Theology, means the act of abandoning, or state of being abandoned, to eternal destruction; and is applied to that decree or resolve which God has taken from all eternity to punish sinners who shall die in impenitence; in which sense it is directly opposed to election. When a sinner is so hardened as to feel no remorse or misgiving of conscience, it is considered as a sign of reprobation; which by the casuists has been distinguished into positive and negative. The first is that whereby God is supposed to create men with a positive and absolute resolution to damn them eternally. This opinion is countenanced by St Augustine and other Christian fathers, and is a peculiar tenet of Calvin and most of his followers. The church of England, in The thirty-nine Articles, teaches something like it; and the church of Scotland, in the Confession of Faith, maintains it in the strongest terms. But the notion is generally exploded, and is believed by no rational divine in either church, being totally injurious to the justice of the Deity. Negative or conditional reprobation is that whereby God, though he has a sincere desire to save men, and furnishes them with the necessary means, so that all if they will may be saved, yet sees that there are many who will not be saved by the means, however powerful, that are afforded them; though by other means which the Deity sees, but will not afford them, they might be saved. Reprobation respects angels as well as men, and respects the latter either fallen or unfallen. See Predestination.

Reproduction is usually understood to mean the restoration of a thing before existing, and since destroyed. It is very well known that trees and plants may be raised from slips and cuttings; and some late observations have shown, that there are some animals which have the same property. The polype* was the first instance we had of this; but we had scarce time to wonder at the discovery Mr Trembley had made, when Mr Bonnet discovered the same property in a species of water-worm. Amongst the plants which may be raised from cuttings, there are some which seem to possess this quality in so eminent a degree, that the smallest portion of them will become a complete tree again.

It deserves inquiry, whether or not the great Author of nature, when he ordained that certain insects, as these polypes and worms, should resemble those plants in that particular, allowed them this power of being reproduced in the same degree? or, which is the same thing, whether this reproduction will or will not take place in whatever part the worm is cut? In order to try this, Mr Bonnet entered on a course of many experiments on the water-worms which have this property. These are, at their common growth, from two to three inches long, and of a brownish colour, with a cast of reddish. From one of these worms he cut off the head and tail, taking from each extremity only a small piece of a twelfth of an inch in length; but neither of these pieces were able to reproduce what was wanting. They both perished in about 24 hours; the tail first, and afterwards the head. As to the body of the worm from which these pieces were separated, it lived as well as before, and seemed indeed to suffer nothing by the loss, the head-part being immediately used as if the head was thereon, boring the creature's way into the mud. There are, besides this, two other points in which the reproduction will not take place; the one of these is about the fifth or sixth ring from the head, and the other at the same distance from the tail; and in all probability the condition of the great artery in these parts is the cause of this.

What is said of the want of the reproductive power of these parts relates only to the head and tail ends; for as to the body, it feels very little inconvenience from the loss of what is taken off, and very speedily reproduces those parts. Where then does the principle of life reside in such worms, which, after having their heads cut off, will have not only the same motions, but even the inclinations, that they had before? and yet this difficulty is very small, compared to several others which at the same time offer themselves to our reason. Is this wonderful reproduction of parts only a natural consequence of the laws of motion? or is there lodged in the body of the creature a chain of minute buds or shoots, a sort of little embryos, already formed and placed in such parts where the reproductions are to begin? Are these worms only mere machines? or are they, like more perfect animals, a sort of compound, the springs of whose motions are actuated or regulated by a sort of soul? And if they have themselves such a principle, how is it that this principle is multiplied, and is found in every separate piece? Is it to be granted, that there are in these worms, not a single soul (if it is to be so called) in each, but that each contains as many souls as there are pieces capable of reproducing perfect animals? Are we to believe with Malpighi, that these sorts of worms are all heart and brain from one end to the other! This may be; but yet if we knew that it was so, we should know in reality but very little the more for knowing it: and it seems, after all, that in cases of this kind we are only to admire the works of the great Creator, and sit down in silence.

The nice sense of feeling in spiders has been much talked of by naturalists; but it appears that these worms have yet somewhat more surprising in them in regard to this particular. If a piece of stick, or any other substance, be brought near them, they do not stay for its touching them, but begin to leap and frisk about as soon as it comes towards them. There want, however, some farther experiments to ascertain whether this be really owing to feeling or to sight; for though we can discover no distinct organs of sight in these creatures, yet they seem affected by the light of the sun or a candle, and always frisk about in the same manner at the approach of either; nay, even the moon-light has some effect upon them.

