of some shallow places that lie high or by a Divulsion from some Continent or a Protrusion from the bottom of the Sea And he gives us also one Figure to represent the Rise of those original Islands according to his said Hypothesis To this I answer That the Causes he has given for these Phaenomena relating to the Sea Channel are well assign'd consequentially to his Hypothesis but as I have already shewn a failure in his Hypothesis those causes cannot be true neither shall I be more particular on them But as the Author has excluded a Sea from his Antediluvian Earth I shall set down a few Reasons to shew the necessity of a Sea from the beginning of the World First then we find a necessity of admitting a Sea from the beginning for the support of Sea-Animals and Vegetables which we cannot judg but to have been from the beginning For supposing that the Authority of Moses who tells us of a Sea and great Whales c. from the beginning should be evaded I would ask whether all Sea-Animals and Vegetables were created de novo after the Deluge or whether they were kept in the Antediluvian Rivers or in the Abysse First to say they were then created de novo or that their Seeds had been preserv'd in the Antediluvian World till they exerted their Powers at the Deluge it would no way be admitted For this were in effect to exclude in a manner half the Creation in reference to Plants and Animals from the Antediluvian Earth the Sea being the most fertile of all the parts of the World the generative Faculty being no where so luxuriant as there Secondly they could not live in the suppos'd Antediluvian Rivers which in all probability must have been all fresh and without any Saltness in them as I shall shew in the next Chapter And again when we consider the various Genius's of Fishes we find it inconsistent for them to have liv'd in those Rivers For as Philo says all marine Animals receive not their Being in all places some love a moorish and shallow Sea some Ditches and Ports neither passing up into the Land nor swimming far from the Sea shoar some living in the deep Seas shun Islands Rocks and Promontories running out into the Sea and others are delighted in calm and quiet Seas others in tempestuous so that being exercis'd with continual tossings and striving against the Surges they become stronger and fatter c. Now how all these Dispositions and a multitude of others could be answer'd in the Antediluvian Rivers or the Abysse I see not The like may be said of all Birds living always on the Sea Coasts and feeding on Sea Animals and the like of Vegetables which grow no where but in or by the Sea Thirdly as to the Abysse certainly the Birds could not be preserv'd there if it be said that the Fishes or Sea-Plants could I desire one Instance in natural History where any Animal or Vegetable has been found living twenty Fathoms deep in the Earth where there has not been a Communication to the day I well know there are some Fishes I cannot say Vegetables living in some subterraneous Rivers and Lakes which have such a Communication a I speak of but none otherwise To conclude the Author in his Answer to Mr. Warren finding himself urg'd against the living of Fishes in the Abysse through its closeness instances that a Child can live many Months shut up in the Mothers Belly where he says there is Closeness and Darkness in the highest degree and thinks it likely that the Fishes were less active and agile in the Abysse than they are now and that their Life was more sluggish then and their Motions more slow as being still in the Womb of Nature that was broke up at the Deluge and that they had Air enough for their imperfect way of breathing in that state and that possibly they might have some Passages in their Bodies open'd at the Disruption of the Abysse when they were born into the free Air which were not open'd before c. To this I reply that it 's one thing what a Man is forc't to say consequentially to an Hypothesis which he proposes to introduce and another what Reason dictates to him upon free Thought And I believe if the Author's Hypothesis would permit him to be open and candid he must own that such an Abysse could be no probable nor possible Habitation for Fishes As for the Instance of the Child in the Mothers Belly where the Author says there is Closeness and Darkness in the highest degree we know it to be otherwise the Mother being a living and breathing Animal and having a Body freely perspirable the Envelopings also with which the Infant is encompast being very thin nor can the Child subsist if the Mother dies Now what Analogy with this has an Orb of dead Earth a Mile or two thick with which the Abysse is suppos'd to be invested where the Fishes are said to live Again how unnatural is it for the Author to make the Fishes in the Antediluvian Paradisiacal times to be in an embrionate imperfect state so that the Whale could not sport himself by spouting up Waters nor the Nautili sayl before the Wind nor any Fishes divert themselves according to their Genius and what they enjoy in this pitiful degenerate World So that at a time when all things on the Earth are suppos'd to have flourisht in a degree far transcending the present the poor Fishes which least deserv'd it lay under a double Curse being wholly pent up in a dark Dungeon impervious to the Light and Air as great Blessings as the World affords and having no Food but by preying on each other whereas now besides Vegetables growing in the Seas they have good Supplies by what the Rivers bring them besides other good Contingencies from the Shoars I must confess that I know nothing forct and unnatural in an Hypothesis if this be not so Next we must consider the Necessity of a Sea in reference to its Use as to the Earth and to pass by its Use for Navigation which is generally suppos'd not to have been practis'd in the Antediluvian times we find that the Antients unanimously plac'd the Sea all along the torrid Zone many of them saying that the Body of the Sun and other Planets and Stars were refresht and nourisht by the Moisture thence drawn But however we may look upon this Opinion we must still say with the Poet Sed rapidus Titan ponto sua lumina pascens And that one of the chiefest Actions of the Sun's Rayes on this inferior Globe is to raise Waters from the Seas to be pass'd thence by the Winds on all the parts of the Earth to qualifie the Air for the Promotion Refreshment and Support of Vegetable and Animal Productions and hence as Plutarch says Homer in the Battle opposes Neptune to Apollo and hence Juno is said to have been born and brought up in the Island Samos
of the Earth be consider'd according to Gravity or Magnetism Aristotle who consider'd it according to the former says that all the Particles of the Earth have a natural Gravity which carries them towards the midst or Center whence a spherical Figure of it must be caus'd as he explains at large and concludes that the Figure of the Earth must therefore be Spherical or naturally Spherical and that every thing must be said to be such as it uses to be or is by Nature and not what it may be by force or preternaturally and in a violent state The same may be said of the Earth's Figure if it be consider'd according to Magnetism the Experiment of the Terrella according to the various Inclinations of the Needle to it shewing the Earth to be Spherical And whereas the Author says that Circumnavigation the appearing and Occultation of Mountains and Towers to Saylors as also the Stars and the like prove indeed the Earth not to be plain but convex but does not plainly prove what that Convexity is whether Spherical or Oval We find that Clavius was of a contrary Opinion he thinking to have well prov'd the Spherical Figure of the Earth if measur'd either from East to West or from North to South by shewing that if a Man keeping the same Meridian passes from North to South there is that proportion still observ'd in the decrease of the elevation of the Pole which can only agree to a spherical Figure and so if any Man travels from East to West betwixt two Parallels he may still observe that to a City fifteen degrees more Easterly than another the Sun always rises and sets an hour sooner or later than to the other which anticipation of the rising and setting of the Sun could not keep the said proportion unless we give the Earth a spherical Figure As to the third Difficulty that the Author finds and the Explanation he endeavours to give of it viz. What Issue the Rivers would have when they were come to the parts near the Torrid Zone to which he says That then they would be divided into many Branches or a multitude of Rivulets and those would be partly exhal'd by the heat of the Sun and partly drank up by the dry sandy Earth This seems not to me fairly to account for the Rivers Issue It 's true we have now accounts of some Rivers absorpt in the Sands but the Waters so absorpt or which any where pass into the Earth have their Issue again at some other place either passing into the Sea or emerging again on the Land but what became of those Antediluvian Waters which must have been in vast quantities absorpt in the Sands Did the Circumgyration of the Earth carry them back again under ground upon an Ascent toward the Poles Or did they sink into the Abysse This must have been full before for many Ages till the Sun had cloven the Earth and drawn out great quantities of the Abysse Waters and the other way of their Issue seems not to me conceivable But I shall insist no farther on this matter The Author in the last place urges that the Rainbow set in the Clouds after the Deluge makes out that the Antediluvian Heav'ns were of a different Constitution from ours the Rainbow having not been seen in the Clouds before Now concerning the Rainbow mention'd Gen. 9. many have said many things but the most natural Interpretation of it seems to me to be thus We find in the foregoing Chapter when Noah and his Family by Gods Command were come forth of the Ark and that Noah had rais'd an Altar and sacrific'd to God God accepting his Sacrifice assur'd him that he would no more destroy every living Soul as he had done but that Seed-time and Harvest Cold and Heat Summer and Winter Night and Day should not cease or should continue They having been interrupted for a years time before And in the 9th Chapter after having bless'd Noah and his Sons he made a Covenant with them against any future Deluge and to comfort them gave them the Rainbow as a present sign of the Air 's setling in its wonted way the Seasons which he had mention'd before to Noah being to succeed in Course And the Rainbow thus appearing after the Deluge carried somewhat new in it as the Author says a Sign ought to have done because it had not been seen for a year before and in its nature appearing after Rains it betokens fair Weather as appearing after fair Weather it betokens Rains Whereas the Author says he does not look upon the Rainbow as a voluntary Sign and by divine Institution but that it signified naturally and by Connection with the effect importing that the state of Nature was chang'd from what it was before and so chang'd that the Earth was no more in a condition to perish by Water This seems to me without any ground I agree with him so far that the Rainbow signified naturally and by Connection with the effect because appearing after Rains it betokens a remission of the moisture and consequently fair Weather and this with Gods Promise to Noah and his seeing the Waters retir'd from the Earth I think was sufficient for Noahs satisfaction he having had experience that God was Master of his Word before when he had reveal'd to him that he would bring a Deluge on the Earth But to say that the appearance of the Rainbow imported the state of Nature to be so chang'd that the Earth was no more in a condition to perish by Water this will not be allow'd for if the Deluge was miraculously caus'd as I conceive it to have been what natural sign could foreshew its coming or no return of it Wherefore in this respect I look upon it to be only a voluntary Sign and by divine Institution And we know some have been so far from thinking the Rainbow to denote a change of Air towards a Conflagration that they plainly say it denotes a Dominion of moisture in the Air and that on this account it will not appear forty years before the Conflagration happens Neither do I believe that Noah or perhaps any Man since him besides the Author could find by any natural signality in the Rainbow that a Deluge should ne'r return Indeed as the Author says if Noah had never seen a Rainbow before on its first appearance it could not but have made a lively Impression upon him for his assurance for its probable it would have rais'd a stupor in him and he would have lookt upon it as a Miracle wrought by God for his satisfaction whereas the Rules of Providence are otherwise God never giving a miraculous Sign but of a miraculous Effect which the preservation of the Earth from a second Deluge was not to be but only the Earth left to itself with those second Causes that attend it for its own preservation And those instances of Signs which the Author has quoted from the Scriptures are miraculous Signs of
