According to the Ancients who stretched it from one Tropic to the other it was about Seven and forty Degrees wide that is near Three thousand Miles But yield it to have been but half so broad and what Men could ever have marched over it For as under their feet there would have been vehemently hot and scalding Sands so the scorching fury of the glaring Sun would have beat intolerably upon their Heads And then what should have guided them through this burning Tract where was nothing of Path or Way-mark to be seen Suppose they had the Direction of Stars by night yet who or what should have led their Caravans by day And yet had they journied without sure conduct whither might they have wandred and to what length might they have spun out their rangeing Progress at the shortest too long and tedious to be born Especially if we consider that in those their Travels they could have met with no manner of shelter or refreshment No not so much as with a Grove or a Tree with a Lake or a River with one poor Fountain or Spring of Water or a single puff of fresh and cooling Air. And say the driest burningest part of this Zone had not been above Five hundred Miles over yet who durst have thought of venturing through it as not knowing its extent And who that had advanced a few Furlongs into it could have been able to have gone forward or to return alive None will be surprized at this that have a right Notion of the nature of this Region or of the excessive degree of its raging heat The Theory speaks it in these words which all circumstances weighed carry no Hyperbole in them It was a wall of fire indeed or a Region of flame which none could pass or subsist in no more than in a Furnace Now if Adam were seated at first in the Southern Hemisphere of the Earth as the Theory holds then how could he or any of his Off-spring have removed into this Northern one there being such a fiery Partition betwixt them Yet we are told of Providence's transplanting Adam into this Hemisphere after he had laid the Foundation of a World in the other But that Adam in any ordinary Providential way and no extraordinary one is mentioned should cross a wall of fire or a Region of flame we know not how many hundred Miles broad which none could pass or subsist in no more than in a Furnace may justly be concluded a thing impossible And then equally impossible it was that this Hemisphere of ours should ever be peopled by Adam or his Progeny before the Flood To say that GOD led Adam through this Mediterranean fiery Zone the Barrier betwixt the two Hemispheres which nothing could pass either way as soon as he had sinned and so very timely that it was not as yet grown hot and burning might be a useful suggestion in the case were it not perfectly forestalled and quite shut out by what was said before namely That Adam was not transplanted into this Hemisphere till he had laid the Foundation of a World in the other Which suppose to have been done in Twenty Years time as it could not well be done in less yet in that interval the fire would have been so kindled in the Torrid Zone as to have made it too hot a Climate for him to have gone through If in this our Land we have no Rain for eight or ten weeks together in a Summer we see how lamentably the Ground is scorched and how the surface of it is turned as it were into a meer Turf and yet all this while the Sun is not perpendicular to us by two or three thousand Miles But how inconceivably hot then must the middle circumference of the First Earth have been supposing it subject to his perpendicular Beams not only for ten weeks but twenty years together and no one Cloud to have overshadowed it and no drop of Rain to have fallen upon it all that while It is said to have been the Opinion of Athanasiâ—s and Ephrem Syrus That Paradise into which Adam was put lay beyond the Ocean and that he wading through it made towards the Country where he was formed and at length dying there was buried in Mount Calvary Upon what good grounds this conceit was built I know not but by no means can it escape the Censure of absurdity Yet the vast Ocean it self might as well be â—ordable to the first Father of Mankind as this glowing Zone passable And therefore the difficulty of getting through that Ocean was one thing that induced St. Austin to follow Lactantius and the Ancients generally in denying Antipodes For in their Judgment an immense Ocean begirt the Earth after the manner this Zone is supposed to have done and parted our Northern from the Southern Hemisphere For which reason the good Father deeming it impossible that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Inhabitants of that side of the Earth which is opposite to ours should ever spring from the same Stock with us and be of Adam's Race he fairly concluded that there were no such It is too absurd to say that any Men could out of this get into that part of the Earth by sailing over the huge Ocean as also it would be to say That Mankind was founded there of that first Man Adam And tâ—erefore by the way how could St. Austin if consistent with himself place Paradise in the Anti-hemisphere or Continent opposite to ours as the Theory understands he did when he thus expresly declareâ— it to be his Judgment That Mankind was not propagated there and could not be transported from hence thither 5. Again Had the Earth held such a Right Situation to the Sun it would have put by the Rains which helpt to raise the Flood I confess it is granted That at that time the rains fell forty days and forty nights together and that throughout the face of the whole Earth And this is but a certain truth and so a necessary concession But then it is more than the Hypothesis can bear which makes Rain impossible while the first Earth stood in any other place but the Frigid Zones And therefore to admit such general Rains is to desert or overthrow the Hypothesis and to suppose the Situation of the Earth changed before it was so So incompatible were Rains to the first order or constitution of Nature as fixed by the Theory that a Particular Hydrography was calculated by it to serve the prediluvian Age with Water But then the same System or Frame of Nature which rendred that World so impluvious all along would have done so at the time of the Flood likewise Yea in that critical juncture when Rains were most useful it would have taken most place and made them least plentiful For then the Earth it self would have been hottest and driest and the Subterraneous Abyss most exhausted Nor can these general Rains be pretended to come from the
disruption of the Abyss as if the fall of the Earth had caused such extraordinary commotions in the Air or convulsions of its Regions as made them every where to pour down Waters For the Theory will have the Rains to be antecedent to the disruption I do not suppose the Abyss broken open till after the forty days rain But then this is most directly against Scripture again for that plainly affirms the contrary that the Fountains of the great Deep and the Windows of Heaven were both opened upon one day Gen. 7. 11. In the six hundredth year of Noah's life in the second month the seventeenth day of the month the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up and the windows of heaven were opened So that in the same year of Noah's Life and in the same Month of that Year and on the same Day of that Month the Fountains below and the Windows above were both set open that the Waters issuing out of both might raise the Deluge 6. Let me add in the next place That it is a known Question that has been moved by Writers of all sorts Ancient and Modern Iewish and Christian Divines Historians Chronologers c. at what time of the year the Flood came in Iosephus for instance will have it to happen in Autumn others in the Spring and they give their reasons for it The Question does manifestly proceed upon inadvertency their not minding that when it was Spring in one part of the World it was Autumn in another And the like Question is put by Writers and bandied among them touching the Creation at what time of the year that great Work was done But somewhat more improperly there being no Seasons of the year before the Creation Now this being the general Judgment of the Learned That the year had Tempestival Changes from the beginning even the same that it has now as these Questions import from hence it may be inferted that they never dreamt of this Position of the Earth or a Perpetual Aequinox but were all of the contrary perswasion or common Opinion 7. As for the Authorities that are made use of to establish the Doctrine we are upon if they be examined they will hardly be found to speak home in the case For though in the Contents of the Tenth Chapter of the Second Book of the Latin Theory it be thus declared the last Article concerning the right Situation of the first Earth is establisht by the sentences of Philosophers yet if their Sentences alledged in that Chapter be well considered they will appear to be too weak and insufficient I shall set them all down fully to avoid suspicion of perverting or misrepresenting them The first is taken out of Plutarch and delivered by him as the joint Opinion of two ancient Philosophers Diogenes and Anaxagoras think that after the World was constituted and living creatures were brought forth out of th◠Earth the World in a manner was inclined towards its Southern part of its own accord And that this perchance was done by providence that some parts of the World might be inhabited and others not by reason of cold heat and convenient temperature But this will do the Theory little service it rather fights against it For the Inclination here is said to be made by Providence that some of the Worlds parts might be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 habitable by reason of a good temperature Which agrees not with the Theory for that holds the World to have been of the best temperature before the Earth was inclined insomuch that it knew no Season but Spring And what then could mend its habitableness Yet in order to that the Earth was inclined as the Citation intimates And when in the Judgment of these Philosophers the inclination of the Earth was to conduce to or improve its habitableness and according to the Tenor of the Theory it would rather have been an hindrance or disadvantage to the same it is apparent that this Allegation does rather cross than confirm the Hypothesis In case it be argued That this Inclination might promote or mend the habitableness of the Earth as it quenched the flame in the Torrid Zone and reduced its intolerable to a gentle hea◠neither thus can the Passage be drawn to favour the Theory For say the Philosophers by vertue of this Inclination some parts of the Earth were to be rendred 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 uninhabitable and that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 too upon the account of vehement heat Whereas this very Inclination was of necessity to be a qualification or corrective or indeed a perfect extinction of all furious burning in the Torrid Zone as the Theory owns So that the Authority cited is so far from establishing the Theory's Hypothesis of the Earth's Inclination that it will not be easily reconciled to it Nor can it excuse the matter with this Pair of Philosophers to say that they were blinded here with the common Error and ran for company with those that believed there was a Torrid Zone when there really was none For allowing they were so sagacious as to discover this Secret of the Earth's Inclination we must also grant that by the same quick-sightedness they would clearly have discerned that the effect thereof could not have been 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a scorching raging insufferable heat about the middle of the Earth but a certain mitigation or quenching of the same The second Sentence is that of Empedocles which occurs in the same Chapter of Plutarch Empedocles teacheth That the Air giving way to the force of the Sun the North inclined the Northern parts being elevated and the Southern ones depressed and this happened by that means to the whole World Here is a mighty effect produced without a cause assigned at least here is non causa pro causa the assignation of a cause altogether incompetent and not to be understood For why should the Air yield to the force of the Sun more towards the South than towards the North when his force was equal upon both the Regions at once For he moving at all times exactly in the midst betwixt them his influence must be exactly alike upon each and therefore that it should cause the depression of one more than of the other is a thing in the dark and unintelligible But say the Sun had had power to displace the Earth and by sinking one Pole of it through such a cession of the Air to have raised the other yet then that this cession should not be in the Air nor consequently this dislocation of the Earth till the Flood happened is not to be thought And therefore this Sentence favours not the Theory neither for that has positively determined the time of the Deluge to have been the juncture of the Earth's declension or dislocation Whereas if the Sun had been the cause thereof by working a change in the Air conducive thereunto it must have been accomplisht
length of Seventy five Degrees or between four and five thousand Miles And then Eastward of that Sea runs the main Land of India which from the Western parts of it to Camboia in the East is extended between two and three thousand Miles more And yet it is all-a-long one continued Tract of Land bating the Sinus Gangeticus or Gulf of Bengala which North-wards thrusts up but a little beyond the Ecliptic neither And lastly the same Ecliptic runs obliquely over almost the widest part of America Peruana another piece of Ground three thousand Miles in breadth So that the Earth seems to be too whole in its Aequinoctial Regions I mean those that were so before the Flood to have been dissolved to make the Deluge For had it suffered such a dissolution the middle parts of it falling in first for some reasions before suggested it seems probable that it should have been more broken and shattered thereabouts than any where else if not clean swallowed up and so the Earth must have been of quite another shape than now it is But this I speak as a probable rather than as a certain thing Where grounds are but presumptive and conjectural Assertions built upon them must not be positive and dogmatical 5. Fourthly Had the Earth been dissolved to make the Flood its Dissolution would have brought it into a state of most lamentable barrenness For then the inward parts of it being turned outward and the starven Molds and stony Materials in its Bowels being made into its surface in a great measure in all such places it would not only have been destitute of such things as should have afforded nourishment both to Men and Beasts but moreover indisposed to and incapable of yielding them for a long time The Husbandman when he plows a little deeper than ordinary and fetches up the dead Soil as he terms it it proves a great hindrance to his Crops Yet what is that Soil but part of what upon the exterior Orb 's tumbling into the Abyss must have been turned up by whole Countries at once at least in the Aequinoctial parts of the Earth as being extreamly dried and having all the heart or fatness suck'd out of it by the scorching Sun And where vast pieces of Earth sank whole as they were and the ground also was of a richer nature as retaining we 'll suppose some of its native Oiliness yet there it must have been covered with an huge quantity of Mud which would have made it barren by choking such things as would have grown upon it For the Waters below being by the falling in of the Ground expell'd from their aboad and forced to fly up with unspeakable violence and then by reason of their plenty and gravity descending with as much rage and force again and still as the Earth suffered more fractures and plung'd into the Waters in more pieces they feeling new commotions and being huffed up and put into fresh estuations by their rising and falling and working and beating furiously and incessantly they must needs wash and wear off a mighty deal of Earth from the fragments that dropped into the Deep Which Earth being carried into all places by the tossing rolling turbulent Waters and spread pretty thick upon the face of the Ground and also incorporate with much other Filth it could not but be occasion of great barrenness to the Earth For then when the Deluge settled and went off that Filth could not but harden into a crust or cap upon the Earth's surface very destructive to the Earth's fruitfulness Especially if we consider how long and dismally the Ground was harrass'd by the Flood before it was incrusted For says the Theory the Tumult of the Waters and the extremity of the Deluge lasted for some Months And the fluctuations of the Waters being so boisterous and withal so lasting they could not but wash up or kill most of the tenderer sort of Plants and many of the hardier and stronger ones too yea and perhaps rinse off the top of the ground it self leaving it generally bare and covering it in many places with store of silty sandy or gravelly stuff So that the Earth being first made bare and then overgrown with the Crust aforesaid which with the Sun and Wind would be baked on to it and wax pretty stiff and hard about it how could it at first have afforded sustenance to the living Creatures And therefore we read concerning Attica That by reason of Mud and Slime which the Waters lest upon the Earth it was uninhabited two hundred years after Ogyges's Flood And that the whole Earth should be in as bad a Condition after the general Flood as Attica was after that Inundation which happened to it we need not question if the Theory has hit upon the true Cause of the Deluge So that however Noah and his Family might have made shift for Food supporting themselves by eating some of those Creatures kept alive in the Ark which GOD at their going out of the same gave them for meat with a general Licence to eat Flesh Gen. 9. 3. yet other Animals for a time would have been at a very great loss for Nourishment 6. Again had the Earth been drowned by its being dissolved and falling into the Abyss all the Buildings erected before the Flood would have been shaken down or else overwhelmed Yet we read of some that outstood the Flood and were not demolisht Such were the Pillars of Seth and the Cities Henochia and Ioppa Touching which to avoid quoting of several Authors I shall only recite what I meet with in one And for a more direct proof that the Flood made no such destroying alteration Josephus avoweth that one of those Pillars erected by Seth the third from Adam was to be seen in his days which Pillars were set up above fourteen hundred twenty and six years before the Flâ—od counting Seth to be an hundred years old at the erection of them and Josephus himself to have lived some forty or fifty years after CHRIST of whom although there bâ—â—no cause to believe all that he wrote yet that which he avoucheth of his own time cannot without great derogation be called in question And therefore possibly some foundation or ruine thereof might then be seen Now that such Pillars were rear'd by Seth all Antiquity hath avowed It is also written in Berosus to whom though I give little credit yet I cannot condemn him in all that the City of Enoch built by Cain about the Mountains of Libanus was not defaced by length of time yea the ruines thereof Annius who commented upon that fragment which was found saith were to be seen in his days who lived in the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile And if these his words be not true then was he exceeding impudent fâ—r speaking of this City of Enoch he conludeth in this sort Cujus maxima ingentis molis fundamenta visuntur vocatur ab incolis regionis Civitas Cain ut
