In considering Ray's work on geology it has been necessary to give an account of the Discourses; for, as we have seen, these are his fullest treatment of the subject and the only contribution that has received any attention from later writers. But in fact the Discourses both in their intention and in their gradual enlargement follow closely the book which he published in the previous year, 1691.

The Wisdom of God manifested in the Works of the Creation is certainly his most popular and influential achievement. Published as a slim octavo volume of 249 pages, in a first edition of 500 copies, it was reprinted in a second edition of 382 pages in 1692, in a third of 414 pages in 1701 and in a fourth of 464 pages in 1704. It was reissued many times during the next century; it formed the basis of Derham's Boyle Lectures in 1711–12; it supplied the background for the thought of Gilbert White and indeed for the naturalists of three generations; it was imitated, and extensively plagiarised, by Paley in his famous Natural Theology; and more than any other single book it initiated the true adventure of modern science, and is the ancestor of the Origin of Species or of L'Évolution Créatrice.