miraculous Effects and therefore of another nature from this here under Consideration Again it s well known that many Institutions in the Law of Moses were made directly in opposition to certain Customs among the Gentils Now whereas Iris among the Gentils was made generally the Messenger of Discord whence it was call'd Iris quasi 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 why may it not be thought that in opposition to this which might have been deriv'd down from the corrupt Antediluvian times God would have the Rainbow to be his sign of Love and Concord it signifying in its Nature indifferently Rains and fair Weather as Pliny says As to the existence of the Rainbow before the Flood certainly all the Gentils were of that Opinion Juno must have been an Antediluvian Goddess who was never without her Nymph Iris she being the most diligent Attendant she had alway standing ready at her Elbow and more officiously serviceable to her than the other thirteen Nymphs that belong'd to her among other services she is said to have made Juno's Bed and was represented with Wings and a Robe of divers Colours half tuckt up to shew her readiness to obey the Commands of her Mistris on all occasions The two predominant Colours of her Robes were blew and red denoting the two great destructions of the World the blew that which happen'd by the Waters at the Deluge and the Red the general Conflagration to succeed by Fire so that the Rainbow carries a mixt signality And indeed the antient Philosophers might properly enough make her the Messenger of Discord she carrying the Types of those two contrary Elements Fire and Water and God might make her his Messenger of Peace he controuling and directing all natural Powers and re-establishing a Concord betwixt those two contrary Elements whereof she carries the Types in those Colours she bears I may note in the last place that Father Simon censures Luther of Ignorance in the style and symbolical sense of the Scriptures for saying that there was no Rainbow before the Deluge and that God created it for those very Reasons set down Gen. 9. But though there may be a known symbolical sense contain'd under the Rainbow which may far more require our attention than the Symbol it self yet I shall not here take upon me to determine how far Luther may stand affected by that Censure As for what the Author urges from the Passage of St. Peter viz. That the Antediluvian Heav'ns had a different Constitution from ours containing only watery Meteors I do not find he makes out that there were more of those watry Meteors in the Air then than there are now so that a Deluge should be thence particularly caus'd on which account St. Peter intimates that different Disposition to have been and when the Author has said all he can of it he plainly concludes in his Latin Copy That he cannot find or discover by Reason whence that Glut of Waters rose at that time or wherefore after fifteen Ages after the World was made that Immense Glut of Waters gather'd together in the Air discharg'd itself on the Earth it might have been he says from supernatural Causes And in his Answer to Mr. Warren he says the Rains that made the Flood were extraordinary and out of the Course of Nature And what is this in effect but to own that the Deluge is not explicable by humane Reason and that Miracles are to be allow'd in it but they must be the Authors own way and not as others have said which perhaps by many may be interpreted to carry more of Humour than Reason CHAP. VI. THIS Chapter contains only a review of what the Author has said concerning the Primitive Earth with a more full survey of the state of the first World Natural and Civil and the Comparison of it with the present World so that here is little new wherefore I shall note only the following Passage where the Author says I cannot easily imagine that the sandy Desarts of the Earth were made so at first immediately from the Beginning of the World To this we may reply That if the sense of one Man may be oppos'd against that of another Lucan seems of a contrary Opinion where he says Syrtes vel primam mundo natura figuram Quum daret in medio pelagi terraeque reliquit When Nature fram'd the World at its first birth It left the Quicksands 'twixt the Sea and Earth CHAP. VII HERE the Author comes to the main Point to be consider'd in this Book viz. the Seat of Paradise and says that its Place cannot be determin'd by the Theory only nor from Scripture only and then gives us the sense of Antiquity concerning it as to the Jews the Heathens and especially the Christian Fathers shewing that they generally place it out of this Continent in the Southern Hemisphere He declares that considering the two Hemispheres according to his Theory he sees no Natural Reason or occasion to place it in one Hemisphere more than in the other and that it must rather have depended on the Will of God and the series of Providence that was to follow in this Earth than on any natural incapacity in one of those Regions more than in another for planting in it that Garden Neither do the Scriptures determine where the place was As to Antiquity he says the Jews and Hebrew Doctors place it in neither Hemisphere but under the Equinoctial because they suppos'd the Days and Nights to have been always equal in Paradise Among the ancient Heathens Poets and Philosophers he finds they had several Paradises on the Earth which they generally if not all of them place without or beyond this Continent in the Ocean or beyond it or in another Orb or Hemisphere as the Gardens of the Hesperides the fortunate Islands the Elysian Fields Ogygia Toprabane as it is describ'd by Diodorus Siculus and the like As to Christian Antiquity or the Judgment or Tradition of the Fathers in this Argument he tells us that the Grand Point disputed amongst them was Whether Paradise were Corporeal or Intellectual only and Allegorical Then of those that thought it Corporeal some plac'd it high in the Air some inaccessible by Desarts and Mountains and many beyond the Ocean or in another World but nam'd no particular Place or Country in the known parts of the Earth for the Seat of it and upon the whole he brings it to this Conclusion that tho their Opinions are differently exprest they generally concenter in this that the Southern Hemisphere beyond the Aequinoctial was the Seat of Paradise And this Notion of another World or Earth beyond the Torrid Zone he says he finds among Heathen Authors as well as Christian and that those who say Paradise was beyond the Ocean mean the same for that they suppos'd the Ocean to lie from East to West betwixt the Tropicks the Sun and Planets being there cool'd and nourisht by its moisture And having quoted many of the Fathers
from the Eden of Moses that word with the Hebrews signifying Pleasures and Delights as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 does with the Greeks and as the word Pardeis does with the Chaldeans and Persians whence the Greeks took the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the Latins Paradisus These are the Gardens where the never-ceasing Nightingale sings Vbi suavis cantat Aëdon Apollo being famous for his Charms he foments his Eggs in his Brest and solaces the waking labour of the tedious Nights with the sweetness of his Songs retiring in the Winter-time from these parts of the Earth to others then more Pleasant Concerning the Elysian Fields the Author takes an occasion to intimate as tho they were in the other Continent as he reflects on those who he conceives have misrepresented Paradise saying these have corrupted and misrepresented the notion of our Paradise just as some modern Poets have the notion of the Elysian Fields which Homer and the Antients plac'd in the extremity of the Earth and these would make a little green Meadow in Campania Foelix to be the fam'd Elysium Considering Homer and others of the Antient Gentils I see not why they must be interpreted to have plac'd those Fields in the other Hemisphere as for that Speech of Proteus to Menelaus in Homer Sed te quà terrae postremus terminus extat Elysium in in campum coelestia numina ducunt Strabo interprets this of the Fortunate Islands or the Canaries famous for a salubrity of the Air and gentle Zephires peculiar to that Region lying in the West Plutarch tells us that by those extreme parts of the Earth is meant the Moon where the shadow of the Earth and these sublunary Regions terminate Macrobius tells us that according to Antiquity those extreme parts of the Earth where the Elysian Fields are is the Sphaera 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 where the purest Minds reside But to pass by these Interpretations it 's well known to the Mystae what Homer would be at by his extreme parts of the Earth it implying only a passing from the Flesh into the Spirit where the Earth truly ends and where St. Paul found a real Paradise and there is a Torrid Zone to pass e're we come to it and passable only by those Qui solis meridiantis fulgidissimum jubar ferre possunt it being hardcoming near those Coestial Fires without being melted by their heat But I shall say more beneath concerning what some of the Ancient Gentils meant by seeming to place their Paradises in the other Hemisphere Virgil as I have intimated before represents the Elysian Fields as well as the place where the wicked are tormented in the bowels of the Earth And Servius tells that those Fields are at the Center abounding with all Delights and that Solemque suum sua sydera norunt Hither it was the Sibyl carried Aenaeas an Enterprize she had not undertaken but that she knew him of the Heroes and some way qualified to attend her in it for it 's an incredible labour and indeed in a manner insupportable to wade through those subterraneous Regions nor can the difficulty of it sink into the mind of Man without trial The Poet calls it Insanus Labor and it is so a divine Fury attends it during the transaction the Soul is stimulated to exert its noblest Instincts and the Understanding is consummated as far as it 's capable of so being Hence Plato says that humane Wisdom if compar'd with that which is had from Oracles and a divine Fury is as nothing and hence Virgil thought not Aeneas duly qualified for being founder of the Roman Empire till with his other Endowments he had this divine Institution of the Sibyl And I make no doubt but there are Sibyls still in the World who on certain occasions can and do perform the like pious Office to Man though the outward Typical part of Caves and Tripods be left off the Caves only denoting a deep mental Recess the Tripod the three successions of Time all known to Apollo Virgil not only in his sixth Aenead but elsewhere sufficiently intimates the dreadful Labour which attends this Transaction where he disswades Augustus though a great Emperour and a Man of noble Endowments of Mind from ever wishing himself a party concern'd in it saying Quicquid eris nam te nec sperent Tartara Regem Nec tibi regnandi veniat tam dira cupido Quamvis Elysios miretur Graecia campos Nec repetita sequi curet Proserpina matrem Da facilem cursum Whate'er you 'll be for Hell ne'r hopes you King Nor so seek Rule to wish so direful thing Tho Greece admires th' Elysian Fields nor was Proserpine fond with Ceres thence to pass Vouchsafe the Favour And perhaps it might be in view of this difficulty that Christ said Regnum Coelorum vim patitur violenti rapiunt illud Mat. 11. and 12. And again That it was as hard for a rich Man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven as for a Camel to go through the eye of a Needle If we consider what the Sibyl requir'd of Aenaeas to perform before he could accompany her in this great Undertaking it may not be difficult for us to conceive what those Regions are into which he pass'd the Golden Branch must be gotten and carried with him to gain his admittance into them and a dead Man a Friend of his slain by Triton a Sea God whom he had provok'd must be buried the Old Man the Animal Man must be slain and buried without which sacred Necromantick Practise Christ cannot be form'd nor reign within us nor can we enter the Kingdom of Bliss The Poet makes this Man a Trumpeter the Animal-man being nought but Clamour and Noise his Funeral-pile must be made of that ancient over-grown Forest that Den of wild Beasts with which the golden Bow is all invested Gold for that its a pure and incorruptible Metal and the most ductile and extendible of all Bodies and in its Colour resembles the glorious Lights of Heaven it terminating also the desires of Man was made by the Ancients the sacred Type of the Deity or of that divine Nature diffus'd thorow the World and hence by Divines the whole Intellectual World is call'd the Cataena Aurea and hence also are those famous Stories of the Golden Fleece at Colchos and of the Golden Fruits in the Gardens of the Hesperides and the Golden Age refers here and this is that Aurum Ignitum which St. John says will make a Man Rich. Now the Sibyl truly tells Aenaeas there is no coming at this Golden Branch that divine Spirit which must be his Passeport to the Elysian fields till he has cut down the wild Forest with which it is surrounded and made a Funeral-pile of it to burn the dead Body of his Friend Misenus that animal Man the Forest being nought but that confusion of Vice in which humane Life is involv'd and till this be cut down and burnt igne
so as to the Separations he supposes to have pass'd in the Chaos I have many things to say Not to stand therefore with the Author for allowing a Chaos and that it was a fluid Masse and of a circular Figure tho I know no reason why a Man should admit a Postulatum which if the Authority of Moses may be set by as the Author does I see no ground for unless it be to serve a turn for trying whether a natural Explication may be given of a Deluge which I judg miraculous and to reason with those who seem to have held gradual successive Changes to have pass'd in the Chaos in order to the forming of the World The main Error as I conceive on which the Author has grounded his whole Theory for the Composition of his Earth as it rose from a Chaos is that he has here consider'd the Chaos not as a strongly fermented Masse which it must necessarily have been from the infinite variety of seminal Principles of a contrary Nature therein contained as all Antiquity has represented it and from this fundamental Error has concluded that in the Separations and Settlements of the Chaos all things pass'd according to the common Laws of Gravity observ'd in the subsiding of unfermented Bodies no respect being had to those Effects which must necessarily have been produc'd by the said Ferments Can any Man cast his Eye on the Contrariety of Natures which appears betwixt Superiors and Inferiors and what we find in the Animal Vegitable and Mineral Kingdoms which every where occur to us and not presently thence conclude from the consideration of a Chaos where all these are suppos'd to have been confusedly mixt that the same Contrariety must have been there and that turbulent and violent Commotions were thence rais'd in it To go no further than Ovid who has represented the Nature of a Chaos as well as any of the Antients where he speaks of it he says Congestáque eodem Non bene junctarum discordia semina rerum And mingled there The jarring Seeds of ill-joyn'd beings were And beneath quia corpore in uno Frigida pugnabant calidis humentia siccis Mollia cum duris sine pondere habentia pondus ' cause in one Masse The cold things fought with hot the moist with dry The soft with hard the light with contrary Indeed as he affirms the World to have risen from the Chaos he immediately subjoyns Hane Deus melior litem natura diremit God and prevailing Good broke off this Strife But how far this jarring Discord was taken away according to what we may reason from second Causes and what Effects must have been produc'd by them upon the framing of a World must be consider'd by us It must