have hindred the same Waters from running back into it Not the Waters in the Bowels of the Earth for if they were there in such plenty as 't is confest there is room enough for them as to have been able to have made a much greater Flood than Noah's yet then against their nature they must have risen above their Source and being so risen they must have stood so long as the Flood lasted in a miraculous opposition to their own nature inclining them to retire from whence they came Not the Supercelestial Waters for then the breaking up of the Fountains of the great Deep and the opening of the Windows of Heaven must be one and the same thing Whereas by Moses they are very plainly and carefully distinguisht Not the inclosed Abyss for then besides that the whole Hypothesis so improbable must be allowed the forty days Rain would have been utterly needless Because then the falling of the Earth into the Abyss being the breaking up of the Fountains of the great Deep it must have fallen in the very first day that Noah went into the Ark because on that very day all the Fountains of the great Deep were broken up Gen. 7. 11. And if by the Earth's falling into the Abyss the World were drowned the first day that Noah entered the Ark as of necessity it must have been if the Earth were dissolved and fell that day to what purpose should it after that rain for forty days together And whereas it is said Gen. 8. 2. That the Fountains of the Deep were stopped the Earth broken down into the Abyss was never made up again nor the Abyss it self covered but remains still as open as ever To which Particular Heads let me add but one more which has a kind of general Relation to them all If either the open Sea or the Waters within the Earth or the Waters above the Heavens or the Abyss under the Earth had been the great Deep meant by Mosâ—s none of them had any true or proper Fountains in them And so what will become of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all the Fountains of the great Deep But now supposing that the Caverns in the Mountains were this great Deep how surprizingly do all these things fall in with them For First They are called great Deeps by the HOLY GHOST as has been noted Psal. 78. Secondly They were capable of being cleaved or broke open as being fast shut up Thirdly They were able to afford a competent quantity of Water even as much as it was necessary they should yield Fourthly The Water that came forth of them could never return into them more Fifthly The breaking them up must be quite another thing than opening the Windows of Heaven Sixthly They might all be broke up the same day that Noah took into the Ark. Seventhly The Rain which fell in the forty days would still have been as needful as ever Eighthly They were stopped again as strictly and literally as they were broken up Lastly They were as true and distinct Fountains as any in the World So that if they were not the real Fountains of the Mosaic Tehom Rabbah one would think they might well have been so 5. But let us now pass as it is time we should to a Second Ground upon which we build the probability of our Hypothesis above specified namely That the Flood was but fifteen Cubits higher than the highest parts of the surface of the Earth And that Ground is this Supposing that to have been the true height of the Flood it will not only be possible but very easie to find Water enough for it without recourse to such Inventions as have been and justly may be disgustful not only to nice and squeamish but to the best and soundest Philosophic Judgments For thus in the First place we need not call in the Theory's assistance an Hypothesis how ingenious soever in the contrivance and contexture of it guilty of unjustifiable absurdities Nor Secondly need we fly to a New Creation of Water to gain a sufficient quantity of it An Expedient that sounds harshly in the Ears of many And that not only because they are of Opinion that GOD finisht the work of Creation in the first six days But because he has expresly declared That the true and only Causes of the Deluge were these Two The breaking up of all the Fountains of the great Deep and the opening of the Windows of Heaven To which may be added That the Creation of so vast a quantity of Water as should have surmounted the highest Hills would certainly have inferred either an enlargement of the whole Universe to receive it and so a Dislocation and consequently a disorder of its parts respectively or else a Penetration of the Dimensions of Bodies while so much new matter should have sprung into being more than ever existed and yet have been confined to the same space of aboad that was before fill'd up in its whole capacity Nor need we Thirdly to fetch Waters from the Supercelestial Regions Where if the Heavens be Fluid how could they have kept from falling down so long And if they be Solid how could they possibly have descended at last For in their descent they must have bored their way through several Orbs as hard as Crystal and how thick we know not Besides these Waters must have been lodg'd either below the Stars or above them If below them they would have hid them from our sight The Sun himself cannot be seen through a watry Cloud how much less the Stars through a watry Ocean Nor will it help to say the Element of Water above is more fine and transparent than the Waters below For were it as thin as an ordinary Mist still it would hide the Sun's Face from us though it might transmit his light In case they were plac'd above the Stars they must have been delug'd before the Earth could have been so as intercepting them in their fall Nor could they have slid off the Stars again dropping down to the Earth unless that were the Center of the Universe which is hard to prove yea most absurd to think Nor will it be necessary in the Fourth place to suppose the Mass of Air or greatest part of it was changed into Water to make the Deluge A change which some will by no means admit of as being not hitherto proved by Experiment Yet I cannot but own that the best Philosophers have thought it fecible and also believed it to be actually done The Egyptians conceived Manethus and Hecataeus both attest 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That Rains were made by the version of Air. Plato was of the same Opinion 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That Air being thickned and condensed made Clouds and Mists And so was Philo. For besides that he affirms 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that it varies and runs through all manner of mutations He says expresly in another Place 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. That Air being
Philosophy upon our SAVIOUR's Miracles though it carries me a little farther still out of my way to take notice of his Baseness They were much superiour to the Wonders of Moses Yet that rude Epicurean would fain argue them down into the hateful Rank of Prestigious Impostures and make the HOLY JESUS no better than a Conjurer Yea having gotten the sacred Story by the end of our LORD's Flight into Egypt he perverts it most shamefully to make it countenance that black and hellish Reproaâ—h which he would have fastned on his GLORIOUS MAJESTY For he blasphemously affirms That he was brought up in an obscure manner and being Lett for a Servant thither grew skilful in the strange Feats of that Nation and then returning from thence by the Feats he could do gain'd himself the Name and Repute of a GOD. And yet still says the Wretch in another place he was but a Iuggler and as such a one went up and down dishonourably begging and getting his livelihood by what he could do by Sleight-of-hand Now whither tends this Why as it is all but a Cast of Celsus's profound Philosophy so the drift of it was but to advance Philosophy and set it too high to exalt it that is above the Christian Doctrine and to maintain it in way of Opposition to that And thus to come home to our purpose at last Some have set Philosophy too high in reference to the Flood I mean that great and general Flood which put a disastrous period to the First World For they held it proceeded from Second Causes in such a manner as reflects upon the First in such a manner that when to do the greater honour to Philosophy they attempt by the help of it to explain how the Explication grievously impeaches Scripture and charges it very boldly and unhandsomly a thing by no means to be endured For though Philosophy as has been said be eminently serviceable to Divinity and that in its noblest and most important Articles unless they be such as are absolute Mysteries and so naturally as unintelligible to meeâ— Reason as finest Speculations are imperceptible to Sense yet it must not be allow'd to clash or interfere with it in the least especially in its holy Foundations or Principles the Inspired Oracles For so the Hand-maid would pertly usurp over her Mistress and forgetting her duty proudly domineer in her Station of Obedience 17. And this is too much the Fault of The Theory of the Earth It pends too hard against the Sacred Scriptures and advances to an intrenchment upon Divine Revelation Which will evidently appear in several Particulars in the Sequel of our Discourse 18. It abounds with Philosophy indeed and the Philosophy it contains is well delivered But it is not justly regulated and kept within due Limits For it runs so fast and is driven so far that it treads unseemly and unsufferably too upon the heels of Truth even of that most Divine and Infallible Truth which was spoken by GOD and therefore to be infinitely reverenc'd of Men. 19. Now this Irregularity I apprehended so great that the reverence I bear to that Holy Volume whose Contâ—nts are no other than the Doctrines of Heaven ingaged me in drawing up the ensuing Exceptions and then in publishing them Though I must own too that I was much encouraged in the Undertaking by the Theorist's ingenuous and frank Invitation Whosoever by solid Reasons will shew me in an Error and undeceive me I shall be very much obliged to him This I shall endeavour to do with all Sincerity and that only as a Friend and Servant to Truth And therefore with such Candour Meekness and Modesty as becomes one who assumes and glories in so fair a Character And also with such Respect to the Virtuosoe who wrote the Theory as may testifie to the World that I esteem his Learning while I question his Opinion 20. And that our Work may be done with the more ease and order it shall be prosecuted in a Method cut out to our hands and shaped according to that Recapitulation of the Theory which we find set down in the Second Book and the Ninth Chapter in these words That there was a Primitive Earth of another Form from the present and inhabited by Mankind till the Deluge That it had those Properties and Conditions that we have ascribed to it namely a perpetual Equinox and Spring by reason of its right Situation to the Sun was of an Oval Figure and the exterior face of it smooth and uniform without Mountains or a Sea That in this Earth stood Paradise the Doctrine whereof cannot be understood but upon Supposition of this Primitive Earth and its Properties Then That the Disruption and Fall of the Earth into the Abyss which lay under it was that which made the Vniversal Deluge and the Destruction of the Old World And That neither Noah's Flood nor the present Form of the Earth can be explained in any other Method that is rational nor by any other Causes that are intelligible These are the Vitals of the Theory and the Primary Assertions whereof I do freely profess my full Belief Against these Assertions my Exceptions shall be levelled and in the same order in which they stand 21. So much for the First Chapter which may be reckoned as an Introduction to the following Discourse Which if any shall look upon as a Collection of Notes somewhat confusedly put together rather than a formal well digested Treatise they will entertain the best or truest Idea of it CHAP. II. 1. The Hypothesis of the Earth's Formation stated 2. The first Exception against it It would have taken up too much time 3. The World being made in Six Days 4. How there might be Light and Days before there was a Sun 5. A Proof that the Creation was perfected in Six Days time 6. Numeral Cabbalism cannot overthrow it 7. The Jews in Cabbalizing still allowed a Literal meaning to Scripture only they superadded a Mystical one never contrary to it 8. Though were there a Cabbala destructive to the Letter of Moses's Story of the Creation that would not invalidate the Argument alledged 9. Moses's Account of the Creation runs not upon bare Numbers but upon Time 10. What Account the Christian Church has made of the Cabbala 11. How it discovers its own Vanity 12. The Literal sense to be kept to in the Story of the Creation 13. Where Scripture speaks so as not to be understood Literally it is sometimes for plainness sake 1. AS every thing had a Beginning except One I mean that most perfect and glorious ESSENCE who gave Being to all so the Earth among the rest had its Origin likewise This none but Infidels or Anti-Scripturists can doubt the Article being founded upon no less than Divine which is the most firm and unquestionable Evidence Could any Doubt of this Matter offer to form it self in our Minds and to settle there the very first Verse in the Holy Biblâ— would not
them were to be â—ound at the rate we have them And truly the perpetual absence of them must needs have made the Air more severely nipping in the Frigid Zones then than it is now Especially they being shot out so far from the Sun by virtue of the oblong figure of the first Earth For even as the Earth is now of a Globular make the Rains might have fallen in the Frigid Zones for ten Degrees latitude or six hundred Miles together and yet on the one side have been five Degrees distant from the Poles themselves and on the other side have been seventy five Degrees distant from the Sun in the Aequinox which is as far to half a Degree as he is ever remov'd from us But then if we add better than fourteen Degrees more to each Pole upon accompt of the Earth's Oâ—iformity the Rains must be removed a great way farther from the Sun still perhaps the whole fourteen Degrees into Climates most horridly cold and freezing And though there would have been constant Day about the very Poles yet in this Oval Earth there would have been as much Night in the presumed rainy Regions as in any other part of it whatever For so we may observe that those rays of the Sun which fell upon that Earth suppose at k and l whereabouts according to the Hydrographic Scheme in the Theory we may imagine the Rainy Regions were could not illighten the opposite side of it at m and n till such time as those points were turned to him which they could not be sooner than the point f where it must have been of the biggest circumference measuring it in way of Longitude Indeed it must be owned that it is not the Sun's distance in Winter which does only or chiefly make our Climate so cold but the oblique falling of his beams on the Earth So that instead of his retreating Southward forty seven Degrees the whole space between the Tropics were he at the time of his entring into Cancer when he is nearest to us but elevated directly as many Degrees or removed only perpendicularly from us our Winter if any would be very moderate because his beams would be reflected in the same Angles as before But his recession from us being in way of latitude or declination â—is Rays must fall the more obliquely upon the Earth From which kind of incidence it comes to pass that they rebound in obtuse Angles and the heat which should be caused by more direct reverberations is impaired As also many of his beams are reflected by the Atmosphaere another way and come not at us at all But then the Sun being farther distant from the rainy Regions in the praediluvian Earth his beams must have fallen more obliquely upon them still and so the cold must have been greater there because his influence was less And therefore what can be thought but that the Dewy Rains if any could have been in those parts should either in falling have been turned into Hails or if they fell in Water have been frozen into Ice And so instead of streaming along and refreshing the Earth they must have stood congeled into Mountains Especially if we consider that extremely cold hanging Mists must have always incircled those Regions above and so have shut out that sorry kind of influence which might have been derived from the so remote and feeble Sun It may a little inforce what has been said that all who have held with the Theorist the Torrid Zone was uninhabitable by reason of heat ever believed that the Frigid ones were so through extremity of cold as Aristotle Cicero Strabo Mela Pliny and others To which add That several Navigators attempting to find out a nearer course to China have been frozen to death Yet they failed nothing so far Northward as the rainy Regions in the Oval Earth must have lain Though without question they chose the most seasonable time for the Enterprize I mean when the Sun was on this side of the Aequator where now he may advance though he could not do so says the Theory before the Flood twenty three Degrees and an half which on Earth we reckon about fourteen hundred Miles Nor is what Mercator remembers touching Novâ— Zembla impertinent to the Case Here the Air is very sharp and the Cold most vehement and intolerable And again their Tents are covered with Whales skins the Cold being continually very sharp in these parts Their drink the Geographer goes on is warm blood of wild Beasts or else Ice water there are no Rivers or Springs because the violence of the Cold does so shut up the Earth that Springs of waters cannot break forth And where Rivers cannot flow out of the Earth for Forst surely they cannot fall down from Heaven Yet this Island is extended but form the Seventieth to the Seventy sixth Degree of Northern Latitude or thereabouts Speed also informs us that the Isles of Shetland in the Deucalidonian Sea are ever covered with Ice and Snow Yet Ptolomy placeth them but in the Sixty third Degree of Latitude which is a good way on this side of the Arctic Circle Heylin also says of Island that it is a damnable cold Country And Blaeu reports of the Frigid Zones Perpetuum istic horridumque est frigus There is perpetual and horrid Cold. Lastly the Theorist himself so far agrees with us as to own that the Frigid Zones in the first Earth were uninhabitable and that by reason of Cold as well as Moisture CHAP. VI. 1. Another Exception against the Hypothesis it would have drowned the world though Man had not sinned 2 Or though Mankind had been never so penitent 3. Which would have reflected upon Providence and imboldened the Atheist 1. WE are taught from above That GOD brought in the Flood upon the World of the VNGODLY That is it was a Judicial act of His and a just revenge which he took upon the impious They had grievously offended and provoked His MAJESTY by very great and epidemical Sins For as we read in the Sixth of Genesis the wickedness of Man was great and every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually and all flesh had corrupted his way before him Whereupon the HOLY GHOST speaking of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 after the manner of Men declares that he was grieved at the heart to see this And such was the grief he conceived that He repented He made Man And so vehemently did He repent of making him that He resolved to destroy him again And not only him but most of his fellow creatures with him made in good measure for his use and benefit And not only them but the Earth it self in some sense which had been the scene of his vanity and unrighteousness And at length He decrees and proclaims aloud that the Instrument of this fearful general destruction should be a Deluge of water Gen. 6. 17. So that nothing can be more clear than that the Flood
it to others And when it was thus secret and hidden from all learned Men why should the HOLY SPIRIT I say tax these Scorners with wilfull ignorance for not understanding it Who however they might abound with conceited knowledge as the name Gnostics which they arrogated to themselves imports were but piâ—iful Sciolists The Theory also affirms that Paradise and the Vniversal Flood were by length of time and the changed face of nature so much obscured that if holy Story had not minded us of them we should not only not have known them but never have thought of them And if the Flood had been utterly buried out of mind and might never have come into the thoughts of Men if Scripture had not kept it in memory then what hope of understanding that it was occasioned by such a form or Fabric of the Earth as the Theory has invented unless the same Scripture minds us of that also But because it does not how could the Persons whom S. Peter reproves be wilfully ignorant of the Phaenomenon Wilfull Ignorance is that which GOD blames and which is really faulty upon our account which we carelessly rest in when we might come out of When Men might have means of knowledge but will not seek them or when they actually have them but will not use them but in the midst of proper helps to science sit down and chuse to acquiesce in Ignorance this is wilfull and affected But these were not the circumstances of those whom we find to have been Objects of the Apostolical Censure They were so far from standing fair for acquaintance with this structure of the Earth or from being in a probable way to the knowledge of it that they were next door to an utter impossibility of ever attaining it supposing it had been real For their Minds were set I may say with a contrary Biass and it was morally necessary that they should be drawn the other way For the whole World was of that Judgment it is of now and which these Mockers were of then and why should they differ from all people then alive or that ever lived It hath been generally thought or presum'd says the Theory that the World before the Flood was of the same Form or Constitution with the present World And how could they help swimming with the general Stream Yea which is more the Opinion was as Strong as it was general and stood very firmly in Mens apprehensions they thinking it built upon Scripture Grounds For that speaks of Seas created in the beginning and of Mountains covered with Water in the Deluge And all agreeing that the Seas mentioned by Moses were no other than those which are now extant and that the Mountains so covered were praeexistent to the Flood the present face of things which is presumed of good use to evince the Earth was of another Form once became a great Argument to perswade these Scorners that it was always of the Form which it now bears and a means to fix them in that Perswasion And when their condition was such as to be destitute of the knowledge of the Form of the Earth and the most likely means they had to help them to it would rather have run them upon the contrary belief and rivetted them fast in it there could be no reason why they should be charged with Wilfull ignorance of the thing And if they could not upon just grounds be charged with Wilfull