Men are impatient, and for precipitating things; but the Author of Nature appears deliberate throughout His operations, accomplishing His natural ends by slow, successive steps. And there is a plan of things beforehand laid out, which, from the nature of it, requires various systems of means, as well as length of time, in order to the carrying on its several parts into execution.
Joseph Butler (1798). “The Analogy of Religion: Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature. To which are Added, Two Brief Dissertations: I. On Personal Identity. II. On the Nature of Virtue. Together with a Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Durham, ... in the Year MDCCLI. By Joseph Butler, ... A New Edition, Corrected. With a Preface, ... by Samuel Halifax, ...”, p.228