not then be thought that when the Chaos came to be separated in order to the framing of a World all the homogenious Bodies or pure Elements were rang'd by themselves a pure Element being a pure Chimaera no such thing in Nature Indeed if such a Separation had been made whereas there was a Mutiny before in the Chaos this would have establish'd a Peace but such a Peace that no habitable World nor any Animal Vegitable or Mineral Productions could then have been The Elements then upon the separation of the Chaos must have been mixt and blended together according to such Proportions as to be able to produce such Effects as the prime Author design'd them for therefore when we consider his design was a World should be produc'd qualifi'd for the Production Support and Propagation of those varieties of Species we find in Nature and withal reflect what the Quantities and Qualities of those Elements were and are which chiefly concern us in this Discourse viz. The Earth and Waters we shall soon find how this habitable Earth and the Sea thence arose All the Water which the Author does account for in Nature as I shall have occasion to set forth in the sequel does not amount to enough to make an Orb of Water to cover the Earth as it lies in an even Convexity with the Sea a quarter of a Mile deep and what is this to the vast Body of the other Element the Earth Not comparably so much as a Sheet of the thinnest Paper laid on a Globe of three foot diameter adds in thickness to that Globe Indeed notwithstanding this disproportion if the Earth when it first settled from the Chaos had been an homogenious Body without any Principle of Motion in it arising from Ferments through the Contrariety of Natures therein contein'd the Waters must have cover'd it as Moses seems to intimate it did Gen. 1. but when those Ferments quickned by the ordinary concourse of the first Cause not to insist here on a miraculous fiat came to exert their Force can we think that less Effects could be wrought than the production of Mountains and a Sea Channel such inconsiderable Nothings to the Body which produces them the greatest Mountains on the Earth being no more in proportion to the Earth than the slightest Dust on a Globe of three foot diameter is in proportion to that Globe as the ingenious French Author of a late Book entituled De L'Origine des Fountaines has well made appear where he has likewise shewn that the little Protuberances on an Orange which are usually compar'd to the Mountains of the Earth are each of them a thousand times greater in proportion to that Fruit than any Mountain on the Earth is in proportion to that Globe We find that many very small vegetable Seeds contain a protrusive Principle in them able to raise Bodies by degrees containing many Tuns weight and can we doubt but the primigenial Earth fermented with the Seeds of all things in it had a force able to produce the Effects mention'd And tho the Author seems to smile at those who have held that Mountains have been cast up as Mole-hills or produc'd as Wens on the Body of Man I know not whether it may be so easie to shew a Disparity and why the one is not as possible and as probable as the other for if the vastness of the Body will afford it and there be a proportional mover neither of which I think any Man has reason to question in the Earth I know not why the Earth may not be judg'd better able to produce the one than the Mole or Man's Body the others I well know that all Antiquity I mean it of those who held the World had a gradual beginning from a Chaos abets this Theory as I have stated it and the feign'd Story of the Gyant Typhoëus if it contains any natural deduction relates here Typhoëus being that Enormontick Spirit if I may so call it or that protrusive Impetus still reigning in the Chaos through Ferments Winds and Inflamations and causing the present Unevenesses in the Earth and the retiring of the Waters into a Sea-Channel till at length all things being set in their apt State Jupiter or a meet temperies of
the World compos'd these turbulent Commotions and put a stop to their exorbitant Efforts And this seems to me a more apt Explication of the original Formation of the World than that the Author would introduce I may farther here note that tho I think the original Formation of the World may be accounted for this way yet I am of opinion there is no Mountain on the Earth now that is an original Mountain or that existed when the World first rose and conclude with Aristotle that the Sea and Land have chang'd places and continue so to do and I think it not possible for any Man fairly to solve the Phaenomenon of marine Bodies found in Mountains by any other Principle especially by a Deluge caus'd as the Author has propos'd But it being not my business here to set for t a Theory of the Earth but only to shew the Inconsistency of the Author's Hypothesis I shall not enlarge at present in making out these things but refer them to a particular Tract I design to publish with what convenient speed I may the Demonstrations whereof will refer to certain Cuts taken from a Collection of Fossil's I have by me where I hope to satisfie the Author in some tolerable way concerning the Rise of Mountains Islands c. and to solve all the Objections he has made against their Rise any other way but what he has propos'd CHAP. VI. WE are now come to the main drift of the Author 's Undertaking viz. How the Deluge was caus'd And in this Chapter he proposes to shew that it happen'd upon the Dissolution of the first Earth and that the Form of the present Earth then rose from the Ruins of the first First then he here presents us with a Figure of the Earth all smooth on the Convex part as he conceivs it must necessarily have been as it rose from a Chaos the great Abysse suppos'd to be spread under it And next he supposes that at a time appointed by Providence this great Abysse was open'd or that the Frame of the Earth broke and it fell down into it And this he says would first cause an universal Deluge by the great Commotion and Agitation of the Abysse on the violent Fall of the Earth into it Then after the Agitation of the Abysse was asswag'd and the Waters by degrees were retir'd into their Channels and the dry Land appear'd we should see the true Image of the present Earth in the Ruins of the first The Surface of the Globe he says would be thence divided into Sea and Land the Land would consist of Plains Valleys Mountains with Caverns containing subterraneous Waters c. The Sea would have Islands in it and Banks and shelfy Rocks on its Shoar c. And these things in the following parts of his Work he examins piece-meal but first here he considers the general Deluge and how aptly this Supposition represents it Supposing therefore it will be easily allow'd that such a Dissolution of the Earth would make an universal Deluge he enquires in what order and from what Causes the Frame of this exterior Earth was dissolv'd The great Cause he assigns for producing this great Effect is the continued Heat of the Sun which he supposes in the Antidiluvian World to have always mov'd in the Equinox there being then no Colds nor Rains nor Change of Seasons so that what by its parching Heat sucking out the Moisture of the Earth which was the Cement of its Parts and so drying it immoderately and causing it to cleave in sundry places and what by rarifying the Waters under the Earth into Vapours which would thence force a way for their Dilatation and Eruption he concludes the Dissolution followed He exemplifies his Doctrine first by an Aeolipile or an hollow Sphere with water in it which if the mouth of it be stopt which gives the vent the water when rarified by the heat of the fire will burst the Vessel with its force Secondly in an Egg which being heated before the fire the moisture and air within being rarified will burst the shell and he is the more free to instance this Comparison because he says when the Ancients speak of the Doctrine of the Mundane Egg they say that after a certain period of time it was broken Thirdly In Earthquakes which generally he says arise from the like Causes and often end in a like effect viz. a partial Deluge or innundation of the place or Country where they happen which may naturally lead us to conceive that a general one has so come to pass Lastly He says the main difficulty propos'd was to find Waters sufficient to make an universal Deluge and that after sometime it should so return into its Channels that the Earth should become again habitable for according to the common Opinion he says it was impossible that such a quantity of waters should be any where found or be brought upon the Earth and then if it were brought that it should be again removed whereas this explication performs the same effect with a far less quantity of water which is easie to be found and easily remov'd when the work is done for he says when the Earth broke and fell into the Abyss a good part of it was cover'd by the meer depth of it and those parts of it that were higher than the Abyss was deep and consequently would stand above it in a calm water were reacht and overtopt by the Waves during the agitation and violent commotions of the Abyss and to represent this commotion to us he supposes a stone of ten thousand weight taken up into the Air a mile or two and then let fall into the middle of the Ocean and believes that the dashing of the water upon that impression would rise as high as a Mountain But if a mighty Rock or heap of Rocks a great Island or a Continent fall from that height the dashing must rise even to the highest Clouds and he thinks it is not to be wondred that the great tumult of the waters and the extremity of the Deluge lasted for some months because besides that the first shock and commotion of the Abyss was extremely violent here were ever and anon some secondary ruins which made new Commotions lasting the time suppos'd till the waters by degrees were retreated the greatest part of them constituting our present Ocean and the rest filling the lower cavities of the Earth And from things thus explain'd he concludes that this third and last Proposition is made out viz. That the disruption of the Abyss or Dissolution of the primeval Earth and its fall into the Abyss was the cause of the universal Deluge and of the destruction of the old World I have been the more particular in stating this part of the Theory because the main point under debate is here contain'd which I must now examine The Causes assign'd by the Author for such a dissolution of the Earth as is mention'd do not seem to me so
must follow that no Proportion can be assign'd to an Orb of Earth but about two Miles in depth Now we find according to these Proportions which are the only Proportions assignable to the two Orbs that the Abysse-Orb is but a ninth part of the other a Proportion no way answering such an Effect as a Deluge and the forming of the present Earth which could not possibly thence ensue Thus I have been forc't to apply Arguments several ways and to make a large Discourse on a Point which if the Hypothesis had been clearly stated I might have answered in a few Lines And now I think no more need be said the whole Contents of the Book falling of course only as the Author has said in some part of his Work That he conceives what he has advanc'd may at least serve to open the Inventions of some other Men so possibly some part of what I shall deliver in the sequel may conduce to the same end If the Author does suppose that at the time of the Disruption of his Orb of Earth there was an Orb of Air or Vapours betwixt it and his Abysse-Orb rais'd there by the constant Action of the Sun on the Abysse in the later Ages of the Antediluvian World as in some places of his Works he seems to intimate I think he ought to have represented such an Air-Orb in his Scheme of the Disruption of his Orb of Earth p. 135. which he has not done and therefore my preceding Arguments have not related to any such Air-orb But if he pleases to be plain in the matter and fairly tells us if he supposes any such Air-orb how thick he supposes it and what thickness he allows to his other Orbs I do here assure him I shall always be ready either to shew him the impossibility of a Deluge its being caus'd that way so that the Earth should be afterwards habitable or freely to own that he has represented the Possibility of a thing to me which upon long thinking hitherto I cannot conceive so to have been CHAP. VII and VIII IN the seventh Chapter the Author endeavours to make out by Argument and from History and particularly by some passages in the Scriptures that the Explication he has given of an universal Deluge is not an Idea only but an account of what really came to pass in this Earth and the true Explication of Noah's Flood And in the 8th Chapter he endeavours particularly to explain Noah's Flood in the material parts and circumstances of it according to his preceding Theory and concludes this Chapter with a Discourse how far the Deluge may be look'd upon as an effect of an ordinary Providence and how far of an extraordinary I think it plain enough by what I have set forth in the foregoing Chapter that nothing contain'd in these Chapters can be of any force wherefore I shall pass them by only taking notice of what the Author says concerning an Ordinary or Extraordinary Providence in reference to the Deluge for performing which he will not have the Waters to have been created or otherwise miraculously brought on the Earth but allows as there was an extraordinary Providence in the Formation or Composition of the first Earth so there was also in the dissolution of it and thinks it had been impossible for the Ark to have subsisted on the raging Abyss for the preservation of Noah and his Family without a miraculous hand of Providence to take care of them And concludes that writing a Theory of the Deluge as he does he is to exhibit a series of Causes whereby it may be made intelligible or to shew the proxim natural Causes of it Now as for any natural Causes to be found for the Deluge the learned Johannes Picus falling foul with Astrologers says thus Astrologers ascribe Noah's Flood as well as all other Miracles mention'd in the Scriptures to their Constellations in which thing doubtless they are madder than those who deny any such things to have been because they believe them as they are related and nevertheless effected by natural Causes when no greater madness can be imagin'd than to think that any thing is done by Natures power above Nature it self this being demonstrably so because