ignorance of the Form of the Earth then neither with the like ignorance of the Constitution of the Heavens and of the Change and Dissolution that happened to either they being things as much in the dark and as far removed out of the way of their notice Let us but just point at each of them The whole Superficies of the Terrestrial Globe was entire and continued smooth and even regular and level No Lake nor Sea no Rock nor Island no Hill nor Dale was any where upon it But as the Earth was made of two distinct Orbs so betwixt its outward Orb of an Oval figure and that within was the great Body of the Waters lodg'd and shut up so close as to hold no commerce with the open Air. Such in gross was the Form and constitution of the first Earth The Sun piercing through the outward Orb of the Earth drew up chiefly about the Middle parts of it great quantities of Vapours out of the Abyss Which Vapours directing their Courses in the Air from the Aequinoctial to the Polar Regions they were there condensed into Rains to furnish the World with Rivers But these streams of Exhalations flowing continually through the Aereal Regions made them exceeding watry And such in general was the Form or Constitution of the Heavens The Sun moving always in the Aequinoctial the Earth grew extremely dry about the Aequator and full of Chaps which rendred it more weak and brittle in its exterior Orb. Which Orb being fill'd with Vapours within raised by the penetrating heat of the Sun was still more apt to be blown up and broken At length being able to hold no longer it flew in pieces and down it fell into the Deep beneath sinking till it rested on the Orb below Such in short was the Earth's Dissolution By the fall of that into the Waters under it they were forced violently to fly up aloft and surging and raging in a tumultuous manner the great and fatal Deluge was caused Hence also Seas and Lakes arose while the watry Element abating of its fury quietly retired into such hollownesses as were ready to receive it And whereas the external Orb of Earth was so much bigger than that within as to contain the whole Mass of Water in its Cavity and so could not possibly surround and sit close to the inward lesser one in an orbicular fashion about it but several of its parts in several places were fain to stand erect inclining c. these various Prominencies of different sizes shapes and situations made Mountains and Rocks of all sorts But the Outward Earth being thus dissolved and fallen as low into the Waters as it could it was no more liable to a general Flood but was certainly put past that danger for ever And thus Its Form and Constitution was altered Now the Sun also running a new course about the Earth by reason she had changed her old Position and the Abyss being disordered by the Disruption of the Earth and its falling into it Vapours could no longer be drawn out from thence as they used to be nor fill the Aereal channels with store of Exhalations And so they growing dry the watry Complexion of the Heavens perish'd and Their Constitution was changed also Such in brief so far as we are concern'd to note at present was the Form and Constitution of the Heavens and the Earth and such the changes they both underwent as the Theory teaches If therefore the Parties S. Peter reproves were blamed for not knowing the first constitution of
the Heavens and the Earth and that change and dissolution which happened to them in the Deluge their ignorance of those Particulars rehearsed must be the Summ of their Charge But then all those things being perfectly new such as neither Pythagoras nor Plato nor Aristotle nor Zeno nor any Philosophers of any Sect or Age did understand and declare how can it be thought that silly Gnostics or Pseudo-Christians could be acquainted with them And yet if they could not then neither could they be condemned of wilfull ignorance of them nor can the Text be applied to the Theory's Hypothesis 2. But if this were not S. Peter's Drift if it were not his intent to rebuke them for their ignorance of these things what then could be the scope of his correption I answer Though he could not give them this gird for their being ignorant of the Flood yet he might do it properly for their being ignorant of the Chief Cause of it Ignorant of the Flood they could not be it was a thing so well known and so generally received in the Church That the Heavens were of old and the Earth standing out of the water and in the water and that in their standing thus the then World was overflowed with water and perished they could not be chargeable with ignorance of this But the stress or Emphasis of the Apostles charge lies here that they were ignorant of its being done by the Word of GOD. The Heavens were of old says he and the Earth standing out of the Water and in the water 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by the word of GOD. And then it follows 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by which that is by which situation and by which word of GOD causing it the World that then was being overflowed with water perished So that this seems to have been their fault that they had not a true notion of the principal Cause of the Deluge But through their own heedlesness were much in the dark and mightily to seek as to that particular They did not know because they would not that GOD brought it in by the word of his power or in pursuance of that righteous decretory Sentence denounced by him Gen. 6. They were of opinion as others have been that the Flood was a meer casual thing and that the hand of GOD was no otherwise in it than in the purest contingent Calamities Or else that it proceeded wholly from Nature and Second Causes as from the Conjunction and influence of watry Planets However they might think it was of larger extent and longer Duration they might ascribe it to no higher Cause than some do the Flood of Ogyges that happened in Arcadia or that of Deucalion which drowned Thessaly Concerning the latter of which Lucan thus phansied Deucalioneos fudisset Aquarius imbres Aquarius 't was that made those rains pour down Which in Deucalion's time the Earth did drown He plainly imputed it to Astral efficiency or the force of the heavenly Constellations Now if these Men thought thus vainly of the general Innundation and knew it not to be the Effect of the special Providence of GOD they were grossly ignorant in the Case and this their ignorance was grievous wilfull and deserved the holy reproof they met with For had they but consulted the Story of it and considered what Moses says concerning it they would soon have perceived it was the direful issue of divine power and justice and came not by the influence of the Sâ—ars but by the appointment of the DEITY And that to condemn this very ignorance was the real meaning of S. Peter seems to be clear from its agreeableness to his aim or intention Which was to prove the World's Conflagration upon perverse Men who question'd the same and disputed against it by this Argument that all things continued as they were from the beginning whereby they hardned themselves against the Doctrine of the Conflagration in which the Apostle threatned them with a dismal Catastrophe Now how does the Apostle answer and take off this Why by fetching a compass about in his Discourse and by telling them though not in these words to this purpose that when the World was to be drowned all things continued then as they were from the beginning and Nature did not signify it beforehand by any sensible observable Changes because the work was not to be naturally done but by the Word of GOD commanding and causing it which to be ignorant of was their great fault And therefore that in their time all things continued as they were from the beginning ought to be no reason to them that the World shall not be Burned because it is not to be expected that Nature should foreshow it by any prâ—vious alterations inas much as this Burning is no more to be effected in a natural way than the Deluge was but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by the same Word which drowned the World and by which the Heavens and the Earth which are now are reserved unto fire Were it necessary in the least after what has been said it might here be noted that the words are very capable of and might properly be expounded to another sense This they are willingly ignorant of That is they are willingly mindless or forgetfull of it For so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may signify which in the case the Apostle speaks to must be an hainous fault and worthy of reprehension and therefore a thing forgotten is said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Isocrates commending the actions of Hercules and Theseus says they were such 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. as no time could bring into oblivion or blot out of remembrance Tho' still there would be as little reason to charge these Heretics with wilfull forgetfulness of those things that the Theory would make the Text point at as there is to check them for wilfull ignorance of the same 3. Besides this of S. Peter other places of Scripture seem manifestly to describe this same new form of the Abyss with the Earth above it as we are told But as all those places may as well or better be applied to the Earth in its present form so they can hardly be interpreted in favour of this other without some kind of violence or absurdity The First occurrs Psal. 24. 2. He hath founded it the Earth upon the Seas and established it upon the Floods Where 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 rendred upon does as properly signify by And so He founded it by the Seas and established it by the Floods Which David might the rather note because so much of Palestine where he lived lay along by the Mediterranean Though when our Learned Translators turned the word upon they made it speak most true English For where land lies by the Sea we commonly say it lies upon it But then on the other side the Earth according to its first imagined form could in strictness be founded neither upon the Seas nor yet by them because no Seas were then
in being but only an Abyss Should it be answered that the Abyss is here called Seas by a Prolepsis I rejoin Those Seas must then be called Floods by another Proleâ—sis And so the advantage will be cast on our side For in respect of the present form of the Earth the words may be expounded most naturally without a Figure but in reference to the other form they must not only be strained up to a Figure but that Figure must be twice made use of And which is very considerable 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 rendred Floods does signify Rivers and so the LXX and Vulgar do both render it And though that sense falls in most properly with the present form of the Earth as it is every where extended by Rivers yet it can by no means hold with its first form supposing it established upon the Abyss for in that allowing there were Floods there could be no Rivers As to the next place Psal. 136. 6. Who stretched out the Earth above the Waters We need say no more than has been said already It may as well be read juxta aquas by the waters as super aquas above the waters The Third plaâ—e is Psal. 33. 7. He gathered the waters of the Sea as in a Bagg He layeth up the Abysses in Storehouses Which says the Theory answers very fitly and naturally to the place and disposition of the Abyss which it had before the Deluge inclosed within the Vault of the Earth as in a Bagg or in a Store-house But I say it sutes the present form of the Earth as well as it does the first only this difference The Bagg and Stâ—re-houses supposed to be in the first Earth were shut but in this they are open Yea it sutes it much better upon two accounts For in the Earth as it is now there are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 many Treasuries or Storehouses of Waters according to the Text which has the word in the Plural Number Whereas in the first Earth there could be but one before the disruption And then the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 rendred as in a Bâ—g should be rendred as on an heap as it is in the English The Theory indeed faults that Reddition as not making a true sense But in all likelihood our Translators were in the right for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 properly is an heap And though 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies a Bag yet as Buxtorf notes where it is written without Aleph it is not found in that signification but signifies an heap And so says Fagius and the same says Masius And therefore Schindler renders 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in this very place tanquam â—umulum as an heap And so does Bithnor adding That whereas the Targum and LXX render it a Bag it was because they read it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 coming of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 motion and so being quasi rei motae in unum congregatio the gathering of a thing moved into one he will have to signifie an heap And whereas the Theory alleges That the Vulgate Septuagint c. render the word in a Bag or by Terms equivalent yet granting that to be the only proper Reddition it would make nothing at all to the Theorist's purpose another place of Scripture plainly defeats it For Psal. 78. 13. we read in the Septuagint 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And in the Vulgar statuit aquas quasi in utre He set the Waters as in a Bag. Which not only makes the forecited Clause of the 33. Psalm to be no manner of evidence of the Seas being inclosed at first but moreover makes it a Proof of the clean contrary For it speaks of the Red-Sea and says it was in a Bag as much as the fore-quoted Text can possibly be made to say that the Abyss or Proleptic Sea was so and yet at the same time it was not only open as other Seas are now but much more open than ever For it speaks of it at that very time when Israel passed through it as the same Verse testifies And whereas the Theorist notes that the Oriental Versions and Paraphrase render the word as he does in a Bag I may affirm that the Targum Syriac Arabic c. render it so in the place I have alleged But how little their Authorities will countenance his Exposition of the Psalmist's words which he cites and how little that Exposition will help his Hypothesis of the form of the Earth may appear from the Psalmist's words that I have cited Which if they had been considered might have damped that thought which concludes the Paragraph belonging to that place of Scripture we have now spoken to The thought is thus expressed by the Theory I think it cannot but be acknowledged that those Passages which we have instanced in are more fairly and aptly understood of the ancient form of the Sea or the Abyss as it was enclosed within the Earth than of the present form of it in an open Chanel But then that Passage in Psal. 78. 13. being parallel to Psal. 33. 7. so far as we are concerned in it must be acknowledged to be most fairly and aptly understood of the Red Seas being enclosed within the Earth when Moses and the Hebrews marched through it and could that be The next place is Iob 26. 7. He stretcheth out the North over the empty places and hangeth the Earth upon nothing The same is as true of the South also but the good Man living in this Hemisphere the North was the nearer and more obvious of the two And what could be morâ— agreeable to the present Earth For it having no visible sensible thing under it or about it to shoar it up or support it it may very well seem in common apprehension and be said in the vulgar way of speaking to be stretcht out upon emptiness and hanged upon nothing And so the Sun stood still upon Gibeon and the Moon in the Valley of Ajalon though the places were without the Tropic And however Iob in this Expression might accommodate himself to the ordinary Phancy and speech of Men while he represents the Earth as extended and pendent over an immense vacuity yet to cry quit with the Theory which makes an illiterate Apostle a profound Philosopher let me say in the truth of the Notion he was a perfect Platonist For in this matter whensoever he lived he fully agrees with Plato's Doctrine For he also conceived the Earth to â—e hanged upon nothing as having no other Prop to sustain it but it s own figure and equiponderancy by which it swims evenly in the Element about it In testimony of this and so of the mutual concent betwixt Iob and him let this Passage out of his Phaedo speak I am perswaded that if the Earth be but in the midst of the Heavens it needs not the air nor any other help of the like nature to keep
it from falling But that a general equality of the Heaven in it self and an even-poizedness of the Earth is sufficient For an Equilibrious thing placed in a sutable or similar medium will not sway any way little or much but keeping it self evenly ballanced is free from inclination But in this New Hypothesis Ioâ—'s notion can have no place For to say the Earth according to that was stretcht out upon emptiness and hanged upon nothing would be notoriously false For the Theory teaches that it rise upon the face of the Chaos and could not have been formed unless by a concretion upon the face of the Waters and that it had the mass of Waters as a basis or foundation to rest upon And so the Antediluvian Earth was no more stretcht out upon emptiness and hang'd upon nothing than an Arch is when it is built upon its Center And it was but just now that the Theory contended from that Passage in the 24. Psalm that it was founded upon the Seas and established upon the Floods But how then could it be stretched out upon emptiness and hanged upon nothing Or how can the two Texts in the Theory's sense be reconciled In case it be answered That though the Earth at the very first was not stretcht out upon emptiness and hanged upon nothing yet in process of time it was so when the Abyss was sunk in some measure by reason of the huge quantity of Waters the Sun had drawn out of it and so the Earth sat hollow about it I reply in short Iob for certain meant no other than this present Earth For in the very next Verse he speaks of thick Clouds in which Waters were bound up and they not rent And such Clouds according to the Theâ—ry there could never be till the first Earth was dissolved A Fifth place is Iob 38. 4 5 6. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the Earth declare if thou hast understanding Who hath laid the measures thereof if thou knowest or who hath stretched the line upon it Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened Or who laid the corner stone thereof This likewise answers as properly and perhaps more fully to the present real form of the Earth than to the other fictitious one For GOD is here said to have laid the foundations of it Which surely he may as properly be supposed to have done in case he produced it by immediate Creation as if there had been only matter and motion and the power of gravity and levity in the Architecture of it and so its formation had been meerly mechanical as the â—heory makes it And then the measures and the line that are here mentioned do only imply that the Earth was made with fitting accâ—racy of necessary and convenient of regular and comely dimensions and proportions And may not this Earth in those regards be allowed to vie with that supposititious one undâ—r debate Yea does it not in some things excel it For though it has not the very same Elegancies which that Earâ—h had yet it has other Imbellishments equal to them if not beyond them Indeed it has not that smoothness and entireness which is pretended to have been in the first Earth But then which is more considerable it has the raised work of Hills the Embossings of Mountains the Enamellings of lesser Seas the Open-work of vast Oceans and the Fret-work of Rocks To say nothing of those stately Curtains over-head wanting heretofore which are frequently drawn and â—lung open upon occasion and sometimes curiously wrought and most richly gilt even to admiration far surpassing the goodliest Landskips that ever were or can be painted I mean the Clouds which though they be things distinct from the Earth yet having their beginning from the Earth and from this Earth too according to the Theory in opposition to the other are no improper instance of its out-vying it But not to run out into endless Particulars this Earth may compare with and be thought to out-go that imaginary one in Two general and chief things Comelinâ—ss and Vsefulness First in Comeliness For irregularities many times make a sort of Ornaments and those ruggednesses and inequalities that are void of all exactness and order do often pass for Beauties or a kind of Prettiness But then more especially may they do so in the Earth whose natural pulchritude is made up of such things as Art would call rudenesses and consists in asymetries and a wild variety And yet for an Earth it is most beautiful and comely still Thus an Urchin may be handsom in his kind though he has not the beauty of a Dog and a Dog though he has not the beauty of an Horse and an Horse though he has not the beauty of a Man And so is this Earth though it has not the beauty of â—iner things in it but only that which is peculiar to it self For as the beauty of the Sun lies in brightness and glory and the beauty of the Sky in clearness and serenity so the beauty of the Earth which is a different thing does and must needs lie in very different instances namely in Seas and Lakes and Islands and Continents in Flats and Prominencies and Plains and Protuberancies and Hollownesses and Convexities in smooth and spacious Levels in some places and Hills and Mountainous Roughnesses in others Whose careless diversifications and interchangeable mixtures as they mutually set off one another so they all conspire to adorn the Earth Insomuch that to suppose it of the prediluvian From would be rather to detract from its measures than improve them Yea it would be in a manner to make it no Earth or at least not so perfect a one as it is For as we can have no Camels without Bunches nor Mules without Hairs nor Fowls without Feathers or if we could they would be but the more imperfect so were the Earth abstracted from its aforesaid appendages however it might have the more uniformity in it yet as an Earth it would have the less comeliness Somewhat to inforce this Were a Man to contrive a Prospect for himself we may be sure he would not have it all of a piece or alike throughout but would have it cast into Swamps and Hillocks Bottoms and Gibbosities Evennesses and Asperities yea into Seas and Ilets and Rocks if it could be and so it would be an Image not of the primitive but present Earth A petty Argument to prove that there is something of perfection or at least of pleasingness in this Earth's disorder if we may call it so and that it is fitter to gratifie its principal Inhabitants and so far better in it self than if it had been regular and undiversified And the truth is several of those appearances which we are apt to call rude confused and uncouth and to count but Blemishes Scars and Deformities are commonly so well placed and suted to one another as to become very taking in artificial Draughts and a kind of natural
