Nor has a single instance of the transmutation of species ever been proved.

Every beast, bird, fish, insect and plant brings forth after its kind, and has done so since its creation.

No law of Natural Philosophy is more firmly established than this, _That there is no spontaneous generation, nor transmutation of species._ It is true there is a regular gradation of the various orders of animal and vegetable life, rising like the steps of a staircase, one above the other; but gradation is no more caused by transmutation than a staircase is made by an ambitious lower step changing itself into all the upper ones.
To refer the origin of the world to the laws of nature is absurd.

Law, as Johnson defines it, is a rule of action.

It necessarily requires an acting agent, an object designed in the action, means to attain it, and authoritative enforcement of the use of those means by a lawgiver.