nothing is more repugnant to Nature than that it should attempt its own destruction wherefore it would never bring that Injury on its self that it could not free it self from by its Power And if it could not be according to the course of Nature that the Waters exceeding the Mountains tops fifteen Cubits Noah with his Cargo in the Ark should be free from Shipwrack twelve months so it was not Natures purpose to drown the whole Earth with an Inundation of Waters to the destruction of all living Creatures He adds also particularly against Astrologers who will have the Stars to be Signs at least if not the causes of such effects as follows The course of natural things is so limited by God according to the Order he has establisht and so disjoyn'd from those things which are preternaturally done by the divine Power and Will that if all these were taken away there would be nothing wanting nor nothing abounding in Nature Wherefore as by the Order establisht by God natural things are signified by natural Signs and miraculous things by antecedent Miracles so Noah being divinely inspir'd and to be preserv'd by the divine Power signified to the World that an universal Deluge was to come by a Miracle of the divine Justice and he exemplifies the usual proceedings of Providence in other instances of the same kind And indeed we have reason to think that if there had been any natural Causes for the Deluge some of the learned Persons then in being at least upon Noah's warning would have perceiv'd some growing dispositions in the Heavens and Earth toward such an effect and not have suffer'd themselves to have been all surpriz'd when it came as the Scriptures represent to us they were Again since the ten Plagues of Egypt were miraculous which were to teach only one obdurate King that there was a God who commanded all things certainly when that God pleas'd to execute his vengeance on a World consummate in sin he would do it in an extraordinary and supernatural manner that Posterity should have no Tergiversation but be forc'd to own that Divine controling Power being certified of this act surpassing all natural Causes whatsoever And whereas the Author says that he writing a Theory of the Deluge is to shew the proxim natural Causes of it It will be answered that when an effect is thus miraculously wrought by an arbitrary determination of the most remote Cause we must not look after proxim Causes in Nature for it Effects being only accountable from any second or proxim natural Causes when things are left to Gods ordinary Concourse Not but God often uses second Causes in working Miracles but then he raises that natural Power otherwise belonging to them to an height far transcending Nature so
could have made it change from a direct to an oblique or inclin'd Posture through a fancy'd loss of its equal Poise and this whether the frame of the Earth be suppos'd as vulgarly to consist by an Equilibration of parts to the Center of Gravity or according to the soundest Philosophy by a Magnetick Vigour strongly binding its parts together For suppose his Orb of Earth a Mile or two thick as he says it was in his Book of the Conflagration this can be no more to the whole Globe of the Earth than the thickness of a sheet or two of Paper is to a Globe of three foot Dameter as I have set forth in my first Book Now suppose a Globe of three foot Diameter suspended as the Earth is by Libration or Magnetism what conceivable alteration in as much on the surface of it as comes to about the thickness of a sheet or two of Paper could cause any Change in its Libration Or what alteration in such a proportion of a Magnetick Terrella three foot Diameter could make it decline from its wonted Points of bearing When the Author pleases to explain these things to me I may think more of it mean while I must conclude the bare Proproposal of this matter to be a plain Refutation of his Hypothesis Nay Let him suppose his Orb of Earth ten Miles thick if he pleases or more I desire him to shew us some possible way how upon its disruption such a proportion of either Hemisphere should be brought on the other as to be able to make it change the Position it had before Besides if any such disruption of an Orb of Earth as the Author supposes caus'd the Earth to change its Posture it must have inclin'd to the North and not to the South as he says it did because from what appears to us on the Globe of the Earth it 's manifest that we have much more Earth in the Northern Hemisphere than there is in South and consequently its inclination must have been this way But because the Author lays a great force on this Site of the first Earth to the Sun insisting on it as the most fundamental of the three Differences in the first Earth from the present and establishing it as the Ground for making out the three great Characters Properties or Phaenomena of the Golden Age of the Ancients and of Paradise I shall be a little mone full in this Point and set down a few Reasons against this Doctrine leaving it to Philosophical Heads to consider how far it can bear Neither has it been unconsider'd by many learned Men already what the Consequences must be if the Sun should constantly hold this Equinox Root or the Earth had always a right Posture to the Sun which makes me somewhat the more admire how this Doctrine should now be offer'd at We read of a King of Arragon who was wont to say that if he had been with th' Almighty when he made the World he would have given him Councels as to Heats Colds and other Particulars as to the frame of it that it should have been in a better state than it now is and this may pass among the extravagant Fancies of an inconsiderate Man But when we come Philosophically to assert a thing it would require a more than ordinary Consideration before we go about to unhinge a Frame of Providence as thinking to put it in a better state than an Infinite Wisdom has done And so distinct is the Relation and so artificial the Habitude of this inferiour Globe to the Superiour and ev'n of one thing in each unto the other that the more we consider them the more we may admire them and I think the more despair of ever contriving them in a better or more advantageous Site than they are in And tho all the advantages of the Suns present Course or of the Earths Situation to it may not be known by Man yet I believe whoever shall go about to alter it let him frame his Hypothesis as finely as he please he shall never be able to involve humane Reason so far but it may ever be made appear to him from what is known that he has been guilty of no less a mistake than that of Phaëton in not carrying an ev'n hand as to Heats Colds Light and Darkness c. and that it cannot consist with the general benefit of the Earth And hence Theodoret in his first Sermon concerning Providence sharply taxes those who would be finding fault with the Seasons Sed exurget fortasse ingratus quispiam qui ea quoque quae bene pulchre facta sunt simulque sapienter commodè administrantur reprehendere vel culpare volens dicat Cur sodes istae anni conversiones fiunt quaenam ex hisce anni partium successionibus ad nos utilitas redit c. And tho according to the scantling of our Reason we might fansie some posture of the Heav'ns more commodious to the Earth than the present yet thence presently to conclude that such a thing must really have been we having no solid historical Ground for it I cannot see but it renders us liable to that reprehension of Austin Tam stulti sunt homines ut apud artificem hominem non audeant vituperare quae ignorant sed cum ea viderint credunt esse necessaria ut propter usus aliquos instituta in hoc autem mundo cujus conditor administrator praedicatur Deus audent multa reprehendere quorum causas non vident in operibus atque instrumentis omnipotentis artificis volunt se videri scire quod nesciunt l. 1. de Gen. contra Manich. c. 16. But to proceed in Reasoning First then The Author making the Sun in the Antediluvian times to hold constantly the Equinox Root or giving the Earth a right Posture to it burns the middle Zone making it wholly uninhabitable and unpassible as he owns himself so that in the Antediluvian Earth there was no possible Communication betwixt the Men or other Animals inhabiting the two Temperate Zones which is followed with these Absurdities especally with the Author who seems very thrifty of Miracles that first when God turn'd Adam out of Paradise which he supposes to have been in the South Temperate Zone and the Torrid Zone to be the Flaming Sword he must have wrought a Miracle to have thence convey'd him and Eve into this Temperate Zone Secondly after Adam had got Children here the Author owning the other Temperate Zone to have been inhabited before the Flood God must have wrought another Miracle to have convey'd some of Adam's Children thither to people it Thirdly at the time of the Deluge he must have wrought a third Miracle to have brought of every Species of Animals in the other Temperate Zone into this to have been receiv'd into the Ark unless the Author will say that the Earth here produc'd all the same Species of Animals that were in the other Zone which a Philosopher
considering that diffus'd Variety Nature delights in may be content to smile at but will never allow or unless he can make out some other way the Conservation of those Species besides the Ark which will be consider'd by us in the sequel Secondly By this Doctrine the Author drowns the two Polar Zones supposing it to have then rain'd continually there and that all the Rivers that supply'd the Earth thence arose no Rains falling in the Torrid or either of the Temperate Zones But in reference to the State of the two Polar Zones in case the Sun always kept the Aequinox Root we must consider what the Learned Dr. Browne says in his Vulgar Errors where he has a Digression concerning the Wisdom of God in the Site and Motion of the Sun It is as follows If the Sun mov'd in the Aequator unto a parallel Sphere or to such as have the Pole for their Zenith it would have made neither perfect Day nor perfect Night For being in the Aequator it would intersect their Horizon and be half above and half beneath Or rather it would have made perpetual Night to both for tho in regard of the rational Horizon which bissects the Globe into equal parts the Sun in the Aequator would intersect the Horizon yet in respect of the sensible Horizon which is defin'd by the Eye the Sun would be visible unto neither For if as ocular Witnesses report and some also do write by reason of the Convexity of the Earth the Eye of Man under the Aequator cannot discover both the Poles neither would the Eye under the Poles discover the Sun in the Aequator Hence we find that contrary to what the Author has urg'd in his Answer to Mr. Warren If the Sun mov'd in the Aequator there would be a total absence or in a manner as good of the Sun in the Polar Parts whence vehement and continual Frosts must be there caus'd which would render them impossible Sources for his suppos'd Rivers Thirdly we may consider whether the Sun keeping always in the Aequator so as to make a continual Spring without a variety of Seasons would make better for the Rise Support and Propagation of the Earth's Productions even in the Temperate Zones than by its present Course Bede considering it says that if the Sun kept it self always at an equal distance from us in the Aequator this great Evil would thence ensue that the Earth would never conceive within which it does in the Winter nor would Fruits if any then grew come to a maturity without which Animals cannot live And indeed how the Sun always keeping in the Aequator and making still equal Days and Nights in all parts of the Temperate Zones should carry on Vegetation in the remote parts of them is not to me intelligible For now when the Sun is in the Aequinox we find its Heats but faint to us and were it not that we are holpen out by its approach to us toward the Tropick and thereby rendring our Days much longer than the Nights we have reason to doubt how our Fruits would be brought to a maturity much more those who live in the more northerly parts where the Vegetation wholly depends on their continued Days in the Summer with little or no intermission of Night And hence the Diversity of Seasons has been always lookt upon as necessary of which Cicero says In Autumn the Earth is opened to conceive Fruits in the Winter it 's comprest to digest them in the Spring it 's open'd to bring them forth in the Summer being brought to a maturity they are either mellow'd or dry'd In the Summer the Bodies and Branches of Vegetables are increast in Winter the Roots are strengthned and what is rais'd in the Summer is consolidated We see generally in Plants and Animals how Nature pleases it self in moving by interchangeable starts they require a time of rest as well as a time of labour One while upon the Sun's access they bring forth their Fruits another while upon its retreat they resume their Strengths Some Fruit-trees indeed in some Parts bear all the Year but to conclude thence that all may do so every where is more than their Natures will bear a Vicissitude of Seasons being necessary for them which Vicissitude seems to me plainly intimated in the Scriptures to have been from the beginning For when at the Cessation of the Deluge God says to Noah That he will no more curse the earth for the sake of man and that thence forward all the days of the earth seed-time and harvest heat and cold summer and winter day and night shall not cease This plainly denotes that such things had past before which having been interrupted during the Deluge should now return in their common course for otherwise those words Summer and Winter Seed time and Harvest had not been intelligible to Noah as never having seen or heard of such Seasons before And Pererius on the foresaid Passage says it plainly appears to be fabulous and full of Vanity and Ignorance what Ovid had said Met. 1. That this Inequality of Seasons was not in the Golden-Age of Saturn but that then there was a constant Spring and that afterward the Age degenerating this alternate Succession by Changes was brought on the World So again when it 's said Gen. 1. Let lights be made in the firmament of heaven and let them divide day and night and let them be for signs and seasons and days and years All expound those Seasons for the four Seasons of the Year And here I may add that by this altering the Sun's Course and making but one Season it subverts all antient Astronomy which if any Learning is concluded to have been derived to us from times before the Deluge And this Argument alone is convincing with me I cannot say it will with all Men that since all agree Clavem Magiae naturalis esse clavem Astrologicam and since the former Science has certainly been convey'd down to us from Antediluvian Times the Clavis to it must of course now that Clavis is known to be according to the present Disposition of the Heavens to the Earth whence I absolutely conclude that the same has ever been And we know that among the Priestly Ornaments of Aaron which carried the Types of the whole Universe the Brest-plate was one of the chief in which the twelve pretious Stones among other Significations typifi'd the twelve Signs of the Zodiack and their being rang'd in four Ternaries denoted the four Seasons of the Year which I believe had never been unless those Seasons had been according to the most perfect state of the World And that the Antediluvian Patriarchs as well as the Postdiluvian were in their respective times the most absolute Masters of the foresaid Science of any Men on the Earth and that from them it has been convey'd down in its Pureness to us is what I know not how to disbelieve Fourthly The Diversity of