Landskips And however the Theorist does sometimes disparage the Mountainous parts of the Earth at such a rate as if they had been wholly unworthy of the care of Nature and she had scorned to put her hand to the work of their â—ormation and indeed his Hypothesis makes them nothing but ruines yet another while when the ingenious Man is pleased to turn the stream of his Eloquence the contrary way he represents them though certainly the most horrid visible pieces of Nature as exceeding grateful to Beholders Yea he makes this very Earth of ours and that in the hideously amazing and gastly Cragginess of its Mountains to afford more delights to contemplative Minds than ever the Roman or Grecian Theaters did or those Sports wherewith they entertained Spectators So he expresseth himself in the Latin Theory Pag. 89 90. And at the same time we find him transported as it were into a pleasing rapture or pang of Admiration through the singular content and satisfaction he found from the prospect and consideration of what we speak of And truly that roughness brokenness and multiform confusion in the surface of the Earth which to the inadvertent may seem to be nothing but inelegancies or frightful Disfigurements to thinking Men will appear to be as the Tornings and Carvings and ornamental Sculptures that make up the Lineaments and Features of Nature not to say her Braveries Nor need we wonder that the Theorist should be so mightily pleased and raised by the sight and contemplation of these things for though some would take them for flaws and botches and the fag ends of Nature yet in them a quick and piercing Eye can easily discern not only her pretty dexterous Mechanisms but the marvellous and adoreable Skill of her Maker most rarely expressed And therefore the inspired Psalmist meditating upon the Earth in its present Form and particularly revolving in his Holy Thoughts the Mountains the high Hills the Rocks and the great and wide Sea was so taken with them that he could not but think they had GOD for the cause or Author of them And accordingly he declared and proclaimed the worst of them not only to be produced by him but to be the product of his infinite Wisdom O LORD in wisdom hast thou made them all Psal. 104. 24. And when the Divine Wisdom brought forth the Earth and these pieces of it and ordered them into their present places and postures and so admirably well as that the Psalmist directed by the Heavenly SPIRIT could not chuse but celebrate the Production and disposition of them has not this Earth as much to shew for its being made by Rulâ— and Measure as another of a pretended different Form could have had especially when it must all over have been but one vast Plain And then in the Second place this Form of the Earth is most Vseful likewise It appears to be so in sundry respects and very considerable ones For now a great part of Mankind live by the Seas either in way of Traffick or Navigation not to say that all are some way or other the better for them But in the First World says the Theory there was no Sea Mountains also now are most eminently serviceable That is to say in Bounding Nations in Dividing Kingdoms in Deriving Rivers in Yielding Minerals and in breeding and harbouring innumerable wild Creatures I might also add in contributing somewhat towards enlarging the Earth and inabling it in some Countries to sustain its Inhabitants Thus it is alledged as one Reason why Palestine could maintain so many of old that the Country was rising and falling into Hills and Vales whereby ground was gâ—ined and so the Land was far roomthier to use my Author's Phrase And indeed that there were store of Hills in Iudea and very fruitful ones is insinuated by the Royal Prophet where he calls upon Men to give praise to GOD for making Grass to grow upon the Mountains But in the first Earth there were no Mountains neither Lastly The Earth in its present Form and State is attended with Rains and seasonable Showres Whereas in its other Figure and capacity it must have been all over cut into Rills and Aqueducts for the Watring of Mens Grounds and their trouble in doing it would have been endless and unspeakable because it must generally have been done by hand What Tongue can express the toil they must have had in a manual watring of Fields Woods Groves Orchards c. and in slicing a great part of the Earth in pieces thus to moisten and cultivate the rest But now kind Nature saves them that labour while Clouds do the work effectually for them For they filling their Buckets by the help of the Sun and then emptying the same to the best advantage excuse them from the drudgery by taking it upon themselves And that these Rules whereby we measure the Vsefulness of this Earth and shew it to be more excellent than that of the Theory are the most true and proper Rules is manifest from GOD's making use of the same in a Case not unlike For he comparing Egypt and Palestine prefers the latter before the former because in Egypt the Seed sown was watered with the foot as a garden of herbs but Palestine was a land of hills and valleys and drank water of the rain of heaven Deut. 11. 10 11. So that if an Earth most comely and decent in it self and also most Vseful and convenient for Men may most properly be said to be laid in measures and to have had the line stretched upon it or the Rule applied to it as questionless it may than the present Form of the Earth may challenge this Text more justly to it self than the other could do had it ever been And however the Architecture of that is presumed to surpass the Architecture of this yet one thing may here be remarked concerning it That the Holy Man's Language does but indifferently sute it For to talk of Foundations in such a Circle or of a Corner-stone in such a spherical Arch as the primitive Earth is conceived to be sounds but harshly The Sixth Place consists of the 8 9 10 and 11 th Verses of the same Chapter where GOD continues his Interrogatories thus Or who shut up the Sea with Doors when it brake forth as if it had issued out of a Womb When I made the Cloud the garment thereof and thick darkness a swadling band for it and brake up for it my decreed placâ— and set bars and doors And said Hitherto shalt thou come but no farther and here shall thy proud waves be staied Which Period the Theory would have to be understood of the breaking forth of the Sea at the opening of the Abyss but the Context allows it not For that plainly signifies that what the Sea is here said to do and what is said to be done to that was transacted in the beginning when the Foundations of the Earth were fastened and the corner-stone
thereof was laid and the morning Stars sang c. And therefore when the Theory would put a difference in respect of time betwixt the foregoing 4 5 and 6 th Verses and those last set down so as to make the Questions in the former Verses proceed upon the Form and construction oâ— the first Earth and those in the latter upon the demolition of that Earth the opening of the Abyâ—s and the present state of both what it says is gratis diâ—tum and the distinction groundless Yea it seems not only to be applied without grounds but with force and violence for the Context intimates no such matter but rather the contrary It runs on in a direct series of Queries without giving the least hint that any of the Particulars touching which they are made were of later date than others And that the first set of them relate to things as ancient as the Primitive Earth's Production the Theory owns and therefore why should not the other too To which add when the Sea brake forth at the time of the disruption it could not be said to issue as out of a Womb so properly as out of its House where it had dwelt above Sixteen hundred Years for a Womb is the place where a thing is conceived and brought into being which before was not But these Waters were preexistent to the inclosure of the Abyss the Womb which held them yea against the order of Nature they were contributive to the being of it as they were the basis whereon the First Earth was built So that the place of the Abyss falls in but ill with the notion of a Womb in reference to these Waters And consequently they could as ill be said to issue from thence as out of a Womb. And then the Darkness at the Disruption was not so thick nor so much a garment or swadling band to the Sea as darkness was at the Creation Yea the truth is it could then be no garment or swadling band at all for the Sea but only for the Flood For by that time the tumultuary Waters of the Deluge were quietly retired into the decreed place and became a Sea the Sky was cleared up and the darkness gone Nor could it so properly be said to be shut up with Doors and to have Bars set upon it then as to be infranchized or set at liberty For those Doors and Bars which shut it up and made it fast in a closer state before the Disruption were then all broken down and thrown open for ever and it was put into a condition of far greater freedom than it formerly had its present settlement being perfectly a state of enlargement to it But now turn the words to the sense of the Old Hypothesis and besides that they keep time exactly with the Context how patly do they fall in with it For when on the First Day GOD together with the Earth made the Water of the Sea as it brake forth into being as if it had issued out of a Womb indeed because it just then gushed out of the Womb of nothing into Existence and as he then made the Cloud the garment thereof and thick darkness a swadling band for it in a fuller sense for darkness was then upon the face of the deep Gen. 1. 1. and that darkness for certain most thick there being then neither Sun nor Light so on the Third Day when he brake up Chanels for it he might well call them His decreed place and declare that he had beset it with Bars and Doors because by his command the Waters were gathered off the surface of the Earth where was their first and naturâ—â— situation and shut up in such Receptacles and with such a confinement as they would never have withdrawn into of themselves but would always have remained in their original diffusion over the whole Terrestrial Globe And that this shutting up of the Sea in its decreed place was a thing done in the beginning and not at the time of the Flood is evident Prov. 8. 29. where GOD's giving his Decree to the Sea that it should not pass his commandment and his appointing the foundations of the Earth are made to be Sâ—nchronals But from the last Verse of the Quotation Hitherto shalt thou come and no farther and here shall thy proud waves be stayed an objection is raised against the usual exposition of the Place For that sentence shews saith the Theory that it cannot be understood of the first disposiâ—ion of the Waters as they were before the Flood for their proud waves broke those bounds whatsoever they were when they overâ—lowed the Earth in the Deluge I answer If they did so yet that argues not but the words may speak the disposition of the Waters before the Flood according to the common interpretation of them for that Inundation was by GOD's special appointment And when he assigned to the Waters the place of their abode he did not intend to fortifie them in it against his own Omnipotence or to devest himself of his Sovereign Prerogative of calling them forth when he pleased And when they passed the bounds he set them so long as they did it not by any force of their own but meerly by his powerful order or providential act this their Eruption and spreading Overflow cannot be lookt upon as a breach of that Law or those Limits he prescribed them It was only the marvellous effect of an extraordinary Cause and a particular Exception of GOD's own making to the general and standing Rule of his Providence Just as Enoch's or Elijah's Translation was to the universal and irrevocable Sentence of Death That may be one answer in defence of the ancient Hypothesis But then to the Theorist I may give in this for another The proud Waves of the Sea did never pass their bounds to make the Deluge The great Deep or the Fountains then broken up had no relation to the Sea I confess this implies that the Flood is to be explained by a new Hypothesis but if we can but bring in such a one as may be as justifiable as the Theory's is which we shall endeavour to do we need not concern our selves farther about it The last place is Prov. 8. 27 28. When he prepared the Heavens I was there when he set a compass upon the face of the Deep when he established the Clouds above when he strengthned the fountains of the Abyss Whence is inferred So there was in the beginning of the World a Sphere Orb or Arch set round the Abyss which is presumed to be no other than the first habitable Earth But this is a sense far fetcht to serve the turn of an Hypothesis when there is a nearer at hand will do much better For by the Compass set upon the face of the Depth is meant no more than those bounds wherewith GOD encompassed not the Theory's Abyss but the open Waters The HOLY GHOST who is the best Interpreter of his own Writings expounds it so
by a paralled Text in Iob He hath compassed the waters with bounds chap. 26. ver 10. Take it in the Original and it speaks out Solomon's meaning to the full 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 terminum ciâ—cinavit super faciem aquarum With a pair of Compasses he set a boundary upon the face of the Waters Not upon the face of the Deep so it might have been catcht at and construed an Arch upon the inclosed Abyss but upon the face of the Waters And this Compass was extant in that state of Nature where were Thunders and Waters in thick Clouds as the Context shews neither of which Phaenomena's could be contemporary with that Arch or Orb which the Theory contends for And then it was to last until day and night come to an end So that if Solomon's meaning be the same with Iob's the Compass he mentions as set upon the face of the Deep must be standing still And so it cannot be that Arch which the Theory would perswade it was because that was down long before Iob's or Solomon's time And yet that these two great Men both Kings as some think did intend the same thing the Theory acknowledgeth And that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 does here signifie a Boundary may well be inferred from what follows in the next Verse when he gave to the Sea 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 his decree which the Targum renders 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 his boundary Or if the Phrases used by Solomon and Iob sute not so exactly with the Waters as encompassed with Earthly bounds yet they are very applicable to them as they are encompassed with the firmament of Heaven For that is set as a Sphere or Orb as an Arch or Circle upon the face of the Deep and shall continue 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 until the consumption of light with darâ—ness according to the Holy Man's expression And this the old Chaldee Translation falls in with while it says GOD set the firmament upon the Waters And so does Eugubinus who affirms That the place in Iob is to be understood de orbe Coelesti of an heavenly orb as the Theory has noted to our hand though that he did it parùm philosophicè we have little reason to believe when we read of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Orb or Circle the Sphere or Compass of Heaven Job 22. 14. And then by GOD's strengthening the fountains of the Deep is meant his making the Earth so compact and solid as that the Springs and Rivers derived from the Sea should not ordinarily wash it down and so obstruct and dam up themselves But how on the other side an Arch built over the Mosaical Abyss should any way strengthen the Fountains of that when not so much as one Spring or River or fountain in specie did ever flow out of it during its inclosure is not so easie to apprehend 4. Such are the Scripture-Proofs of the aforesaid Form of the Antediluvian Earth To take them off I might oppose them by many other Texts I mean such as are charged with counter-Metaphors with such Allegorical or allusive terms as carry a sense in them not only different from what is suggested in the forementioned Allegations but inconsistent with it and repugnant to it I will instance but in one Who shaketh the Earth out of her place and the Pillars thereof tremble Job 9. 6. So that the Earth which is one while said to be founded upon the Seas and established upon the Floods and another while to be stretched over empty places and hanged upon nothing and anon according to the Theory to be a Sphere or Circle or an independent Orb or Arch is said at last to be built upon Pillars Whence it is manifest that the Citations above are but Tropical or Figurative Schemes of speech and so wide and indeterminate that nothing of strict and particular signification or certainty is to be lookt for in them or concluded from them To do that though I will not say it is to trifle with Scripture is to make it speak what it never meant It is said of GOD in the cited Text That he shaketh the earth out of her place Which had it been hit upon and that way applied would have been as notable an evidence for the Earth's changing her situation in the time of the Flood by some terrible concussion happening to her in her Dissolution as any the Theory has brought to other purposes And yet we read in the Psalms that GOD founded the Earth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 upon its basis that it should not be removed for ever Though at the same time we are told again The earth is dissolved Psal. 75. 3. quite down as it were and all in ruines which might have been a Proof of its Dissolution at the Deluge even then when it was impossible also that it should be so because GOD upheld it for it follows immediately I bear up the Pillars of it Most plain Demonstration how little of Argument as to the matter in hand can be drawn from such 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Tropological forms of speech as these which frequently occur in the sacred Volume especially in the Poetic Books thereof 5. Had learned Tycho but minded this and rightly considered how the HOLY GHOST does all-a-long deliver himself in Figurative Expressions touching the Earth he needed not to have scrupled the Coperniâ—an System of the World and falling off from the old Pythagoriâ— Hypothesis have erected a new one of his own more intricate and less tenable in tenderness to the Sacred Writings For Gassendus gives that in as one of Brahe's Objections against Copernicus's way and as one reason for his inventing and setting up his own quod Sacris adversetur Literis aliquoties ipsius Terrae stabilitatem confirmantibus CHAP. VIII 1. A continual Aequinox before the Flood by virtue of the Earth's Position improbable 2. For then that Position would have remained still or the Change thereof would have been more fully upon Record 3. Scripture does not favour this Aequinox but rather discountenance it 4. It would have kept one half of the Earth unpeopled 5. And have hindred the Rains at the time of the Flood 6. The Doctrine of the Aequinox is against the Judgment of the Learned 7. The Authorities alledged for the Right Situation of the Earth upon which the Aequinox depends Insufficient to prove it 8. Two Queries propounded relating to the Aequinox 1. WE are now from its form come to the First Property of the Antediluvian Earth namely a Perpetual Aequinox by reason of its right situation to the Sun By which is meant that the Axis of the Earth was always kept in a Parallelism to that of the Ecliptic as now it is to that of the Aequator So that in her Annual motion about the Sun she was carried directly under the Aequinoctial without any manner of Obliquity in her site or declination towards either of the Tropics in her Course
