This essay from Aeon via Pocket is a very interesting take on the ramifications of the discovery of microscope life from the 16th century to present day.
The opening paragraph ...
"When the Dutch cloth merchant Antonie van Leeuwenhoek looked at a drop of pond water through his home-made microscope in the 1670s, he didn’t just see tiny ‘animals’ swimming in there. He saw a new world: too small for the eye to register yet teeming with invisible life. The implications were theological as much as they were scientific."