a particular Providence for upholding the Ante and Postdiluvian Longaevity will be forc'd to relapse here for any thing that can be made out from Authentick History or Reason in the Case Not but we have several Instances of late date of Persons who have liv'd two or three Hundred Years and upwards But this has not been successively as in the Patriarchs and there is odds betwixt three or four Hundred Years and near a Thousand And whereas the Author urges for a general Longaevity among the Antediluvians as well as for some time after the Flood we do not find it authoriz'd by Scripture And that it was granted only to the Patriarchs and some few others by a particular Providence and this through the means of a certain Panacaea well known to the Mystae I am satisfi'd according to what is written of it by the foremention'd Adept Philosopher But leest instead of open reasoning I seem to obtrude Mystery on the World which by some may be interpreted vain Ostentation I refer the Reader to the Book it self where he may read at least what is written and if hapily he does not fully apprehend what is said he may believe or reject what he thinks good CHAP. V. IN this Chapter the Author treats concerning the Waters of the Primitive Earth what the state of the Regions of the Air was then and how all Waters proceeded from them How the Rivers arose what was their Course and how they ended He applies also several places in Sacred Writ to confirm this Hydrography of the Earth especially the Origin of the Rainbow He says then that the Air being always calm and equal before the Flood there could be no violent Meteors there nor any that proceeded from extremity of Cold as Ice Snow and Hail nor Thunder neither nor could the Winds be either impetuous or irregular in that smooth Earth there being one ev'n Season and no unequal action of the Sun But as for watery Meteors or those that rise from watery Vapours more immediately as Dews and Rains there could not but be plenty of those in some parts or other of the Earth the action of the Sun being strong and constant in raising them and the Earth being at first moist and soft and according as it grew more dry the Rays of the Sun would pierce more deep into it and reach at length the Great Abysse which lay under the Earth and was an unexhausted storehouse of new Vapours He adds but the same Heat which extracted these Vapours so copiously would also hinder them from condensing into Clouds or Rains in the warmer parts of the Earth and there being no Mountains at that time nor contrary Winds nor any such Causes to stay them or compress them we must consider how they would be dispos'd off To this he says as the heat of the Sun was chiefly towards the middle part of the Earth so the copious Vapours rais'd there being once in the open Air their Course would be that way where they found least resistance to their motion which would be towards the Poles and the colder Regions of the Earth for East and West they would meet with as warm an Air and Vapours as much agitated as themselves which therefore would not yield to their progress that way So that the regular and constant Course of the Vapours of the Earth would be towards the extreme parts of it which when arriv'd in those cooler Climates would be there condenst into Dews or Rains continually This Difficulty he says for finding a Source for the Waters in the Primaeval Earth was the greatest he met with in the Theory which being thus clear'd he finds a second Difficulty viz. how those Waters should flow upon the even surface of the Earth or form themselves into Rivers there being no descent or declivity for their Course And he has no way to explain this but by giving an oval Figure to that Earth in which the Polar Parts he says must have been higher than the Aequinoctial that is more remote from the Center by which means the Waters that fell about the extreme parts of the Earth would have a continual descent toward the middle parts of it and by vertue of this Descent would by degrees form Channels for Rivers to pass in through the temperate Climates as far as the Torrid Zone And here he meets a third Difficulty viz. What Issue the Rivers could have when they were come thither To this says he when they were come towards those parts of the Earth they would be divided into many Branches or a multitude of Rivulets and those would be partly exhal'd by the heat of the Sun and partly drunk up by the dry sandy Earth For he concludes as those Rivers drew nearer to the Equinoctal parts they would find a less declivity or descent of Ground than in the beginning or former part of their Course for that in his suppos'd oval Figure of the Earth near the middle part of it the Semidiameters he says are much shorter one than another and for this reason the Rivers when they came thither would begin to flow more slowly and by that weakness of their Current suffer themselves easily to be divided and distracted into several lesser streams and Rivulets or else having no force to wear a Channel would lie shallow on the ground like a plash of Water As for the Polar parts of the Earth he says they would make a particular Scene by themselves the Sun would be perpetually in their Horizon which makes him think the Rains would not fall so much there as in other parts of the Frigid Zones where he makes their chief Seat and Receptacle whence sometimes as they flowed they would swell into Lakes and toward the end of their Course parting into several streams and Branches they would water those parts of the Earth like a Garden Having examin'd and determin'd of the state of the Air and Waters in the Primitive Earth he considers some Passages in Holy Writ which he conceives represent them of a different Form from the present order of Nature and agreeing with what he has set forth First he tells us that the Rainbow mention'd by Moses to have been set in the Clouds after the Deluge makes out that those Heavens were of a different Constitution from ours And secondly that St. Peter says the Antediluvian Heav'ns had a different Constitution from ours and that they were compos'd or constituted of Waters c. He urges concerning the Rainbow that it was set in the Clouds after the Deluge as a Confirmation of the Promise or Covenant which God made with Noah that he would drown the World no more that it could not be a Sign of this or given as a Pledge or Confirmation of such a Promise if it were in the Clouds before and with no relation to this Promise He adds much more concerning the Nature of Signs giv'n by God mention'd in the Scriptures which I think too tedious and
that we cannot but embrace it Whereas on the contrary Hierom and others censure those as Triflers and Dreamers who so addict themselves to the Allegory that they will not withal allow a plain Historical Sense in that Narration they grounding themselves on this That unless an Historical Truth be held in those things which are deliver'd in the Scriptures by way of an Historical Narration nothing would be certain in them Whereas the Author says we may observe that tho the Fathers Opinions be differently express'd they generally concenter in this that the Southern Hemisphere was the Seat of Paradise and that this seems manifestly to be the Sense of Christian Antiquity and Tradition so far as there is any thing definitive in the Remains we have upon that Subject I find not that this is made out by him for doing which he distributes the Christian Authors and Fathers that have deliver'd their Opinion concerning the Place of Paradise into three or four Ranks or Orders and endeavours to shew that tho they express'd themselves differently yet duly examin'd that all conspire and concur in the foremention'd Conclusion In the first place he reckons those who have set Paradise in another World or in another Earth which he concludes must have been beyond the Torrid Zone in the other Hemisphere In this number he places Ephrem Syrus Moses Barcephas Tatianus and of later date Jacobus de Valentia To these he adds such as say that Adam when he was turn'd out of Paradise was brought into our Earth or into our Region of the Earth for this he says is tantamount with the former and this seems to be the sense of S. Hierom and of Constantine in his Oration in Eusebius and is positively asserted by Sulpitius Severus And again those Authors that represent Paradise as remote from our World and inaccessible as S. Austin Procopius Gazaeus Beda Strabus Fuldensis Historia Scholastica for what is remote from our World he says is to be understood to be that Anticthon or Antihemisphere which the Antients oppos'd to ours I must confess I have not many of the Authors here quoted by me my poor Country Study not affording them But on a Consideration of what the Author has quoted from them and what I find quoted from them by others we may discern how far they concur in that Doctrine which he here ascribes to them and to proceed in order as the Author has set them down I find the Opinion of Ephrem quoted by Ralegh from Barcephus thus Ephrem dicit Paradisum ambire terram atque ultra oceanum ita positum esse ut totum terrarum orbem ab omni circumdet regione non aliter atque lunae orbis lunam cingit Now he that can make Sense of this may unless he will expound it according to Plato's Fable of his Aethereal Earth The Author in his Latin Copy quotes also this Passage tho exprest in somewhat different terms and explains it thus That in the Paradisiacal Earth the Ocean compass'd about the Body of the Earth and the Paradisiacal Earth compass'd about the whole Ocean as the Orb of the Moon does the Moon so that he judges that Form of the Earth to be here intimated which he has before given it where the Abysse compass'd about the Body of the Earth and the Paradisiacal Earth the Abysse or the Ocean Now if this were so it 's manifest that Ephrem in that Passage could not relate to one Hemisphere more than to the other which was the only thing the Author had to make out But to be more plain in this matter the Book which Barcephas ascribes to Ephrem and that falsly as I conceive and whence he quotes his Opinion is call'd Parva Genesis or De Ortu Rerum the foregoing Passage well suiting with others quoted from a Book of that Title which I guess to be the same and if so I should have the worse Opinion of Barcephas for quoting so frivolous and I think I may say so impious a Pamphlet Ralegh derides that Parva Genesis for the miserable Stuff thence often quoted by Cedrenus and a Man may be as well satisfi'd of it by what we find thence quoted in Glycas who in the first part of his Annals says But that little Book De Ortu Rerum tells us that Adam took of the Tree of Knowledg and eat without Circumspection no way urg'd thereto by the Words of Eve but that he found a certain Disquiet in his Mind from Tiredness and Hunger But it 's best to bury these things in silence since they deserve an eternal silence And there he cites several other ridiculous Passages from him and concludes that every Man that understands the Scriptures looks upon them as so And again he quotes this Parva Genesis in the third Part of his Annals and rejects it in like manner saying that he knows not who was the Author of it whereas when on occasion he quotes Ephrem he does it with much reverence I have given a Character of this Book because the Author instances it in several places lamenting its loss and seems chiefly to rely on it in the Point under debate Barcephas indeed in one Passage which the Author quotes from him intimates Paradise to have been in the other Hemisphere But withal he says that it was beyond the Ocean and intimates it to be still in being so that unless the Author will receive these Traditions from him I know not why he should urge the other But I shall say more of Barcephas beneath As for Tatianus tho he distinguishes the Earth of Paradise from ours saying that to be of a more excellent make unless he had been more particular in pointing forth the place where it lay I know not why it should be concluded that he thought it in the other Hemisphere When Jacobus de Valentia places Paradise in the other Hemisphere he says it 's because it lies under more noble Stars than ours Now we know this ground to be notoriously false for that all Astronomers hold the Stars of this Hemisphere more noble than those in the other And as Mr. Gregory observes in his learned Notes on some Scripture Passages our Hemisphere is the principal and far more excellent than the other we have more Earth more Men more Stars more Day and which is more than all this the North Pole is more magnetical than the South according to what the learned Ridley says he observ'd viz. That the Pole of the Magnet which seats it self North is always the most vigorous and strong Pole to all intents and purposes If Hierom opposes Paradise to our Earth I know not why it should imply more than some Excellency of that Soil more than of ours Neither do the Passages of Sulpitius Severus or Constantine seem to me to have any force As for Austin and others that held Paradise remote from our World we know their Opinion relates to a suppos'd high elevated situation of Paradise and