request of his what more gracious or satisfactory answer could be returned than in the words recited Where GOD condescends to give him assurance of what he desired by ingaging That while the earth remaineth seed time and harvest and cold and heat and summer and winter and night and day shall not cease Where Summer and Winter are mentioned as things well known to the Patriarch and he makes no enquiry into the meaning of them as having been familiarly acquainted with them Secondly GOD here promiseth to Noah in behalf of Mankind That there should be Day and Night as well as Summer and Winter yet Day and Night were certainly before the Flood and if the promise of their continuance does not hinder but they were before so it argues not but that Summer and Winter were so too Yea since Summer and Winter are here settled upon the new or recovering World in conjunction with Day and Night which had their alternate beings ever since the Creation it is a good evidence that these Seasons had the same And the reason why both were now ensured is because both were intermitted the Rule of Day and Night having been broken for a while by continual darkness as well as the Regularity of the Seasons for that fatal Year by the prevailing Waters To which add Thirdly That the Lights in the Firmament of Heaven at the same time that they were appointed to divide the day from the night were moreover appointed for the Seasons of the Year for so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 there signifies And therefore those Birds that come in the Spring and go away in the Autumn and are in one place in the Summer and in another in the Winter are said to know their appointed times or the Seasons of the Year Ier. 8. 7. and the Prophet expresseth them by the same word that Moses did But Fourthly There is annother thing wherein Scripture checks with this Aequinox and that is the effect of the Divine Malediction denounced against the Earth Upon Man's rebellious defection or Apostasie from GOD he cursed the Ground for his sake Gen. 3. 17. Whereupon it became naturally barren of good things necessary to Life and fruitful in useless and offensive Products But in case there were such an Aequinox it will be hard to conceive how this should be for that Aequinox would have kept the Heavens in a standing unvaried posture and the stability and unchanged influence of the Heavens would have continued the Air in the same benign Temperature And the Air being still and warm and balmy that rich and fat Earth would have been flourishing and fruitful pleasant and Paradisiacal as the Theory supposes it a long time after Adam fell So that where could be barrenness Or how did the Curse of GOD take place To say the Earth grew dry and barren at last for some ages before the Flood would be no answer or at least no satisfactory one For besides that the heavy Curse was presently to fall as a Punishment upon Adam so late a barrenness would have been the effect of time and nature the unctuous juices of the primigenial Soil which made it a great while so vital and vegetative being at length exhausted And therefore this barrenness could not be imputed to the Curse of GOD because it would certainly have come on in the meer course of things though Man had persisted in his original purity and had kept the Crown of integrity always upon his head Lastly There is a Passage in the Holy Writings which seems to evince That the Air in Paradise had an Intemperature sent into it perhaps the fruit of the Curse now mentioned about the time that our First Parents sinned And this again implys That there was no such Aequinox The Passage relates to our first Parents and occurs Gen. 3. 7. Where it is said of them That they â—ewed fig-leaves together or fitted them together as the Syriac reads it and made themselves 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 things to gird about them Now why did they do this It is commonly said That they might cover their nakedness whereof they were ashamed But this seems not to have been the reason at least not the whole reason of the thing For first Scripture says nothing of it expresly That does not declare that they did thus to hide their shame Secondly What shame need there have been upon account of nakedness betwixt Husband and Wife when there were no other People in the World Thirdly While they stood it was said of them That they were both naked the man and his wife and were not ashamed Gen. 2. ult And surely when they were innocent they should have been most modest and their modesty should have made them most ashamed of their nakedness then had there been shame in it And therefore it is probable that the Perizomata things to put about them were made upon another score namely To defend them from the intemperate Air of the Edenical Regions And this was as much as they at present could do for themselves But then afterwards which helps to confirm our sense we find that the LORD GOD made them coats of skins and cloathed them Gen. 3. 21. Which were to be a better defence still against the aforesaid Inconvenience So Lyra concludes That they were cloathed with Skins because they wanted a covering against the Intemperature of the Air. I confess he speaks of the Air in that place ad quem erant ejiciendi into which they were to be cast forth But let it be so still it will fight as much against this Aequinox and imply or infer what certainly overthrows it that is an Air intemperate in the habitable Regions of the first Earth And by the way let none wonder That GOD by his Angels should stoop to so mean a work as the cloathing of Adam and Eve with Skins Let us but seriously think what disparaging things our REDEEMER JESUS the King of Glory has done and suffered in his adorable Person for us forlorn and most unworthy sinners and we shall cease to marvel at this lesser condescension of the INFINITE MAJESTY though it was exceeding great Yet had it not been more upon the account of warmth than covering their nakedness such Coats need not have been made them their own Fig-leaves would have been sufficient for that use And thus Scripture does plainly discountenance this Aequinox rather than favour it in the least measure 4. But farther yet If the Earth always wheeled about the Sun in a Right Situation to him the Terrestrial Globe in one Hemisphere of it must have been unpeopled because there could have been no easie Passage no way of possible access to it For grant Adam to have been planted on either side of the Torrid Zone how should he or his have gone through it to the other It would have been so terribly heated by the roasting Sun that no Mortal could have travelled over it Consider but the breadth of this Zone
the Ecliptic but only that it was once in a nearer Parallelism to the axis of the Aequator than Anaxagoras found it in his days And so the Declination he meant might be quite different from that we contend about which Astronomy imputes to the wallowing of the Earth in its annual motion If this will not satisfie I have one thing more to offer Grant that Anaxagoras should mean that very Declination which the Theory would have him yet this truly would contribute little towards the Proof of the thing For he was a Man as like to be heterodox as like to broach and maintain false and groundless Opinions as any of the learned Ancients This perswasion concerning him I build upon a wretched Foundation of his own laying I mean that abominably gross and shamefully absurd Assertion of his That an huge Stone by the River Aegos in Thracia fell down from the Sun An extravagance so childish and ridiculously unreasonable as might justly give a wound and a very mortal one to his Philosophic reputation and make the World conclude that as to Skill in Astronomy he did not exceed Laertius remembers this and tells how Euripides his Scholar did hereupon call the Sun 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 golden Glebe Plutarch also mentions it in the Life of Lysander and assures us that as the Stone was shown for a wonder so it was venerable and of high esteem Pliny relates the matter more largely But in case we should believe it says he that a Stone could descend from the Sun fareâ—ell the knowledge of Natures Works and welcome Confusion A very proper Reflection or Inference Nor is this to be lookt upon as a meer â—lip in Anaxagoras or an unlucky error upon which he stumbled by chance It must be his settled and approved Judgment and I make it out thus It is very agreeable to other Notions of his or to the strain or genius of his Philosophy Witness that strange way he invented for generating the Stars For he thought that the ambient aether being of a fiery nature did by its rapid circumgyration snatch up Stones from the Earth and by burning them turn them into Stars According to the rate of which Philosophy that Stone of which the Sun was delivered might possibly be a Star And to this Diogenes very gravely subscribes For he roundly pronounces 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That it was a stony Star which fell like fire at the River Aegos Which whoever can think will not stick to credit Plutarch's Story of a Lion that in Peloponnesus fell down from the Moon he being flung off thence 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by some violent agitation which she suffered Such was the Philosophy of that Age. This I have noted not to disparage Anaxagoras or Diogenes but only to signifie That where they stand alone or are more positive than others in asserting any dark or doubtful Opinion we have no reason presently to run over to them and to lay the stress of our belief upon their Authorities especially when in so doing we must walk contrary to the whole World of the Learned at once Yet so it happens that the most likely evidence which the Theory brings in for the Earth's Declination and so for its Right Position and Praediluvian Aequinox is borrowed of these two Men. Fig. 3 Page 186 The Second Query is this Granting there was such an Aequinox in the first World would not the natural day towards the latter end of that World have been longer than in the former periods of the same For while the outward shell or sphere of Earth was contiguous with the Abyss it seems very likely that it was carried about with more celerity than it could be afterwards when that contiguity ceased by reason the Waters of the Abyss were exhaled And in case that external Cortex the then habitable Earth did abate of its diurnal Motion upon losing its contiguousness with the Abyss it inclosed and the wider the distance grew betwixt them the slower was its rotation which must follow if the failure of the contiguity we speak of did at first retard its gyration then the days just before the Flood must of necessity be longer than ever they were in the prediluvian World supposing Day and Night be made by the Earth's turning upon its own axis Especially if the Moon came late into the Earth's Neighbourhood For then she being to be carried about in the exterior part of the Earth's Vortex would have slacked its Motion as an heavy Clogg hanged upon the Rim of a Wheel makes it turn more slowly Yet that the days just before the Flood were of no unusual length is evident in the very Story of the Flood the duration of which we find computed by Months consisting of Thirty Days apiece Whereas had Days been grown longer fewer of them would have made a Month. CHAP. IX 1. The Oval Figure of the Primitive Earth excepted against from the nature of that Mass upon which it was founded 2. And from its Position in its Annual Motion 3. As also from the Roundness of the Present Earth 4. Which Roundness could not accrue to the Earth from its Disruption in regard that would have rendred it more Oval still in case it had been Oval from the beginning 5. â—r at least would not have made it less Oval than it was 1. AMong the several Properties of the Prediluvian Earth there was none more needful than its Oviformity But as needful as it was it seems a thing improbable The necessity of it is apparent from its Usefulness and that was as great as can well be imagined For it was to be as an Aqueduct to the first World or a general Instrument of deriving Waters into all the inhabited Quarters of it So that without it according to the Laws of this New Hypothesis the Earth would have been outwardly but a lump of Sand and as miserably barren as any piece of Wilderness the worst Arabia has And yet if we attend to the first Earth's Origination how could it be of an Oval Shape For a liquid Mass having its Center in it self and being of a Subâ—tance equally yielding in all its parts and likewise equally compressed by an ambient body must of necessity be equally extended in all the lines of its circumâ—erence that is it must be exactly round or spherical For why any piece thereof should thrust up higher or shoot out farther from the common Center than the rest there can be no reason given Unless according to the Hylozoic Philosophy we should suppose there is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a principle of Life or self-movency in matter which indeed is to exalt it above its capacity and to give it a property that destroys its nature And were not these the very circumstances of that Mass whereon the Primitive Earth was founded For First It was self-centred and by vertue of its proper Centre so entirely coherent and united that no parts of it had the
was higher than that it fell or flowed from as in this case it must prove before the watry Globe by Defluxion of its Water could be made Oval it is evident that the Water by a natural motion or of it self did perform a course against its nature For when it flowed down or is said to do so and according to its own nature ought to have done so in reality and according to the reason of the thing it flowed up Nor indeed could it possibly do otherwise to produce the great effect pretended unless it were possible for an Oval body to be highest in its middle parts And then truly but upon no other terms the watry Globe might become oblong ex illo defluxu aquarum ad latera exoneratione partium mediarum from that flowing down of the Waters to the sides which the Theory mentions and the disburthening of the middle parts of it Now if the watry Mass upon which the ingenious Theorist founds the first Earth could not be made Oval in the way he has invented then neither could that Earth be of an Oval Figure it being bound to put on the same shape which the Water had 2. Very improbable it is also that the first Earth should be Oval considering its Position or Direction in its Annual Motion For that was such as could not well consist with its Oval Figure In it its Poles are said to have pointed always to the Poles of the Ecliptic and so it would have been directed not unlike to Ships swimming side-ways Now put a Ship which is an Oval body into the smoothest stream imaginable and lay it cross that stream and see how long it will keep in that Position Will it always hold it No nor for any considerable while but by degrees will quickly wind and fall in to swim long-ways with it and continue mostly in that posture as suiting best with its own shape and the course of the Waters And truly that an Oviform Earth should lie cross-ways in the aâ—thereal Chanel and be carried round the Sun for Sixteen hundred years together and not change its site in compliance with the tendency or stream of it seems very strange if not impossible Especially when that Earth was thin comparatively and hollow like a Shell and so more light and ready to verge or be drawn aside from its supposed primitive situation The Present Earth though generally allowed to be of a spherical Figure and also of a solid composure throughout unless at its Centre and likewise according to the French Philosophy to be held by a particular hand of Nature in its inclining posture which must be more easie to be kept by a round Earth in the Medium which carries it than a Right Position by an oblong one is yet subject to wallowings in its Annual Motion And how then can it be thought that the First Earth which was oblong and had not that hand to hold it steady could preserve its axis in a constant parallelism to the axis of the Ecliptic till the time of the Flood It would rather have turned end-ways in the Celestial Stream and have stood for the most part in that direction as best agreeing with its own Form and the vehicular Current wherein it floated And so its axis by force of the aethereal matter being wrought into a coincidence with the Plain of the Ecliptic and the Ecliptic like a Colure passing through its Poles while its Poles would have lookt East and West and its Diurnal revolutions have gone North and South it would have brought such a confusion into the Heavens and Earth at once as is not easie to be expressed 3. And that the First Earth was not Oval methinks may in some measure be gathered from the Roundness or Sphericalness of the Present Earth For this Terraqueous Body on which we dwell is of a Spherical Fashion So Anaximander thought and also Pythagoras Parmenides and others of old as well as all of later days And as much is fairly inferrible from several things As First From its Conical Shadow Which Figure Zeno almost Two thousand Years since noted the Shadow of the Earth to be of And a common Argument for the Proof of it is fetcht from the Moon For in whatever place she has at any time entered into an Eclipse or emerged out of the same and whatever part of the Earth during any of her Eclipses has been turned to her still it has been observed that the Shadow cast by the Earth upon her Discus was always Circular which argues the Earth it self to be Globular And that it is so may be inferred Secondly From the Place of the Waters For were it Oval they would not fail to retire out of the Seas near the Poles and running down towards the Aequator of the Earth which would be the lowest part of it settle themselves around it in the middle Regions thereof But instead of this we see the Waters are so far from drawing off from the Northern Seas about the Pole that they abound most and are deepest there nor do we know of any thing but vast and deep Waters about the South-Pole neither Whereas I say were the Earth Oval and so the Poles of it highest the Waters must necessarily have settled about the midst of the Earth there being the lowest place and so the properest for their Situation And so the Sea in Figure would have resembled an Hoop or as a liquid Zone would have encompassed the Earth and divided it into two Hemispheres in the same manner that some worthy Ancients conceived it did for want of better Skill in Geography Thirdly If the Earth were Oval Navigation towards the Poles beyond such a Latitude as bounds the Sphericity of the Earth would be extreamly difficult if not impossible For then in such a course Ships must steer up hill and climb as it were all the way they swim as sailing in a perfect ascent But where would be Winds strong enough to heave them up such watry steepness Or in case they had sufficient strength to do it yet would not the Vessels rather pitch into and run under the Waters that bear against them than drive up upon their rising surface And let but the blustring Gales which push them upward cease and would they not forthwith stop Yea immediately tack about and being left to themselves settle down towards the Aequator again But we hearing of no such difficult sailing up the Polar Seas nor such retiring of Ships down to the Aequinoctial ones have still more reason to believe that the Earth and Water make a True Globe And grant that these Arguments will not perfectly demonstrate the Earth to be Spherical yet they being of more force to prove it is so than any ever brought to prove it otherwise we have reason to acquiesce in the received Opinion 4. But to this it may be answered In case the Earth be Round or Spherical now this is no good evidence that it