A twig of willow, poplar, or many other trees, being planted in the earth, takes root, and becomes a tree, every piece of which will in the same manner produce other trees. The case is the same with these worms: they are cut in pieces, and these several pieces become perfect animals; and each of these may be again cut into a number of pieces, each of which will in the same manner produce an animal. It had been supposed by some that these worms were oviparous: but Mr Bonnet, on cutting one of them to pieces, having observed a slender substance, resembling a small filament, to move at the end of one of these pieces, separated it; and on examining it with glasses, found it to be a perfect worm, of the same form with its parent, which lived and grew larger in a vessel of water into which he put it. These small bodies are easily divided, and very readily complete themselves again, a day usually serving for the production of a head to the part that wants one; and, in general, the smaller and slenderer the worms are, the sooner they complete themselves after this operation. When the bodies of the large worms are examined by the microscope, it is very easy to see the appearance of the young worms alive, and moving about within them; but it requires greater precision and exactness to be certain of this; since the ramifications of the great artery have very much the appearance of young worms, and they are kept in a sort of continual motion by the fibres and diaclotes of the several portions of the artery, which serve as so many hearts. It is very certain, that what we force in regard to these animals by our operations, is done also naturally every day in the brooks and ditches where they live. A curious observer will find in these places many of them without heads or tails, and some without either; as also other fragments of various kinds, all which are then in the act of completing themselves: but whether accidents have reduced them to this state, or they thus purposely throw off parts of their own body for the reproduction of more animals, it is not easy to determine. They are plainly liable to many accidents, by which they lose the several parts of their body, and must perish very early if they had not a power of reproducing what was lost: they often are broken into two pieces, by the resistance of some hard pieces of mud which they enter; and they are subject to a disease, a kind of gangrene, rotting off the several parts of their bodies, and must inevitably perish by it, had they not this surprising property.

This worm was a second instance, after the polype, of the surprising power in an animal of recovering its most essential parts when lost. But nature does not seem to have limited her benevolence in this respect to these two creatures. Mr Bonnet tried the same experiments on another species of water-worm, differing from the former in being much thicker. This kind of worm, when divided in the summer season, very often shows the same property: for if it be cut into two or three pieces, the pieces will lie like dead for a long time, but afterwards will move about again; and will be found in this state of rest to have recovered a head, or a tail, or both. After recovering their parts, they move very little; and, according to this gentleman's experiments, seldom live more than a month.

It should seem, that the more difficult success of this last kind of worm, after cutting, and the long time it takes to recover the lost parts, if it do recover them at all, is owing to its thickness; since we always find in that species of worms which succeeds best of all, that those which are thinnest always recover their parts much sooner than the others.

The water-insects also are not the only creatures which have this power of recovering their lost parts. The earth affords us some already discovered to grow in this manner from their cuttings, and these not less deserving our admiration than those of the water: the common earth-worms are of this kind. Some of these worms have been divided into two, others into three or four pieces; and some of these pieces, after having paled two or three months without any appearance of life or motion, have then begun to reproduce a head or tail, or both. The reproduction of the anus, after such a state of rest, is no long work; a few days do it: but it is otherwise with the head, that does not seem to perform its functions in the divided pieces till about seven months after the separation. It is to be observed, that in all these operations both on earth and water-worms, the hinder part suffers greatly more than the fore part in the cutting; for it always twists itself about a long time, as if actuated by strong convulsions; whereas the head head usually crawls away without the appearance of any great uneasiness.

The reproduction of several parts of lobsters, crabs, &c., makes also one of the great curiosities in natural history. That, in lieu of an organic part of an animal broken off, another shall rise perfectly like it, may seem inconsistent with the modern system of generation, where the animal is supposed to be wholly formed in the egg. Yet has the matter of fact been well attested by the fishermen, and even by several virtuosos who have taken the point into examination, particularly M. de Reaumur and M. Perrault, whose skill and accuracy in things of this nature will hardly be questioned. The legs of lobsters, &c., consist each of five articulations; now, when any of the legs happen to break by any accident, as in walking, &c., which frequently happens, the fracture is always found to be in a part near the fourth articulation; and what they thus lose is precisely reproduced some time afterwards; that is, a part of a leg shoots out, consisting of four articulations, the first whereof has two claws as before; so that the loss is entirely repaired.

If a lobster's leg be broken off by design at the fourth or fifth articulation, what is thus broken off always comes again; but it is not so if the fracture be made in the first, second, or third articulation. In those cases, the reproduction is very rare if things continue as they are. But what is exceedingly surprising is, that they do not; for, upon visiting the lobster maimed in the barren and unhappy articulations, at the end of two or three days, all the other articulations are found broken off to the fourth; and it is suspected they have performed the operation on themselves, to make the reproduction of a leg certain.

The part reproduced is not only perfectly like that retrenched, but also, in a certain space of time, grows equal to it. Hence it is that we frequently see lobsters, which have their two big legs unequal, and that in all proportions. This shows the smaller leg to be a new one.

A part thus reproduced being broken, there is a second reproduction. The summer, which is the only season of the year when the lobsters eat, is the most favourable time for the reproduction. It is then performed in four or five weeks; whereas it takes up eight or nine months in any other season. The small legs are sometimes reproduced, but more rarely, as well as more slowly, than the great ones: the horns do the same. The experiment is most easily tried on the common crab.