to the Shell of an Egg and the Earth to the Yolk Achilles Tatius also quoted by the Author when he tells us that the followers of Orpheus affirm the World to be oval as an Egg he says it of the whole Universe as Varro does which no way advantages the Authors Opinion applied particularly to the Earth and the inward envelopings he supposes it had Ptolomy also in his compost says that the Elements and all things compos'd of them are inclos'd within the first Heaven or the Heaven of the Moon as the Yolk of an Egg is within the White But the main Doctrine of the Ancients concerning the Egg as the Author himself owns was by comparing it to the World in its Origin or as it rose from a Chaos they setting forth that as particular Generations are from Eggs so the whole World rose from it Thus Plutarch tells us it was the Opinion of Orpheus and Pythagoras that the Egg was the principle and ordinary source of Generation and that Orpheus held the Egg not only more ancient than the Hen but to have the Seniority of all things in the World Now though we have no ground to think that the Ancients were as good Egg Philosophers as the World has now by the help of late Anatomical Researches assisted by our Opticks yet Plutarch to exemplifie Generations and the rise of things from Eggs says thus The World containing many differing species of Animals there is not one species of them but passes by the Generation of the Egg for the Egg produces volatiles which are Birds swimming Creatures which are Fishes in an infinite number terrestial Animals as Lizards Amphibious Animals which live both in the Waters and on the Earth as Crocodiles such as have but two feet as Poultry such as have no feet as the Serpent and those that have many as Grashoppers Whence Plutarch concludes it is not therefore without great reason that the Egg is consecrated to the sacred Ceremonies of Bacchus as a representation of the Author of nature who produces and comprehends in itself all things Macrobius also who seems in a manner a Transcriber from Plutarch says those that are initiated in the sacred Ceremonies of Liber Pater pay a veneration to the Egg in this respect that from its smooth even and almost Spherical Figure shut up in every part and including life within it it may be call'd a Type of the World and the World by the consent of all Men is the principle of the Universe he says further as the Elements existed at first and then the other bodies were made of the mixture of them so the seminal reasons which are in an Egg are to be lookt upon as certain Elements of the Hen. Thus we find the great Doctrine of the Mundane Egg referr'd to the Generation of all things from the Chaos concerning which the Doctrin of the Ancients runs thus as I find it stated by a certain Author They say the Chaos was before all things and that in a long series of duration it settled in itself a Center and a Circumference gathered together in the form of a vast Egg upon the breaking of which a certain kind of Person of a double form arose being both Male and Female and call'd Phaneta out of this came Heaven and Earth out of Heaven came six Males which they call Titans Oceanus Caeus Crius Hyperion Japetus Cronos or Saturn from the Earth six Women Thya Rhea Themis Mnemosyne Thetis Hebe of all these he that was first born of Heaven took the first Daughter of the Earth to Wife the second the second c. Saturn therefore took Rhea c. From this Doctrin we as plainly see how fairly the Analogy holds betwixt the Generation of the World upon the disruption of the Chaodical Egg and the particular Generations and rise of Animals from their respective specifical Eggs as we may see how forc'd and unnatural it would be to apply this Doctrin only to the Earth and its disruption at the deluge for at the disruption of the Mundane Egg upon the appearance of Phaneta which Orpheus makes the same with Eros or Love the Heavens and Earth with all their beauteous ornament arose as upon the disruption of particular Eggs the Chick with all that admirable Mechanism in the structure of its parts and the advantage of Animal life comes forth whereas if this Doctrine shall be apply'd particularly to the Antedilunian Earth as represented by the Author and it shall be said that that Earth after sixteen hundred years Incubation of the Sun upon its disruption produc'd this present World where is the Analogy with particular Generations from their respective Eggs Since upon the disruption of that Earth the miserable Chick within according to the Authors own Hypothesis was found no way comparable to the Shell it had before the Antediluvian Earth far transcending the present so that if that Earth must have been an Egg it was but an addled one The Author therefore has given the Earth an oval Figure only to serve his Hypothesis for the Course of his Rivers as I have intimated before and if the Sectators of Orpheus or possibly any others of the Ancients gave the Earth itself an oval Figure not a Man of them gives the least Intimation of any inward envelopings it had answering to those in an Egg as the Author does who by over-straining the matter seems to leave a substance by pursuing a Shadow thereby wholly perverting the Analogy betwixt the Egg and the World which those Ancients endeavour'd to set forth And whatever formerly has been variously said concerning the Figure of the Earth whether as oval or else we know the opinion of its spherical Figure has generally obtain'd as lookt upon to be demonstrated And again if Eggs are commonly of somewhat an oval form there are particular reasons for it the directer of Natures Mechanism giving them that Figure either for the greater ease in Exclusion according to the structure of the parts through which they are then to pass or for the more convenient site of the Animal to be form'd within besides that when Eggs are form'd the fluid matter is not free to run into that Figure it would to the film encompassing them being in some part connected to the Ovarium and they are also prest upon by other Eggs whereas neither of these reasons nor any others I conceive are to be found in the Earth and that the Ancients could not nicely insist upon an Analogy betwixt the World and an Egg for its oval Figure it appears from hence that Eggs generally are only oblong and not properly oval they being much larger at one end than at the other The second point consider'd by the Author in this Chapter is the uninhabitableness of the Torrid Zone concerning which he says thus But nothing seems more remarkable than the uninhabitability of the Torrid Zone if we consider what a general fame and belief it had among the
the Change of the Poles otherwise than their private Opinion and the Reasons they assign for it are so frivolous that Vallesius aptly calls them Ineptiae Infantilis illius Philosophiae and shews the erroneous Ground they went upon But because the Author does not insist upon the validity of their Reasons I shall not examine them here but refer the Reader to Vallesius The Author adds some other Witnesses for this Change of the Posture of the Earth and Heavens viz. Plato the Poets some Christian Fathers and Jewish Doctors who all justifie that in the first Ages there was a constant Spring so that the Heavens and Earth must have chang'd their Posture since But I conceive I have sufficiently answer'd all this in my precedent and and some other Chapters and hope the Author will not go about to put upon us Allegorical Fictions for Historical Truths Another thing the Author endeavours to give an account of in this Chapter is how America came to be peopled which he thinks is easily answered according to his Hypothesis viz. that the Antediluvian Earth being smooth Men could freely pass before the Flood to all parts of this Continent and if they could not then pass into the other Hemisphere beyond the Torrid Zone he says Providence seems to have made provision for that in transplanting Adam into this Hemisphere after he had lain the foundation of a World in the other and concludes that God foreseeing how many Continents the Earth would be divided into after the ceasing of the Flood made provision to save a remnant in every Continent that the Race of Mankind might not be quite extinct in any of them As to this Assertion I shall leave it to the judgment of Divines how far we must be determin'd by the Text of Moses as to a destruction of all Mankind saving Noah and his Family in the Deluge there describ'd and shall only offer what follows from common Reason First It will concern the Author to consider how his Assertion here can consist with what he has set forth concerning the universality of the Deluge in the second Chapter of his first Book where he reasons against those who have endeavoured to represent Noah's Flood as a partial Deluge affecting only a particular Countrey and urges thus I cannot but look upon the Deluge as a much more considerable thing than these Authors would represent it and as a kind of Dissolution of Nature Moses calls it a destroying of the Earth as well as of Mankind And beneath he says St. Peter compares the Conflagration with the Deluge as two general dissolutions of Nature and one may as well say that the Conflagration shall be only National as to say that the Deluge was so And again we see that after the Flood the Blessing for Multiplication and for replenishing the Earth with Inhabitants was as solemnly pronounc'd by God Almighty as at the first Creation of Man Gen. 9.1 and Gen. 1.28 These Considerations he says he thinks might be sufficient to give us assurance from divine Writ of the universality of the Deluge and yet that Moses affords anonother Argument as demonstrative as any when in the History of the Deluge he says Gen. 7.19 The VVaters exceedingly prevailed upon the Earth and all the highest Hills that were under the whole Heavens were cover'd all the high Hills that were under the whole Heavens then quite round the Earth And in his Latine Copy he says Moses's History adds particularly the thing being as it were measur'd and accurately examin'd that the Waters overflowed the highest Mountains fifteen Cubits which Mark he judges to be added not without Providence that we might thence gather by a Testimony not to be gainsaid that the Deluge did not keep itself within the limits of any one Region whatsoever And much more the Author urges both in his English and Latin Copies to the same purpose and how all this can consist with a preservation of some Remnant of Men in every Continent at the time of the Deluge I must leave it to him to consider Secondly According to the Authors own Hypothesis when he says that the Passages North and South being not free Men could not go out of one Hemisphere into the other but Providence seems to have made a Provision for that in transporting Adam into this Hemisphere after he had lain a foundation for a World in the other I hope he does not mean by this that Adam left any Children in the other Hemisphere to people it and be a foundation of a World there It being a common Opinion that Adam and Eve were but a few hours in Paradise before they were expulst and that expulsion being suppos'd by the Author to be into this Hemisphere there were no People to remain in the other Wherefore as I have intimated before if the Author's Hypothesis must stand it must be with these Absurdities First that upon the expulsion of Adam and Eve out of Paradise God must have miraculously convey'd them through the Torrid Zone which the Author supposes as impassable as a burning Furnace into this Hemisphere Secondly After Adam had Children God must have wrought another Miracle to have convey'd some of them into the other Hemisphere to People it and it would have been a Curiosity to know which of Adam's Children were convey'd thither Cain we find must have been one because he is said Gen. 4.16 to have dwelt on the East of Eden which could not be in this Hemisphere if Paradise were in the other and it 's much that living so near Paradise and being past the flaming Sword he should not get into it as well as all descended from him to the Flood though his Crime could hardly deserve that Paradisiacal Continent for his Habitation Thirdly God must have wrought a third Miracle to have brought all Animals there of differing Species from those in this Hemisphere to the Ark at the time of the Deluge unless another Ark were built in the other Hemisphere Whereas the Author says in his first Book that Noah's Ark was the the first Ship or Vessel of bulk that ever was built in the World And I would ask whether the Author thinks that a Man may not give a rational account of the peopling of America without being clog'd with so many Absurdities I think it very easie and natural to imagine supposing the first Plantation in this Hemisphere and the VVorld always as it is how without any Miracle some small Vessels with People in them might have been driven by some Storm on the Continent of America from the more Easterly Coasts of the VVorld such small Vessels being a thing of common Notion so that I think we may reasonably conclude them to have been almost as ancient as Mankind Moreover we know that many Jewish Customs were found among the Americans on their first discovery and Ralegh tells us that in Mexico when first discover'd there were found written Books after the manner of