was so at first It might then be Oval or oblong and its present Roundness may be owing to its Disruption I reply Admit the Earth was oblong before the Disruption and the falling in of its outward Orb could hardly reduce it into a Spherical Form but would rather have made it more oblong still For the Orb we speak of must in likelihood break and fall in first about the Aequator or Middle parts of it For there it was most heated and there it was most cracked and there it was most hollow underneath the Waters of the Abyss being much exhaled And these parts falling those whereabouts the Tropics are now might fall soon after them Whereas the Poles of this Orb being turned with a shorter or narrower Arch were much the stronger And then being remote from the Sun and continually wet were not disposed to break at all through driness and brittleness as the Regions about the Aequator were So that the Poles might remain whole and keep those very places almost which they held before For as for their sinking lower and coming much nearer together than they were it was not likely because that huge Circle of Ground which fell in about the Aequator and Tropics would have intercepted and hindred them For though the Poles were hollow they could not slip over the Earth which fell in betwixt them and clasp it in their cavities in regard they were not wide enough For the Orb being Oval was narrowest towards the Poles So that the falling in of the Earth must have rendred it rather more than less Oval While the Poles of it would have continued at their usual distance almost and the intermediate Regions by dropping into the Abyss would have been contracted into streighter Dimensions of Circumference 5. Or say the Disruption of the Earth would not have made it more Oval than it was yet surely it would not have made it less For as the Earth in all probability would have broke in first about the Aequator for the reasons alledged so those Fragments being nearer the inward Earth than the Polar parts would sooner have reached it in their fall than these could have done Especially considering these Polar parts according to what was said before must have fallen entire in two vast Caps as it were For so they would have contained such abundance of Air as must have rendred their descent very slow much slower than that of the Aequinoctial and Tropical Fragments Which being of quite another fashion that did not inclose the Air so much would have descended a great deal faster Insomuch that before the Polar Hemispheres let me call them could have got down to the interiour Earth all the ground that fell in about the Aequator and Tropics would have been settled there and fit to receive those mighty Hemispheres when they should have come and whelmed themselves whole upon it Or grant they should have broke by pitching upon that vast heap of Earth which fell down betwixt them yet there they must have laid in a confused posture where they flew in pieces and so would have helped to make the Earth oblong In a word suppose they did sink down as far proportionably towards the common Centre as the Aequinoctial and Tropical parts did yet if they sank no farther as indeed why should they all circumstances considered the Earth in case it were Oval at first must of necessity continue so CHAP. X. 1. That there were Mountains before the Flood proved in way of Exception to the Theory out of Scripture 2. And that they could not be made by the Falling in of the first Earth argued from the Mountains in the Moon 3. And from the Opinion of the Talmudists and others 4. How Mountains might arise in the very beginning 5. There must be Mountains in the first World because there were Metals in it 1. TWO Properties of the Prediluvian Earth we have done with its Continual Aequinox and its Oval Figure We must now proceed to its next Property or rather to the former Branch of it The exterior face of it was smooth and uniform without Mountains But neither can this be asserted without some violence to the Inspired Writings LORD thou hast been our refuge from one Generation to another Before the Mountains were brought forth and the Earth and the World were made Thou art GOD from everlasting So we read Psal. 90. 1 2. Where the scope of the Psalmist being to set forth GOD's Eternity and his early Providence over his People he declares of him That as he was always a Shelter and Protection to them from Age to Age so he existed before the Creation even before the Mountains were brought forth and the Earth and the World were made Where his ranking the Production of the Mountains with the Formation of the Earth and the World speaks them coaeval with the same And which is not unworthy of remark Moses says the Title of it composed this Psalm to whom the Rise of all things and the Order of their rising into being was better known than to any Man born Yet this Moses as he illustrates GOD's Eternity à parte ante by his Preexistence to the Universe so he measures his most timely care over his Church as much by the Moâ—ntains duration as by the duration of the Earth or World Thereby giving us to understand That the one is as good a Rule as the other as bearing the same date of Existence and issuing forth into being not by a far distant Succession but all together as fast as nature could permit And however some Mountains might be produced long after others yet that will make nothing against us if we do but suppose the Psalmist to speak of the Earliest This by the way does sufficiently confute the Peripatetiâ— error touching the Worlds Eternity For if GOD was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 before the Earth and habitable World 't is certain the World had a beginning and could not be from everlasting as hâ— was And the same Moses makes mention not only of lasting Hills but of ancient Mountains Deut. 33. 15. But had there been no Mountains till the Flood he would scarce have given them that Epithet as being but few ages older than himself I confess 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies the East as well as ancient And the Samaritan and Syriaâ— Pagnin and Montanus render 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Mountains of the East But not so well For Ephraim and half the Tribe of Manasseh Ioseph's Posterity mentioned ver 17. in whose Land the Blessings of these Mountains are here prophesied of by Moses were planted in that Division of Palestine called Samaria which being on this side of Iordan and upon the Mediterranean Sea lay towards the West and consequently its Mountains could not be called Mountains of the Cast. And as for the other Half of Manasseh though they were seated beyond Iordan yet I do not find that the Mountains in their allotment were known by the name
of Mountains in the East Or if Basan and some of the Hills of Gilead belonging to this half Tribe might be so denominated yet the whole Tribe of Ephraim and the other half of Manasseh had nothing to do with them and so they could not so well be the Mountains here pointed at in the Prediction Inasmuch as they were possessed but by the smaller part of Ioseph's Off-spring whereas in reason the Prophecy should respect the Major part of his Seed and so refer to those Mountains on the West side of Palestine where the whole Tribe of Ephraim and the other half of Manasseh were settled And therefore when the Arabic Vulgar Iunius and Tremelius and others render 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ancient they give it its most proper Signification in this place and such as makes the best or truest sense For the Mountains of Gilead and Basan as well as Mount Ephraim a ridge of Hills crossing the Country of that Tribe several parts whereof were Gerizzim and Ebal and the Hills Tsuphim the Hill of Phineas of Gaash of Salmon and of Samron whereon Samaria stood were all of them though not Eastern yet ancient Mountains such as might take their beginning with the Earth it self or immediately after And therefore the Septuagint calls the Mountains here 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Mountains of the beginning And that most fitly for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies beginning as well as antiquity And accordingly we read 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from or before the beginnings of the Earth Prov. 8. 23. And so the ancient Mountains in the Prophecy are such as were extant à primordiis seculi from the beginning of the World in contradistinction to such as were casually raised or artificially made Solomon also in the same Chapter speaks a remarkable word to our purpose For declaring the Antiquity or Eternity of THE DIVINE WISDOM he there sets it out by its existing before GOD's Works of old ver 22. and then particularly before the Mountains were settled ver 25. A most clear evidence that the settling of the Mountains was one of the earliest Works that ever GOD did Else it could not have been sutable to sort it with those that are there recounted nor would it have been proper to shew forth the Antiquity of WISDOM by it and to argue that it was in GOD's Possession in the beginning of his ways because it was so before the Mountains were settled For if the Mountains were settled long after those other works of old which Solomon specifies as long after as the general Flood was after the Creation why should he place this work amongst them and rank it with them as one effected at the same time And if they were settled at the time of the Deluge how could WISDOM's existing before they were settled be a Proof or Illustration of its being possessed by the LORD in the beginning of his ways So that if we can but think that Scripture is to be understood like other writings that is according to the common signification of its words and the manifest drift or scope of its sense And if we can but believe that when GOD speaks with design to instruct us He does it with the same freeness and sincerity as a rational and honest Man as a kind and open hearted friend would do that means to discover his mind unto us we need not desire more pregnant Proofs of the Mountains just coaevity with the Earth 2. The same Scriptures that prove Mountains coaeval with the Earth are clear Evidences that they could not arise from the Disruption of the same Which Opinion being so fairly encountred and overthrown by Divine Authorities to pursue it farther may seem unnecessary But yet that Nature may set its hand to the confutation of it as well as Scripture I will here put down One single Argument which the Moon affords us That she hath her Mountains as well as the Earth is very evident And also that they are higher than the Earth's Mountains I mean not only comparatively in proportion to her Bigness but they are so simply and absolutely in themselves if w◠dar◠credit Galileo Yea they are not only higher than the Mountains of the Earth but better than four times as high as he undertakes to demonstrate Whence it must follow either that the Moon was not formed and dissolved the same way that the Earth was both which the Theorist owns her to have been or else that her Abyss was deeper and her outward Orb thicker by far than was the Earth's to make such prodigiously lofty Hills and so that she was very much larger than the Earth the contrary to which is most true and manifest Or lastly which is the case that her Mountains were not the effects of her Dissolution which she never suffered but her Native Features and such as she has worn ever since her Creation But then why should it not be so with the Earth likewise Or how can it be otherwise For were it granted That the Mountains of both did at first arise as the Theory would have them from the falling in of their respective exterior Orbs it would be hard to assign reasons why Mountains in the Moon should be four times higher than any on the Earth when the Globe of the Earth is above forty times bigger than that of the Moon 3. And that Mountains were in being before the Flood and so could not result from the falling in of the Earth we may learn in some measure from the Talmudists even while they teach what is phanciful and extravagant For they report That many Giants saved themselves from the Flood upon Mount Sion And Iosephus intimates such another Tradition out of Nicolaus Damascenus There is above Minyada a great Mountain in Armenia called Baris 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. to which many flying in the time of the Flood are said to have escaped As for the First of these Reports it is wholly fabulous nor can it be otherwise as being repugnant to Scripture and Reason The other though certainly false in the gross may yet have somewhat of truth in it as being a broken account of the Preservation of Noah and his Family and the Story of their Deliverance mangled and disguised For it being commonly believed that the Ark rested upon the Mountains of Armenia and that the Old World being Drowned the New one was Peopled by Men 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Lucian's word is of a second stock that came down from thence this might give occasion to that formal fiction of a Multitude flying to Baris and of their being saved there Now though one of these Traditions be absolutely false and the other a Truth perverted and misrepresented yet such things being talkt of in times of old and at last put in writing they do fairly witness what the Thoughts of Men were in former Ages as to this matter and that it was a current perswasion among them who lived much
up from under that Tract between them the ground must there sink down in proportion to â—ill up the emptied space beneath and so fall lower down than the rest of the Earth And for the same reason or others like it many places in the Sea may be exceeding deep and seem to go down into a perfect Abyss as it were or a bottomless profundity And we must note that though but only part of the Earth be Mountainous yet little or none of it is exactly level as being every where heaved up by the forementioned Causes more or less And therefore the smoothest Plains that appear to the eye to be very even are not really so Only this we may observe concerning them That when Horse-men travel over them the Ground being struck with the Feet of the Beasts yields a kind of Sound Which shews that the Earth in those Plains is much in that Posture into which the Sun and Vapours did at first raise it loose that is and porous and somewhat hollow Whereas amongst Hills and Dales it yields no such noise when beaten with such Tramplings And the reason is clear because it being â—lung up and fallen down and altered and transposed by eructations and sinkings it has so been driven closer and made more compact And then as to Maritime Hills or those near the Sea when the Ground was crushed down by the hand of OMNIPOTENCE to make a Receptacle for the Water it is easie to conceive how they should fly up at the sides of Seas or not far from them As also how Hills should be highest in those Countries about which Seas are deepest For the Ground in the adjacent or not far distant Seas being sunk very low and forced to give way very much it might well crowd out and thrust up a great height about the Shores or in the adjoyning Regions Nor is it to be thought that when so great a part of the surface of the Earth was pressed down that the Ground should struggle out at the Brinks of the Ocean only and in some considerable distance from the Shores much of it would recoil from under the compression in thâ— Sea it self and fly up irregularly in innumerable places where it could best do it And hence might come Banks in the Sea stretcht out as Mountains are on the Land to extraordinary lengths As also Rocks and Flats and Shelves without number Nor must this be omitted That all the Mountains of the Earth if raised according to this Conjecture will have no reason to hold proportion in bulk to the Cavity of the Ocean A thing which the common Hypothesis of their Formation implys and which lies as a main Objection against it For thus the In-land Mountains would not be made out of the Sea at all Nor would the whole quantity of Earth which at first filled up the Cavity of the Sea be cast out into the Maritime Hills but most of it be squeezed and forced down deeper into the bowels of the Earth Thus also Islands might be made to take a short step out of the way we are in I mean such as are not of the largest size whether they be distant from all Continents as the Canaries Azores Hesperides and others in the Atlantic Ocean or such as lie in whole Fries by the Main-lands-side as they do in several places of the World Though many of this latter sort might be raised out of Mud or Dirt descending in great plenty out of Rivers So were the Echinades in the Ionian Sea just before the mouth of the River Achelous Or else they might be made by the flowing of the Waters into the Sea when they were first drawn off the surface of the Earth For then they running furiously down into the Pit which Providence had fitted and appointed for them might wear away the ground about the Verge thereof and eating into its Superficies by the violence of their course might divide it into a multitude of little Apartments which afterward when the Sea was filled might be petty Islands about its Coasts as the Philippines for instance and others in the Oriental Seas which stand in whole Sholes even thousands of them together against China and India Whirlepools also by the same means might be made in the Sea as well as chanels for Rivers underground by land for the Earth being pressed down deep in some places and thereby forced to ascend in others kind of arched Vaults might so be formed Which leading out of one Sea or one part of a Sea into another the waters flowing through them cause those voragines or Gulfs at the top where they enter their subterraneous Pipes or Passages Many of which Gulfs are so strong that they suck in and swallow up whatever comes into them But to return we need no more wonder at the Greatness or Number of Mountains made in this method on the Earth than at the Granâ—â—losity or ruggedness in the rind of an Orange And as the Mountains in truth bear no more proportion to the Earth's Dimensions than those little pimples do to the fruit we speak of so they and In-land Mountains both may proceed from Causes not altogether unlike Though now those Causes as to the Earth are so debilitated and wasted that they are unable to produce the like Effects Particularly that slatuous Moisture wherewith at first it did abound and might be put into it on purpose to make it heave in general into necessary inequalities and in places to ascend into mighty Hills is spent and gone And we have no more reason to expect that the Earth should ordinarily send forth Mountains now than that a dead ripe Orange pluckt off the Tree should break out into such Wheals or Wens as we see upon some 5. One argument for Mountains in the first World is yet behind which shall end this Chapter There were METALS in the World And these as all know are now found at the Roots of Mountains And they being the places whence they are digged now it is a shrewd presumption they ever lodg'd in the same Indeed the very generating them in the exterior Region of the Earth does necessarily suppose cavities in it And Cavities under-ground do as necessarily infer inequalities above it And here the Theory will receive another wound perhaps an incurable one in its Hypothesis I mean where it makes the Antediluvian Earth all smooth and even without Mountains all solid to the Abyss without caves or holes But therefore to shun this great inconvenience it fairly consents to the abolishing of Metals out of the first state of Nature Some moreover add to what has been said that in the first nature there were no Minerals or Metals who according to our Hypothesis I think want not their Reasons But this is out of the Frying-Pan into the Fire For thus the Fidelity of Moses is assaulted and another intolerable affront put upon the HOLY GHOST For do not both inform us That the City Enoch
was built and the Ark prepared before the Flood But how cloud either be done without Iron Tools Some Barbarous people I have been told do strange Feats in way of Architecture by sharp stones But the Theory allows not so much as greater loose stones or rough Pâ—bbles in the primitive Earth So that if they had not Instruments of Iron the Men of that Age could never have compassed the Works aforesaid Yet all such Instruments are positively excluded by the Theory in these words Nor were there of old Instruments belonging to War or BVILDINGS Nor need we wonder there should not when there were no Materials whereof they could be made Nor could there be such Materials when the World afforded neither Mines nor Metals Nor could the World afford either of them when it was not possible the Earth should yield them And that it was not possible for the Earth to yield them the Theory again does implicitly affirm where it says that the first World was wholly artificial and that the furniture or provision of things which it had was not of such as were bred but of such as were made But the worst is still behind Tubal-Cain as Heaven assures us was an Instructer of every Artificer in Brass and Iron Gen. 4. 22. Yet the Theorist professeth and that in the second publication of his Hypothesis after he had time to consider well as for subterraneous things Metals and Minerals I believe they had none in the first Earth and the happier they no Gold nor Silver nor Courser Metalls But then how Tubal-Cain could learn his Trade himself and teach it unto others must be a Riddle too hard for Oedipus to untie Or else which is the very truth this Assertion of the Theory must be notoriously false and not only â—latly but loudly contradictory to the most express Word of the Infallible GOD. This alone should all that has been said besides fail is enough to blow up and finally to explode this New Hypothesis of the Earth's Formation I mean as it shews its great incongruity not only to Scripture but also to Philosophy For had the Earth been originally framed as that teacheth it was then grant there could have been a Metallic Region in that part of it under the Water yet that Metals or Matter for any one of them should ever have ascended through the Abyss into the upper Crust of the First Earth would have been utterly impossible And therefore that egregious Philosopher Des-Cartes makes this the reason why Metals are not found in all places of the Earth quia per aquas evehi non possunt because they cannot be carried or drawn up through the subterraneous Waters Princ. part 4. § 73. CHAP. XI 1. That there were open Seas before the Flood made evident from Scripture 2. Such Seas necessary then as Receptacles for Great Fishes 3. The Abyss being no fit place for them 4. A farther Confirmation of open Seas 5. An Objection against them answered 6. Another Objection answered 7. A Third answered 1. HE that from the Clifts about it or in sailing through it beholds and contemplates the Watry Ocean That views it so far as eyes and thoughts can reach in the stateliness of its Depth and wide Expansion That considers what vast and numberless Rivers it continually drinks up and yet is never the fuller for all these Accessions How far it extends its ceruleous Arms and how much it disgorges at Millions of Mouths and yet is never the emptier for all its profusions That sees its incessant and unwearied Motions and how it ebbs and flows with haughty and incontrollable Reciprocations That observes how it surges with every Wind and surlily swells upon every Storm and lifting up tumid scornful Waves foams as angry at its Disturbance That marks how it frets and rages in a Tempest and rolls it self up into liquid Mountains as if it thrâ—atned to mingle Floods with the Clouds or in a pang of Indignation to quâ—nch the Stars or wash down those Lights hanged out by Heaven He that gazeth on the spatious Seas or revolves such thoughts as these of it in his mind would be amazed to think that so immense an Element was once lockt up in a Vault under Ground and wonder where the Earth should have Cellerage to hold it He would scarce believe that so proud and strong and furious a Monster could be kept in Chains or was ever so tame as to be coop'd up contentedly in a subterraneous Cave He would hardly be perswaded that it could be made to hide its head in an hole beneath and to lie quiet and still in a nightsom Dungeon where for many Ages it never saw the Sun But how odd and uncoâ—th soever it may seem yet thus it was says this Hypothesis The same Primary Assertion of it that says The Exterior face of the first Earth was smooth and uniform without Mountains says also it was without a Sea All that prodigious Mass of Waters which Imagination as comprehensive as it is knows not well how to measure was once shut up in an invisible Cell and being clapt under Hatches lay incognito as long as the first World stood Not a Drop of it appeared all that while but what strained forth by evaporation or transpired through the Pores of the thick skin'd Earth when by the heat of the Sun it was put into a sweat As for the main Body of the Waters they lurked and hid themselves in a secret Groâ—â—o nor could they be brought to quit their latent Dwellings or to look forth of their close and dark Retirements till the Roof of their Lodgings fâ—ll in upon them and justled them out of their Mansions to make room for it self But against this there lies the usual Exception namely That it fights with the Holy Scripture For that informs us That when GOD made Adam he gave him Dominion over the fish of the Sea But according to this Assertion of the Theory Adam never saw the Sea nor one Fish in it all his life long though it lasted well nigh a thousand Years and so impossible it was that he should have or exercise such a Dominion And it is farther considerable That Adam's Dominion over the Sea was not only granted him by Patent from Heaven but moreover was part of GOD's Image which was stamped on him Whereinsoever the whole did consist this I say seems to have been part of the Impress For GOD said Let us make Man in our Image after our likeness and let him have dominion â—ver the fish of the sea Gen. 1. 26. And so to shut up the Sea within the Earth till the Flood is to deny to Men a part of that Empire wherewith their Maker was pleased to invest them and to deprive them of a piece of his glorious Image which he put upon them For none could share fully in the one or the other but they who lived after the general Deluge If it be said That Men
loss they would have been at for Pâ—ey how could they have seen to direct their Motions having no manner of Light at any time to guide them So that upon occasion they must have râ—n at tilt upon one another and being inclosed between two Earths would have been in danger of stranding themselves both above and below Secondly It would have been a place as close as it was dark And therefore what shift should they have made for Air I think I may say for Breath For as for Whales and other Fishes that have Lungs Pliny says It is fully resolved by all Writers that they breathe And his Opinion it is That all Water-creatures do the same after their manner In proof of which he offers several Arguments not to be despised As their Panting Yawning Hearing Smelling c. To which add their Dying upon being frozen up for any time Or if they be alive their greedy flying to any little hole made in the Ice whereat the Air enters But in the Abyss they could have had neither Air nor Breath and so for lack of the same must all have been smothered Lastly It would have been a place as Cold as it was dark and close For the same Cover of Earth of unknown thickness that would have hindred Light and Air from piercing into the Abyss must have kept out the Suns cherishing and benign Warmth too So that could they have struggled with and overcome the two first Inconveniences yet here they would have met with a Third insuperable Could they have lived without Light and Breath yet they could not have multiplied without the Influence of Heaven The want of that would have chil'd and quench'd the desires of Procreation in them and rendered them impotent that way Thus Winter we see is no season for Production of Fishes as being destitute of that quickning power and encouragement which the Presence of the Sun affords 4. Farther yet That there were Seas in the Beginning even on the Third Day we are taught Gen. 1. 10. GOD called the dry land Earth and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas And why should they not be such Seas as we have now For we have no more grounds to think or say That the Waters there mentioned were an invisible potential or proleptic Sea than we have to imagine or affirm that the dry Land there spoken of was an invisible potential or proleptic Earth And that there were open Seas then may be argued from the Waters we read of under the firmament Gen. 1. 6 7. And GOD said Let there be a firmament in the midst of the Waters and let it divide the waters from the waters And GOD made the firmament and divided THE WATERS WHICH WERE VNDER THE FIRMAMENT from the waters which were above the Firmament But had there been none but River-waters in the first World and not such an open and huge Collection of Waters as we now see the Firmament could not so properly have been said to divide the waters from the waters For then it must rather have been in the midst betwixt the Earth and the Waters and so must have divided the Earth from the Waters the Earth which was under the Firmament from the Waters above it For as for the River-waters they would have been too inconsiderable to have had the Partition made by the Firmament predicated of them in exclusion of the Earth or in preference to it It would have been as if the KING should have said Let a Wall be built betwixt the Thames and the Conduits of London to part them without taking any notice at all of the City which is infinitely more remarkable than the Conduits are But therefore the Theory presents us with a new Notion of the Firmament and makes it to be quite another thing than what it has always been said to be namely That Cortex or Outward Region of Earth spread and founded upon the Abyss And so the Waters of the Abyss under that Earth must be the Waters under the Firmament I cite but two Paragraphs to this purpose Any one at the first view might be able to guess that this exterior frame which GOD establisht upon the Abyss is to be understood by that Firmament which GOD is said to have establisht between the Waters below and above Gen. 1. 6. 7. And again As to the Firmament between the waters it was a remarkable Phaenomenon of the first Earth or rather the first habitable Orb it self which every way encompassed and shut up the Abyss and so divided the Waters above from those below But this truly is so far from giving any satisfaction that it will rather bring the whole Hypothesis to confusion I mean while thus it runs against Scripture again and that most directly and shamefully For the Firmamentum interaqueum Firmament that divided the Waters was so far from being a Frame or an Orb of Earth or the first habitable Earth that as the DIVINEST SPIRIT tells us it was that wherein the Fowls were to fly which yet were to fly above the Earth Gen. 1. 20. Yea in that very Verse it is said to be the Firmament of Heaven And by GOD himself is stiled Heaven GOD called the Firmament Heaven ver 8. Even that very Firmament which divided the Waters as we learn from the two foregoing Verses And therefore the waters under the Firmament in the seventh Verse are said in the ninth Verse to be the waters 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 under the Heavens I confess the Theorist twits us for understanding by the Firmament what we commonly do calling it an Vnphilosophic thing But I forbear to retort It is enough to shew that the advantage lies so much on our side and that the ingenious Philosopher is so utterly lost in his Notion And since to make the Earth before the Flood to be this Firmament is so impossible as being manifestly repugnant to the Truth of GOD what remains but that it should be that diaphanous Expansum stretched out betwixt us and the Clouds which as it is constituted of Air chiefly so it is the place wherein Fowls do fly according as Providence was pleased to appoint And to seal up this for a certain truth it is known that the Hebrews have no other word whereby to express Air but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Heaven or Firmament Only whereas this Aereous Expansion extends from hence to the cloudy Regions where are the Wates above the Firmament and therefore are called Waters above the Heavens we must note that there is another Firmament mention'd by Moses I mean that Expanse of indefinite vastness wherein the Celestial Lights are fixed for as we read Gen. 1. 17. GOD set them in the Firmament of Heaven But then this Aereous space we speak of being the true Firmament this proves there were open Seas at first Else as was said before this Firmament must have divided the Waters from the Earth whose
an abundance of Waters into it self and swells not with them For though the Stream of Volga which is thought to afford Waters enough in a Years time to drown the whole Earth continually discharges it self into the Caspian Sea it is never the fuller And therefore the Theory need not have instanced in that Sea as a distinct and separate Sea by it self Especially when it allows it to have communication with the Ocean by Subterraneous passages whereby it is really though not visibly joined to it and in some sense but one with it And then as for other Gulfs and Lakes that are distinct as to themselves and divided from the Ocean how inconsiderable are they in proportion to it But as so many Buckets-full to a large Pool Yet should the Waters run out of some huge Pool and settle together elsewhere as it might truly be said of them then that they are gathered together into one place though many Buckets-full should lodge in Plashes by the way so the Waters in general may rightly be affirmed by Mases to be gathered together into one place though a Multitude of small Receptacles and the Caspian larger than the rest remain apart 7. But a Third Objection is yet to be removed for I am willing to encounter all that are Material which is this If the Earth had Open Seas at first dividing it into Continents and Islands and interlacing and environing them as now they do how could the several parts thereof so separate be peopled with Men and stockt with Beasts Or to use the words of the Theory The propagating or conveying of Men and Animals into so many separate Worlds would be difficult to explain I answer First It is as difficult to make out how the Earth should be peopled before the Flood though the surface of it had been entire I mean upon account of that Torrid Zone which the Theory supposeth to have been in it Secondly Islands at first might be nothing so numerous as they are since But as many of them were founded as I may say after the Earth so many of them may be of later date than the Deluge Which factitious or upstart Isles came into being Three ways Some were produced of an abundance of Filth rolling down the Streams of Rivers and running into the Sea and settling there So were the Echinades spoken of before Concerning whose Production therefore Ovid makes the River out of which they came to speak thus Fluctus nosterque marisque Continuam deduxit humum pariterque revellit In totidem mediis quòd cernis Echinadas undis Others were thrust up in some Seas and appeared on a sudden Of this sort was Rhodos in the Carpathian Sea an hundred and twenty Miles in compass one of the ancient Academies of the Roman Monarchy Delos in the Archipelago one of the Fifty three Cyâ—lades Remarkable for the Temple of Apollo for most excellent Brass and for the Fountain Inopus which as Pliny affirms rises and falls as the Nile does and at the same times with it Alone hard by Cyzicum and betwen Lebedus and Teon Two Cities of Ionia Anaphe one of the Twelve Sporades I think or at least not far off them as lying near to Melos one of the chief of them Thera called also Calliste where Callimachus the Poet was born and whence they went who built Cyrene It appeared first in the fourth year of the hundred and thirty fifth Olympiad as Pliny relates and from it was the Ilet Therasia broken off Hiera the same with Automate which appeared about an hundred and thirty years after even in our time says the same Pliny upon the Eighth day before the Ides of July when M. Junius Syllanus and Lucius Balbus were Consuls Other Islands again have been made by Disjunction from the Main-land As some have been joined to Continents and become one with them as Aethusa in the Lybian Sea to Mundus Zephyria to Halicarnassus in Caria Narthecusa to Parthenius a Promontory of Arcadla Hybanda to Ionia and the like so some on the contrary have been ravished or rent away from the firm Land Thus Prochyta an Island in the Tuscan Sea was raised not far from Pâ—â—â—oli While a great Mountain in Inarime falling by an Earthquake poured forth that abundance of Earth of which it was composed And so it carries the account of its Original in its name as Delos also above mentioned does Cyprus a noted Island in the Mediterranean was divided from Syria says Pliny whence it is now distant at least an hundred Miles Sicily from Italy Euboea from Boeotia Besbycus from Bithynia And as some have thought Britain from France And truly if Syria and Cyprus which are now so remote from one another were once united this makes it the more probable that England and France might time out of mind have been joined by an Isthmus or neck of Land Thirdly It may be answered That as Islands at first were not so numerous so the bigger of them might not lie so far off from Continents as now they do the Earth being since much eaten away by Waters and so the distance betwixt them made much wider Or if they did lie so far from the Main-land yet the Inhabitants of such Lands might advance into the distant Isles by the help of some rude kind of Boats made of hollow Trees or the like Or if any were such out-liers as that they did not designedly make towards them or accidentally hit upon them we may without inconvenience grant them never to have been inhabited And so we read of that African Island St. Thomas in the Aâ—lantic Ocean under the Aequinoctial that at its first discovery though since the Flood it was unpeopled and had nothing in it but Woods Lastly I answer As to the grand Continents of the Earth Europe Africa and Asia which are three of them have known Inlets by Lands into one another And for ought we can tell there may be Inlets out of Asia into America in the Northern parts of them But however we are sure it is but a narrow Strait that separates the Kingdom of Anian from Tartary And who can say but that before the Flood and perhaps for a good while after it theâ—â— might be some Neck of Land coupling both together and affording an easie Passage out of the one into the other which may be since washt down or swallowed up For as the Earth does sometimes gain strangely upon the Water witness the City of Antioch to say nothing of Aegypt the Bay of Ambrasia the Flats of Teuthrania and the now Meadowy level where Maeander runs once belonging to Neptune's Empire which at first says Pliny stood upon the Sea coast but even in his time became an hundred and twenty five Miles distant from it so the Sea otherwhiles prevailes as much against the Land Thus the Atlantis a vast Continent bigger than Libya and all Asia says Plato by a terrible Earthquake lasting a day and a
this is that will be made good by casting in on the present Earth's side the sinking hollownesses and declivities of Valleys and the swelling protuberancies and gibbosities of Mountains neither of which the first Earth had Farther if People before the Flood were generally so long-liv'd and this their Longaevity proceeded from a perpetual Aequinox and settled benign temperature of the Air as the Theory holds then surely there would not have been that difference as to length of days amongst them as we find there was Thus Lamech's Age as appears in the Catalogue of long livers was short of Mathuselah's near two hundred years Whereas if the Cause of long life had been so uniform and steddy a thing and so generally and equally influential upon all as the supposed Aequinox the Effect would have answered it Longaevity it self would have been more regular and not have admitted of so much disparity Though the truth is such an Aequinox and such an Earth as we have heard of would rather help to shorten life we may think than draw it out to such a length For certain it is that they must shut all Winds and Storms and Clouds and Rains and Thunders and Lightnings out of the First World And what are these but Crises of Nature wherein those malignities and noxious qualities which are lodged in her and would corrupt her suffer a Solution and are discharged just as morbific humors in the Body first ferment and then are thrown off by proper Evacuations But when there could be no Storms or Thunders to put the Air into Motion and to purge and clarifie it that so it might continue pure and wholsome it being always calm and too quiescent like stagnant Water must needs putrifie and contract such foulness as would make it unhealthy and apt to cause grievous Diseases and Death Egypt is almost in the pretended state of the Primitive Earth Situate between the second and fifth Climates its longest day not above thirteen hours and an half has seldom any Rain but is watered by a River Yet how subject is Cairo to raging Plagues and where are greater or oftener Mortalities than there I have only this to add here If the Aequinox spoken of were the cause of a general Longaevity in the Prediluvian World then other Animals would have lived as long proportionably as Men. That is to say Lions Bears Wolves Dogs c. And these multiplying five or six times to say no more as fast as Men might have soon over-powered and destroyed them Also Rats Mice Fowls c. multiplying in that World all the year round and in far greater numbers than the Creatures aforesaid would have destroyed Mankind another way not by devouring them but the Fruits of the Earth which they were to live upon Especially when Men lived wholly on such Fruits without eating Flesh and had no such ways and instruments at first of killing those Vermin as now they have Nor did the Earth yield such plenty of Corn of its own accord as to satisfie all granivorous Creatures without preying upon Mens Corps For upon Man's sin the ground was cursed And upon that Malediction it afforded not Corn without Tillage For thence forward even Adam himself was to eat of it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in sorrow or labour all the days of his life nor could he have Bread butâ— at the price of his Sweat And if the first Men had no Bread-Corn but what their industry fetch'd out of the Earth how could they defend it against the swarms of devouring Creatures increasing always upon them by numerous Procreations Even barely to name all the sorts of them that would be hurtful upon the account we speak of and would unspeakably abound in a World that knows no season but Spring is so great a Task that I am willing to decline it Yet that other Creatures did live proportionably as long as Mankind the Theory owns where it makes the Longaevity of both at once a Third Phaenomenon of Paradise and the first Ages And which is veâ—â— considerable also it makes the first Earth the common Mother of all sorts of Animals which naturally bred them and brought them forth Whence it must follow that those Terrigenous Creatures strangely increasing by spontaneous Births would soon have filled the World even this way alone though they had not propagated their respective Kinds with such inconceiveable multitudes as would have easily spoiled the Earth and ruin'd Mankind Who as they were made in the beginning but in one Pair so they were capable comparatively but of a slow Multiplication And so Beasts Fowls Creeping Things Insects and all manner of deadly and pernicious Creatures would have poured in upon them in vast numbers and with incredible forces while they were unable to defend themselves against them CHAP. XIV 1. The Flood could not be caused by the Dissolution of the Earth and its falling into the Abyss 2. For it would have been inconsistent with the Description of Paradise 3. It would have destroy'd the Ark. 4. And have made the Earth of a Form different from what now it is of 5. It would also have reduced it to a miserable Barrenness 6. And have overturned the Buildings which outstood the Deluge 7. And have rendred the Covenant which GOD made with Noah vain and insignificant 1. LET us now go on to the next Vital or Primary Assertion of the Theory which is this The Disruption and Fall of the Earth into the Abyss which lay under it was that which made the Vniversal Deluge and the Destruction of the old World For the vehement and piercing heat of the Sun having parched and chapped the exterior Orb of Earth and so greatly weakned it and also having raised great store of Vapours out of the Deep within this Orb their force at length grew to be such that the Walls inclosing them being unable to hold them the whole Fabric brake being torn in pieces as it were with an Earthquake At which time the Fragments of that Orb of Earth of several sizes plunging into the Abyss in several Postures by their weight and greatness and violent descent caused such a rageing Tumult in the Waters and put them into so fierce Commotions and furious Agitations as made them boil and flow up above the tops of the new made Mountains and so caused the general Deluge But against this we Except also and say that the Flood could not be thus effected for several reasons 2. First Because it would be inconsistent with Moses's Description of Paradise What that Description is we have seen already and 't is done according to the proper Rules of Topography For first he marks it out by its Quality a Garden Then by its name Eden Then by its Situation Eastward Then by its Inhabitant Man Then by its Furniture every Tree pleasant to the sight and good for Food And lastly by a River to Water it which rising in it or running through or by it