Deformity Again whereas the Author in his second Book where he treats of the Cosmogonia Mosaica will have it that the Creation according to the six days Works set forth Gen. 1. is deliver'd only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ad capum usumque Populi and judges that some of the Antients have deliver'd the Generation of the World more Philosophically I must confess if any Tergiversation were to be allow'd from the Text of Moses I should be more enclin'd to think that either the World being eternal as the fore-mention'd-Philosophers held or at least that the time of its Rise or Creation being indefinite and wholly inscrutable by Man as all the Gentiles who held it not eternal must have suppos'd it not a Man of them as far as I know having assign'd or substituted any determinate time for its beginning Moses as a divine Legislator substituted a time for its Creation or Rise and the Modus of it whereas the Gentiles substituted only the Modus according to their corrupt Divinity thereby to carry on a Doctrine for the Good and Salvation of Man and that his Chronology according to the Lives of the Patriarchs may possibly be resolvable by Arithmantical Divinity according to certain Symbolical Mysteries contain'd in Numbers or I should more readily follow the Opinion of Austin than any of those Philosophers he holding that God created all things in an instant without any succession of time which Opinion might as well have been consider'd by the Author as that of the World's Eternity this equally taking away those gradual Changes which he represents in the Chaos setting the World immediately in the State it is And truly it seems much more rational to me that all things were set in their perfect State at first whether it be taken as the Text of Moses literally imports by a properated Maturation or instantaneously after the Opinion of Austin than to suppose an Earth gradually qualifi'd as those Philosophers do for the Production of Plants and Animals c. So that their Earth as it rose from a Chaos must have been a long time in a Quagmire condition and not affording a tolerable Habitation for an Irish Bog-trotter till the Sun I know not after what Revolution of Ages had made it tenantable which appears but a meagre and unsatisfactory Story of which I may say more elsewhere Of Austin's Opinion also were the most rational amongst the Jewish Doctors Rabbi Moses Aegyptius Philo Judaeus Abraham Judaeus and the Schools of Hillel and Schammai as Manasseh Ben Israel writes Procopius Gazaeus also and Cajetan held the same I may add that Hermodorus the Platonick says that Linus writ the Generation of the World the Courses of the Sun and Moon and the Generation of Fruits and Animals and that in the first Verse of his Work he affirms all things to have rose together And so much for this Point which some perhaps may think more than need to have been I shall now proceed to state the Author's Theory for the Composition of his Earth or how it rose from a Chaos which runs thus First He supposes that all those that allow the Earth an Origine agree that it rose from a Chaos tho I have shewn before that Austin and those that are for instantaneous Creation could not agree to it farther than to help out our way of conceiving because no real successive Changes could then have pass'd in the suppos'd Chaos in order to the Earth's Formation and then he lays down two Propositions to be made out by him The first is That the Form of the Antediluvian Earth or of the Earth that rose from a Chaos was different from the Form of the present Earth The second is That the Face of the Earth before the Deluge was smooth regular and uniform without Mountains and without a Sea He proves his first Proposition first because he says he has shewn in his Second Chapter that if the Earth had been always of the present Form it would not have been capable of a Deluge Secondly he proves it from a Passage in the second Epistle of S. Peter Chapter the Third Thirdly He proves it from Reason and the Contemplation of the Chaos from whence the Earth first arose To the first Proof I answer that as I have intimated before it does not concern me here to shew how a Deluge was possible according to the present Form of the Earth which may still rely on Miracle till more valid natural Reasons are assign'd for it than any perhaps have hitherto been and all I undertake is to shew that the Deluge could not have happen'd according to the Hypothesis laid down by the Author which I conceive I shall make out in its due place As to his second Proof from S. Peter first I have intimated in my Advertisement to the Reader prefixt to this Book that a right reverend Divine has already given some Explanation of the Passages of Scripture contain'd in the Theory and in this regard I shall not intermeddle with them farther than necessity of Argument shall enforce me thereunto Secondly as to Scripture Passages I have this to offer in general that since the End of the Scriptures is of an higher Nature than to instruct us in natural History and in Sciences grounded on second Causes to which God has left them as useless to the Salvation of Men I think they ought not to be apply'd but in those holy things of Faith and Morals for which they were dictated and possibly it was on these accounts that those of the Antients who are suppos'd to have read the Books of Moses did not quote them in their Writings Again since the Author is pleas'd to set by the first Chapter of Genesis as not Philosophically written tho certainly this if any part of the Scriptures is design'd for our instruction as to the original state of the World and the beginnings of things I know not why he should much insist on any part else unless it be so self-evident that it is not liable to various Expositions as those Passages he quotes are by him allow'd to be Neither to me do they seem cogent tho I may allow some of them to bear a fair Exposition enough his way as others seem more natural in another sense But this I observe generally of Quotations that farther than they carry a fair stress of Reasoning with them what by various Explications and comparing of Passages they breed endless Cavillations which rather nauseate than satisfie a judicious Reader And even that Passage of S. Peter so much insisted on by the Author tho it seems to intimate to us some other state of the Heavens and Earth before the Flood than they have since we find the thing is not so clearly hinted that any Man since could thence divine what that State should have been and I shall shew in the sequel by Arguments drawn from the Nature of the thing that the Attempt the Author has made for explaining it has
been unsuccessful and so for his Tehom Rabba or the great Abysse of Moses which he has also much urg'd and for any other Passages he has quoted To come to the Author's third Proof which is from Reason and the Contemplation of the Chaos whence the Earth rose this Proof in effect is not only for making out that the Earth as it rose from a Chaos in its first state was of a different Form from the present Earth according to the Authors first Proposition but withall is partly for shewing that the Face of the first Earth was smooth regular and uniform without Mountains and a Sea as he has set forth in his second Proposition wherefore the scope of it being connected with the Motions Progress and Separations which he supposes to have pass'd in the Chaos for forming the first Earth I shall briefly state them both together as he has represented them He supposes then the Chaos as a fluid Masse or a Masse of all sorts of little Parts or Particles of the Matter of which the World was made mixt together and floating in confusion one with another Hence he says there follows an impossibility that this Masse should be of such a Form and Figure as the Surface of our present Earth is Or that any Concretion or consistent State which this Mass could flow into immediately or first settle in could be of the said Figure He proves the first of these Assertions because a fluid Mass always casts it self into a smooth and spherical Surface He proves the second Assertion because when any fluid Body comes to settle in a consistent and firm State that Concretion in its first State of Consistence must be of the same Form that the Surface was when it was liquid as when Water congeals the Surface of the Ice is smooth and level as the Water was before And hence when he has consider'd the broken condition of the present Earth both as to its Surface and inward Parts he concludes that the Form of it now cannot be the same with that it had originally which must have been smooth regular and uniform according to his Second Proposition And to make this clear he sets forth the Motions and Progress which he supposes must have pass'd in the Chaos and how it settled it self in the said Form when it became an habitable World 1. First therefore he presents us with a Scheme which represents the Chaos as is before express'd viz. as a spherical and fluid Masse containing the Particles of all the Matter of which the World is compos'd mixt together and floating in confusion in it 2. The first Change which he conceives must happen in this Masse must be that the heaviest and grossest parts would subside towards the middle of it and there harden by degrees and constitute the interior Parts of the Earth while the rest of the Masse swimming above would be also divided by the same Principles of Gravity into two orders of Bodies the one like Water the other volatile like Air and that the watery part would settle in a Masse together under the Air upon the Body of the Earth composing not only a Water strictly so call'd but the whole Masse of Liquors or liquid Bodies belonging to the Earth and these Separations in the Body of the Chaos are represented to us in a second Scheme 3. The liquid Masse he says incircling the Earth being not the mere Element of Water but a Collection of all Liquors belonging to the Earth some of them must be fat oily and light others lean and more earthy like common Water Now these two kinds mixt together and left to themselves and the general action of Nature separate one from another when they come to settle which these must be concluded to have done the more oily and thin parts of the Masse getting above the other and swimming there as he represents in a third Figure 4. Next he considers that the Masses of the Air and Waters were both at first very muddy and impure so that they must both have their Sediments and there being abundance of little terrestrial Particles in the Air after the grossest were sunk down these lesser also and lighter remaining would sink too tho more slowly and in a longer time so as in their descent they would meet with that oily Liquor on the watery Masse which would entangle and stop them from passing farther whence mixing there with the unctious substance they compos'd a certain Slime or Fat soft and light Earth spread on the Face of the Waters as he shews in a fourth Figure 5. He says that when the Air was fully purg'd of its little earthy Particles upon their general descent they became wholly incorporate with the oily Liquor making both one Substance which was the first Concretion or firm and consistent Substance which rose upon the Face of the Chaos and fit to be made and really constituted an habitable Earth which he sets before us in a fifth Figure and which I have also subjoyn'd where A is the first Sediment of the Chaos B the Orb of Water or the Orb of the Abysse C the Orb which made the first habitable Earth 6. Having thus represented the Rise of the Earth from the Chaos he adds that whereas the Antients generally resemble the Earth to an Egg he thinks the Analogy holds as to those inward Envolvings represented in the Figure of the Earth and that the outward Figure of the first Earth was likewise oval it being a little extended toward the Poles which he represents to us in a sixth Figure and which I also here insert where as the two inmost Regions A B represent the Yolk and the Membrane that lies next above it so the exterior Region of the Earth D is as the Shell of the Egg and the Abysse C under it as the White that lies under the Shell This is the Author's Theory of the Earth in reference to the Composition of it as it settled from the Chaos in its first State which he says he has all along set forth according to the Laws of Gravity And this must now be consider'd by me First then If I should allow that the first Earth was form'd from a Chaos according to those Separations the Author has represented it would no way answer his chief End for which he gave it this Construction viz. The Capacity of causing a Deluge as I shall make appear in my Considerations on the next Chapter But tho I might be free to allow it as for any Deluge to be thence caus'd yet in other respects I must not do it because I take upon me to maintain that the World from its first Existence had Mountains a Sea and the like as it has now And both in reference to the Author's Argument from Reason viz. That all fluid Bodies and any first Concretion on them must keep to a sperical Figure whence he concludes the Earth on its first Concretion from the Chaos to have taken it and
competent as would be expected for such a Work The Sun doubtless supposing as the Author does that in the Antedilunian World it always kept in the Aequinox there being no Rains Cold nor changes of Seasons would heat dry and cleave the Earth in some parts especially in the Torrid Zone considerably but withal it must be consider'd how far the action of the Sun could penetrate for producing the effect propos'd it s known that if a Wall be heated red hot on one side it still continues cold on the other It s also a known Experiment that a good Thermometer plac'd in a subterraneous Grotto of an ordinary depth scarce varies perceivably in the hottest day of Summer and the coldest day of Winter how then shall the Sun penetrate three miles and three quarters deep into the Earth for so deep the Author seems to suppose his Orb of Earth to have been as I shall by and by shew and heat an Abyss of waters lying under it so as to rarifie it into vapours Qui queat hic subter tam crasso corpore terram Percoquere humorem calido sociare vapori Praesertim cùm vix possit per septa domorum Insinnare suum radiis ardentibus aestum And indeed Heat being not essentially in the Sun but an effect of the light by whose beams its imparted to us where Light is excluded Heat also must of course The Grotto where no operation of the Suns Heat is found has an open passage into it for the Suns operation if it could there exert it whereas the Author supposes the Antediluvian Earth to have been one continued substance without so much as a Cavern in it Again we must consider of what nature the Torrid Zone must have been and the Author in his second Book concludes it a sandy Desart if so Sand is not inclinable to cleave but soon fills up any Cleft made in it as I believe may be observ'd in all the sandy Desarts now extant and if Rocks are suppos'd under the Sands certainly horizondal beds of Rocks as all must have then have been are not liable to the Suns penetration at least by any perceivable Heat and indeed let the nature of it be what it might it comes much to the same thing and every Man who has us'd himself underground knows how little the Sun has to do with its Heat there Now tho the continued Equinox Heat then suppos'd may seem to aggravate the matter there must have been at least a vicissitude of days and nights and those still of equal length so that the Earth would be always cool'd in the night as well as heated in the day Moreover tho the Author supposes his Antediluvian Rivers to terminate as they came to the parts on each side the Torrid Zone being partly exhal'd by the Sun and partly absorpt in the Sands yet their waters must necessarily have pass'd in the Sands under Ground through the parts of the Torrid Zone which would soon fill up any clefts there made by the Sun I say the Waters must have pass'd so because his Antediluvian Earth must have