did divide its stream into four Heads or Branches all which except one are made to refer to some Country or other Thus Pison is said to compass the Land of Havilah Gihon the Land of Cush or the Asian Aethiopia Hiddekel to run towards the East of Assyria But had the Earth been dissolved to make the Flood how could these Rivers or how could these Countries or any of either of them exist in Moses's time as being all swallowed up and for ever perisht in the fall of the Earth And yet if they were not in being then how could he describe the Terrestrial Paradise by them as he does And yet that they could have no being then the Theory acknowledges in these words 'T is true if you admit our Hypothesis concerning the fraction and disruption of the Earth at the Deluge then we cannot expect to find Rivers now as they were before their chanels are all broke up But then if the Hypothesis of the Theory were true what meant Moses to put these Rivers or any part of them or any Countries near them into the Topography of Paradise when together with the Earth they were all broke up and dissolved so long before To make the Argument as short as may be In case these Rivers were not in the first World it was impossible Paradise should be described by them And if they were in that World it was as impossible they should be in this And so we have good evidence that the general Flood could not be the Effect of the Earth's Dissolution For if it were so Moses's Description of Paradise must be false Which to affirm would be horrid Blasphemy it being dictated by the HOLY GHOST Nor will it mend the matter here to fall to Cabbalizing or Expounding things Mystically So we shall run upon the same Rock and put hideous affront upon the Truth of GOD by turning it into meer Figure and Falshood Two eminent Fathers subscribe expressly to this The first Epiphanius whose words are these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. If Paradise be not sensible then there was no Fountain if no Fountain no River if no River no four Heads no Pison no Gihon no Tigris no Euphrates no Fruit no Fig-leaves nor did Eve eat of the Tree nor was there an Adam nor are there Men but the truth is a Fable and all but Allegories The other Father is St. Ierome who commenting on the fourth Verse of the first Chapter of Daniel infers thus from it Let their Dotage be silent who seeking for shadows and images in the truth do overthrow the truth it self while they conceit that Rivers and Trees and Paradise ought to submitt themselves to the Rules of Allegory And here it may not be amiss to take notice how empty and shallow and extreamly trifling their reasons are that argue against a Local Paradise and turn the Holy Story of it into Allegory Let the Observation run but upon one Writer who being as good as any that way may serve instead of all the rest I mean Philo Iudaeus Let no such impiety invade our reason says he as to suppose that GOD tills the ground or plants a Paradise inasmuch as we might presently doubt why he should do it For he could never thereby furnish himself with pleasant Mansions Retirements or Delights nor could such a fabulosity ever enter into our mind For the whole World could not be a worthy place or habitation for GOD who indeed is a place to himself and is full of and sufficient for himself Where the reason why there must be no Material Paradise and why it is impious for us to think that GOD planted one is because it would not be gratifying to him and because the whole World is not a fit habitation for him And therefore by the same reason there never was a World made neither As if Paradise had not been planted for Man but GOD. And elsewhere we find him harping upon the same string though it sounds but harshly To take the Paradise planted by GOD for a Garden of Vines and Olives Apples Pomgranates and the like Trees would be a gross and incurable folly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. For one might say To what end was it for a pleasant dwelling place But then might not the whole World be thought the most contentful dwelling for GOD the Vniversal King And a little after Truly as GOD does not at all want other things so neither Fruits for nourishment Where the main reason against a Local Paradise again is that which really is none its Vselessness in reference to GOD. As if the design or end of a Paradise had been to supply the necessities or conveniencies of the DEITY and because GOD did not need it and could receive no benefit by it therefore it must be folly to think he planted it But what was it that made so learned a Man to argue thus 3. Secondly The Dissolution of the Earth could not be the Cause of the general Flood because it would have utterly destroyed Noah's Ark and all that were in it For then that great and heavy Vessel sinking with the Ground whereon it stood must certainly have been staved all to pieces if not overwhelm'd in the Ruines of the Earth I know that in favour of this Ark and for its Preservation it is supposed that the Abyss was not broken open till after the forty days Rain and that those Rain-waters might set it a-float and so prevent its ruinous Fall by keeping it from that impetuous shock which it would have had if it had stood upon dry land when the Earth fell But this Supposition was noted above to be false and must needs be so For by the infallible Records we are assured That the Fountains of the great Deep were broke up and the Windows of Heaven opened in the same day Gen. 7. 11. Yea according to the order of the Holy Words if there be any Priority in those two Causes of the Deluge the Disruption of the Abyss should precede the breaking open of the Fountains being first mention'd And so the Ark having no Water to Float on must certainly have stood upon dry ground when the Earth fell And consequently the impetuous shock spoken of could by no means have been avoided but must certainly have destroy'd the Ark and all Creatures in it 4. Thirdly Had the Deluge been caused by the Earth's Dissolution the Earth or dry Land of this Terraqueous Globe would in likelihood have been of another Figure than what now it bears For under the Ecliptic which in the Primitive Situation of the Earth according to the Theory was its Aequinoctial and divided the Globe into two Hemispheres as the Aequator does now the dry ground is of most spatious extent and continuity Even from the South-west parts of Africa about Guinea there is one entire Tract of firm Land reaching as far as the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea That is for the
I believe we must stay for Elias to make out to us the true Philosophical modus of the Creation and Deluge THE CONTENTS CHAP. I. 1. THE great Usefulness of Natural Philosophy 2. In proving there is a God 3. In acquainting us with His Nature 4. In asserting a Providence 5. In excluding Idolatry 6. In vindicating the Gospel in several Points 7. As the Immortality of the Soul 8. The Resurrection of the Body 9. The Conflagration of the World 10. And the endless fiery Torments of the Damned 11. Philosophy is useful also as to Divinity 12. And like to flourish 13. Caution against abusing it 14. Which is done either by speaking or thinking slightly of it 15. Or by setting it too low in its Operatiâ—ns 16. Or else by Raising it too high 17. Which is the fault of The Theory of the Earth 18. A Character of it 19. The Occasion of this Discourse against it 20. Together with its Method 21. This Chapter an Introduction to the Discourse Page 1 2 CHAP. II. 1. The Hypothesis of the Earth's Formation stated 2. The first Exception against it It would have taken up too much time 3. The World being made in Six Days 4. How there might be Light and Days before there was a Sun 5. A Proof that the Creation was perfected in Six Days time 6. Numeral Cabbalism cannot overthrow it 7. The Jews in Cabbalizing still allowed a Literal meaning to Scripture only they superadded a Mystical one never contrary to it 8. Though were there a Cabbala Destructive to the Letter of Moses's Story of the Creation that would not invalidate the Argument alledged 9. Moses's Account of the Creation runs not upon bare Numbers but upon Time 10. What Account the Christian Church has made of the Cabbala 11. How it discovers its own Vanity 12. The Literal sense to be kept to in the Story of the Creation 13. Where Scripture speaks so as not to be understood Literally it is sometimes for plainness sake p. 45 CHAP. III. 1. A Second Exception against the Formation of the Earth viz. the Fluctuation of the Waters of the Chaos whereon it was to be raised 2. That Fluctuation caused by the Moon 3. The Theorist's Doubt whether she were then in our Neighbourhood considered 4. The Precariousness of his Hypothesis in several things relating to the Chaos Which ought to have been better cleared and confirmed according to his own declared Iudgment 5. The Descent of the Earthly Particles out of the Air not only Precarious but Vnphilosophical 6. And also Anti-Scriptural p. 73 CHAP. IV. 1. A Third Exception against the Formation of the Earth the Fire at the Center of it 2. The Theory faulty in not setting â—orth the Beginning of the Chaos which was necessary to be done 3. Such a Chaos was not Created 4. Nor yet produced in Des-Cartes his way 5. And therefore that Central Fire seems a thing unreasonable 6. That the Chaos was produced in the Cartesian way not to be allowed by the Theory 7. The Word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 also insinuates the contrary 8. The Septuagint cleared in one Passage 9. The Story of the Creation not to be restrained to the Terrestrial World p. 86 CHAP. V. 1. The Form of the Earth excepted against from the want of Rivers 2. Notwithstanding the way devised to raise them there would have been none in due time 3. Whereupon Two great Inconveniences must have ensued 4. No Rivers could have been before the Flood p. 106 CHAP. VI. 1. Another Exception against the Hypothesis it would have drowned the World though Man had not sinned 2. Or though Mankind had been never so penitent 3. Which would have reflected upon Providence and imboldened the Atheist p. 121 CHAP. VII 1. Saint Peter's words alledged in favour of the Hypothesis inapplicable to that Purpose 2. Wherein the stress of them seems to lie 3. Seven other Allegations out of Scripture of no Force 4. As being Figurative and so not Argumentative 5. Which Tycho Brahe not minding it gave occasion to his Systeme p. 1â—7 CHAP. VIII 1. A continual Aequinox before the Flood by vertue of the Earth's Position improbable 2. For then that Position would have remained still or the Change thereof would have been more fully upon Record 3. Scripture does not favour this Aequinox but rather discountenance it 4. It would have kept one half of the Earth unpeopled 5. And have hindred the Rains at the time of the Flood 6. The Doctrine of the Aequinox is against the Judgment of the Learned 7. The Authorities alledged for the Right Situation of the Earth upon which the Aequinox depends Insufficient to prove it 8. Two Queries propounded relating to the Aequinox p. 158 CHAP. IX 1. The Oval Figure of the Primitive Earth excepted against from the nature of that Mass upon which it was founded 2. And from its Position in its Annual Motion 3. As also from the Roundness of the Present Earth 4. Which Roundness could not accrue to the Earth from its Disruption in regard that would have rendred it more Oval still in case it had been Oval from the beginning 5. Or at least would not have made it less Oval than it was p. 189 CHAP. X. 1. That there were Mountains before the Flood proved in way of Exception to the Theory out of Scripture 2. And that they could not be made by the Falling in of the first Earth argued from the Mountains in the Moon 3. And from the Opinion of the Talmudists and others 4. How Mountains might arise in the very beginning 5. There must be Mountains in the first World because there were Metals in it p. 201 CHAP. XI 1. That there were open Seas before the Flood made evident from Scripture 2. Such Seas necessary then as Receptacles for Great Fishes 3. The Abyss being no fit place for them 4. A farther Confirmation of open Seas 5. An Objection against them answered 6. Another Objection answered 7. A Third answered p. 218 CHAP. XII 1. The Scripture's Silence touching the Rainbow before the Flood does not argue its non-appearance till after it 2. It s appearance from the beginning no hindrance or diminution of its Federal Significancy 3. But matter of congruence to GOD's Method of Proceeding in other Cases 4. Clouds were extâ—nt before the Flood and therefore the Rainbow was so 5. The Conclusion of this Chapter relating to the Two foregoing ones also p. 252 CHAP. XIII 1. The Doctrine of Paradise intelligible without the Theory 2. Where that Doctrine is best taught 3. What it is with a brief Paraphrase upon it 4. It is Clear in it self though obscured by Writers 5. Longaevity before the Flood no property of Paradise and might be the Priviledge but of few 6. It could not be common to all according to the Theory p. 262 CHAP. XIV 1. The Flood could not be caused by the Dissolution of the Earth and its falling into the Abyss 2. For it would have been inconsistent
with the Description of Paradise 3. It would have destroy'd the Ark. 4. And have made the Earth of a Form different from what now it is of 5. It would also have reduced it to a miserable Barrennels 6. And have overturned the Buildings which outstood the Deluge 7. And have rendred the Covenant which GOD made with Noah vain and insignificant p. 284 CHAP. XV. 1. The Flood explicable another way as well as by that in which the Theory goes 2. What the height of its Waters might be viz. Fifteen Cubits upon the surface of the Earth 3. The Probability of the Hypothesis argued from Scripture 4. What the Fountains of the Great Deep were 5. A Second Argument for the Hypothesis from the easie and sufficient Supply of Waters to raise the Flood to such an height 6. A Third from its agreeableness with St. Peter's Account of the Deluge 7. A Fourth from the Habitableness of the Earth at the Flood 's going off 8. A Fifth from its Consistency with Geography p. 299 CHAP. XVI 1. Objections must be answered 2. Our Exposition of Scripture not to be made an Objection by the Theorist or any that hold with him 3. The First Objection from the Hills being covered answered 4. The Second from the Arks resting upon the Mountains of Ararat answered 5. The Third from the appearing of the Tops of the Mountains upon the decrease of the Waters answered 6. The Fourth from the possibility of Mens being saved from the Flood without the Ark answered 7. The Fifth from the likelihood of other Creatures escaping answered 8. The Sixth from the imaginary excess of Water answered 9. The Seventh from the Raven which Noah sent out of the Ark answered 10. The Eighth from danger of Shipwrack which the Ark would have been in answered 11. A General Answer to farther Objections p 324 CHAP. XVII 1. The Positiveness of the Theory 2. Noted in the English Edition of it 3. It s Author's Intentions laudable 4 The Conclusion p. 356 LICENS'D Ian. 29. 1688 9. Rob. Midgley ERRATA PAge 13. Line 10. Read incorruption p. 48. l. 3. after that insert were in it p. 58. l. 3. r. host of p. 59. l. 31. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 60. l. 26. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 75. l. 13. r. and. p. 95. l. 1. r. professed p. 98. l. 23. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 109. l. 21. r. canales p. 116. l. 7. r. Miles p. 127. l. 9. r. Brahe p. 129. l. 25. r. descry p. 145. l. 28. r. inartificial p. 233. l. 1. r. grow l. 5. blot out so p. 255. l. 1. r. just l. 30. r. it s p. 282. l. 14. r. Crops p. 289. l. 21. after land insert excepting the Red Sea p. 306. in the last line of the Mâ—â—gent r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 307. l. 17. blot out a. p. 321. l. 25. r. two hundred p. 324. l. 17. after in r. answered p. 333. l. 2. r. about p. 345. l. 25. r. hideous The Parentheses p. 289. l. 15 16 17 18. and p. 290. l. 2 3. should have been left out Some mispointings also must be noted GEOLOGIA OR A DISCOURSE Concerning the EARTH Before the Flood CHAP. 1. 1. The great Usefulness of Natural Philosophy 2. In proving there is a God 3. In acquainting us with His Nature 4. In asserting a Providence 5. In excluding Idolatry 6. In vindicating the Gospel in several Points 7. As the Immortality of the Soul 8. The Resurrection of the Body 9. The Conflagration of the World 10. And the endless fiery Torments of the Damned 11. Philosophy is useful also as to Divinity 12. And like to flourish 13. Caution against abusing it 14. Which is done either by speaking or thinking slightly of it 15. Or by Setting it too low in its Operations 16. Or else by Raising it too high 17. Which is the fault of The Theory of the Earth 18. A Character of it 19. The Occasion of this Discourse against it 20. Together with its Method 21. This Chapter an Introduction to the Discourse 1. IT is a memorable and worthy Saying for a Heathen of Simplicius Philosophy is the greatest Gift that ever GOD bestowed upon Men. And were it restrained to Natural Philosophy alone there would be much truth in that Assertion of his For it serves our interests with a mighty efficacy and is highly conducive to our benefit not only many but innumerable ways Thus it exalts our Minds and inlarges our Understanding and fills them with rich and invaluable Notions It elevates our flat and groveling Souls and make them at once to look up and look high It disinthralls our Judgments inslav'd to Sense and weak Speculations and swells our shrivel'd narrow Thoughts into wide and generous and comprehensive Theories It wipes the dust of Ignorance and dimness of Prejudice out of our Eyes and inables us not only to see Nature's Beauty but duely to admire it Yea in a short time it turns our Admiration into studious Industry and of passionate Lovers of Nature's Perfections makes us curious and painful Searchers into her Mysteries And here new Discoveries bring fresh Delights and our intellectual Satisfactions do more than compensate our most tiresom Disquitions For the Mind being weighed down with the luggage of the Body and bound fast as with Chains in the straitnesses of it Philosophy relieves it says a great Man by giving it a fair Prospect of the things of Nature and lifting it up from Earthly to Divine Concerns To take cognoscence of which while it sallies out it recovers a kind of liberty and breaking loose in some sense from the uneasie pressure and confinement it suffers is refreshed with the survey and study of the Heavens The learned Father flies higher still though not in the least above the Mark. For he makes Philosophy profitable for Godliness to such as fetch Faith from Demonstration And says That if it does not comprehend the vastness of Truth nor is able to perform the Commandments of the LORD yet it makes way for the most royal Doctrine And therefore he would have all not excusing very Women to mind Philosophy And argues That none who are young should defer it and that none who are old should be weary of it because no Man is too young nor yet too old to get a found Mind And then adds He that says 't is too soon or too late to study Philosophy is just like him who says it is too soon or too late to be blessed And that Philosophy should contribute towards Mens Blessedness we need not wonder when as he says in another place it does before-hand purge and prepare the Soul to receive the Faith upon which the truth builds Knowledge And albeit in these Expressions he might not mean Natural Philosophy only yet speaking all along of the Greek Philosophy in general he cannot be supposed to exclude that neither Which indeed does very much qualifie and