been porous to percolate waters to all parts otherwise its impossible the Inhabitants in the temperate Zones should have been supply'd with waters to serve their necessary uses by Wells for no Man can indulge Fancy so far as to think the Antediluvian Rivers could have been so thick and near enough each other to afford a convenient supply for the Inhabitants of all the parts of the habitable Earth Men think it now very burthensom to fetch water a mile or two as in some places they are forc'd to do by their Situation remote from Waters and I hope it will not be said that the Rivers were then within a mile or two or ten or hundreds sometimes of each other As to the Comparisons brought in by the Author of the Aeolipile and the Egg which are broken when the moisture within them is rarified and turn'd into vapours by the heat of the fire I answer that when it shall appear to us that the Sun could cause an Heat in the waters of the Abyss proportional to what the others have when broken we may consider more of it mean while such an effect is so far from falling within my Conception that I look upon it in Nature impossible And as to the Doctrine of the Ancients concerning the Mundane Egg 's breaking I shall consider it in the second Book tho I may so far take notice of it here that whereas the Author here intimates as tho the Ancients by mentioning the Mundane Egg 's breaking referr'd to a Deluge its being caus'd that way the contrary is manifest to us for we know it was a general Opinion amongst the Ancients that the World had been renewed by many Deluges and Conflagrations whereas if one Deluge had been caus'd by such a disruption of the Earth any second or third Deluge had been impossible But what is most urg'd is that the generality of Earthquakes arise from like Causes and often end in a like effect viz. a partial Deluge or Inundation of the Place or Country where they happen To this I answer that tho some Philosophers assign the Causes of Earthquakes after this manner viz. That the strugling of Vapours rais'd and rarify'd by the Sun in the Earth sometimes cause a Disruption the Earth thereupon subsiding into Caverns whence Waters flow forth c. yet it would be hard to expect that Men should generally so far acquiesce in this Cause as to allow it a fair ground to build an Hypothesis of this weighl upon When as a great if not the greatest part of Philosophers assign other Causes for Earthquakes and those perhaps more probable Some will have Earthquakes to be caus'd only by certain Conjunctions of the Planets some by the Motion of Comets near the Earth others by subterraneous Fires or Ferments which truly produce Heats and Vapors within the Earth the Sun having nothing to do in it more than by a remote and general Causality others will have them produc'd by the Motion of subterraneous Waters others again by certain Moulderings or Founderings in certain Caverns of the Earth and other Causes are assign'd for them Lastly When the Author comes to the main Difficulty as he calls it viz. The finding of Waters sufficient to make an universal Deluge which after some time should so return into its Channels that the Earth should become again habitable both which he says are as easily effected according to his Explication set down before by me as they are impossible any other way I confess I greatly admire at this his Assertion and the Explanation he gives for those Effects The first thing we should have expected from the Author in reference to this Point is that he should have signified to us of what Depth he supposes his Abysse to have been and what Thickness he allows to his Orb of Earth for unless we will reason by rote it must be
upon a due consideration of these things that we must conclude of what Effects could follow upon the suppos'd disruption in reference to a Deluge and the forming of the present Earth as he will have it thence and indeed if any Person proposes a Theory or an Hypothesis and the Propositions he advances to build his Doctrine upon be not either self-evident or demonstrated by him the first thing he ought to do is to lay down his Postulata that a Man may clearly see how he adjusts his Reasonings upon them But to talk of a Body to be drown'd and not to give us the Dimensions of the Body and of the Water to effect it seems to me to have neither top nor bottom in it and no more than to say such a thing must be done but God Almighty knows how We find the Author has been diligent enough in shewing what Quantities of Waters would be required to make a Deluge where he writes against the Opinions of others and it seems but Justice that he should have been as careful in setting down what Quantities would be requisit according to his own He saw there was no proper way to refute their Opinion but by a particular Examination of what Quantities of Waters would be requisite to make a Deluge according as they fancy'd it and then to shew that if such a Quantity of Waters were once brought on the Earth it would be impossible for the Earth to get rid of them again so as to make an habitable World And if he would help us to conceive how a Deluge should happen and the present Phoenomena of the Earth be solv'd consequentially to it I see not why he should be backward to assign us some possible Proportions of his Orbs of Earth and Waters in order to it unless which I cannot think he had rather involve Men in erroneous Thoughts by offering only unlimited Generals and make them fancy a possibility where there is none It 's the business of Philosophy to possess us with clear and explicit Notions of things and not to imbroil us in such as are confus'd and obscure I may allow what the Author says in his Answer to Mr. Warren That when the Nature of a thing admits a Latitude the original Quantity is left to be determin'd by the Effects and the Hypothesis stands good if neither any thing antecedent nor any present Phoenomena can be alledg'd against it But I cannot see that the Nature of this thing admits of a Latitude so that the present Phoenomena of the Earth may not be alledg'd against it And I believe if Cartes had suppos'd a Deluge to have been caus'd as the Author does on the Disruption of his Earth whereas he supposes only the Rise of Mountains a Sea and the like by it the Conceptions of which may admit of a Latitude in some more tolerable way but all Men would have justly expected he should have assign'd Proportions to his Orbs and I am so far from thinking that any Latitude assignable to Proportions of such Orbs can be here admitted that I am of opinion when any Man shall assign any Proportion whatsoever to an Abysse Orb for causing a Deluge as the Author proposes I shall always be ready to shew him either his Abysse Orb to be so shallow that the Hypothesis cannot swim in it or so deep that it must drown in it Now tho the Author has not assign'd particular Proportions to his Orbs as it might have been wisht yet he has offer'd some Suggestions by which we may guess what he would be at concerning them What therefore I have gather'd from him in disperst Notions in his Work in reference to those Proportions is as follows First He tells us in his first Book p. 77. and p. 84. and again p. 127. That all the Waters which were contained in the great Abysse are now contained in the Sea Channel and the Caverns of the Earth Secondly In this same Book p. 10. he computes the Sea to cover half the Globe of the Earth and that taking one part of the Sea with another it makes a quarter of a Mile depth throughout Thirdly In this same Book p. 15. he says that if the Earth should disgorge all the Waters it has in its Bowels it would not amount to above half an Ocean From these three Assertions we find that the great Abysse which he supposes for causing a Deluge must have contain'd only an Orb of Waters not a quarter of a Mile depth as it was couch'd on the Face of the first ediment of the Chaos which is suppos'd by him to be of a ponderous compact Substance and not containing Waters within it And so much for the Proportion of his Abysse As to the Thickness he allows to his Orb of Earth I gather it from him as follows First In his Second Book p. 273. he says that the whole primaeval Earth in which the Seat of Paradise was was really seated much higher than the present Earth and may be reasonably suppos'd to have been as much elevated as the tops of our Mountains are now Secondly He has suppos'd in this First Book p. 11. that some of the Mediterranean Mountains taken with the general Acclivity of the Earth from the level of the Sea make two Miles in height above the said level or at least he does not there except against this Computation as he has occasion to mention it tho for his satisfaction I shall state also other Proportions to his Earth beneath to see what will follow upon it and I believe all learned Men will allow this Proportion To this I must add that tho he has not nam'd what depth he allows to the Sea I must conclude that he allows it two Miles deep as learned Men generally judg it to be where he supposes his Abysse to end part of the first Sediment of the Chaos receiving the Waters of the Sea upon it And thus we find from the top of the highest Mountains to the bottom of the suppos'd Abysse in the deepest parts of the Sea we have four Miles as we may say in view or at least agreed to by our Author and all learned Men and that whereas he allows near a quarter of a Mile to the depth of his Abysse as I have shewn before so his Orb of Earth must have been at least three Miles and three quarters in thickness All these things being thus establish'd let us now consider how a Deluge could be hence made according to the Description of Moses If I should but present a Scheme here according to those Proportions allowing a quarter of a Mile to the Abysse Orb and three Miles and three quarters to the Orb of Earth I believe any Man at first looking on it as to any Deluge to be thence caus'd must cry out Impossibility The Abysse Orb being but the twelfth part of the other without counting what must additionally accrue to the Orb of Earth from its much larger Circumference
that the common Laws of motion and gravity by which the Author pretends to establish his Hypothesis have no place here I may add that it 's the general Opinion of Divines that nothing of those things which God has made by himself and without the concurrence of any other Cause will ever have an end or total dissolution as the Author intimates this dissolution of the Earth to be for want of Principles in them sufficient for their eternal support tho God by his meer will may put an end to them or dissolve them as he pleases and therefore as the Earth and other Elements were made by God in the Beginning so according to their natures they will remain for ever without any destruction or dissolution as to the whole tho they may undergo some partial Changes And in reference to this the learned Vallesius on that passage of Esdras Considera ergo tu quoniam minori staturâ estis prae his qui ante vos qui post vos minori quam vos quasi jam senescentes creaturae fortitudinem juventutis praetereuntes Says but neither is that fourth Book of Esdras receiv'd by Divines nor could that Opinion ever down with me for the World has Ages according to divine Ordinations and the account of Times which God has with himself but not according to Nature since neither its rise was from Nature nor will its destruction so happen Indeed it may be that this or that little part of the Earth drain'd by long culture and sowing may decay but not the whole Earth neither does any little part of it ever so decay as things which really grow old so that it can never after resume its strength and as it were wax young again but all things pass away and return in a certain Circle according to all and each of their parts according to all by vicissitudes some being decay'd others render'd more fertile according to each each of them being alternately decay'd and restor'd And indeed the Learned Dr. Hakewill in his Apology has so well clear'd the Point against a general decay in the World that I think it past time of Day now to have it brought in question so that such a dissolution in the Earth tending to its general decay as the Author intimates may not be admitted I shall conclude this Chapter by observing that besides the miraculous Providence which the Author allows in the saving of the Ark his Hypothesis forces him to introduce two or three Miracles more as I shall shew in the Second Book Whence we shall find that what he has endeavour'd to save in one great Miracle he has been forc't to make out in little ones CHAP. IX NOW the Author comes to prove his Theory from the Effects and present Form of the Earth and in this Ninth Chapter after having observ'd that the most considerable and remarkable things that occur in the Fabrick of this present Earth are First subterraneous Cavities and subterraneous Waters Secondly the Channel of the great Ocean Thirdly Mountains and Rocks He proceeds to give an account of these according to his Hypothesis Beginning with subterraneous Cavities and Waters Saying that those Cavities were made upon the general Dissolution of the Earth according as the broken Fragments variously fell into hollow and broken Postures and that the subterraneous Waters are parts of the Abysse the Pillars and Foundations of the present Earth standing immerst in it Now I have shewn before that such an Orb of Earth and Dissolution of it on the Face of the Abysse for causing Noah's Deluge as the Author has suppos'd was impossible and consequently his Explanation here of subterraneous Cavities and Waters cannot hold I might add some things here for shewing the necessity of subterraneous Caverns in the Antediluvian Earth which the Author denies to have been But because in the following Chapters I shall shew the necessity of a Sea and Mountains in those times the Uses of which may be more conspicuous I shall pass by the Cavities at present CHAP. X. HEre the Author treats concerning the Sea-Channel and the Original of it the Causes of its irregular Form and unequal Depths as also of the Original of Islands their Situation and Properties He exaggerates much in the Description of the Sea-Chanel where amongst other things he says thus p. 128. When I present this great Gulph to my Imagination emptied of all its Waters naked and gaping at the Sun stretching its Jaws from one end of the Earth to another it appears to me the most ghastly thing in Nature And again p. 131. If we should suppose the Ocean dry and if we look't down from the top of some high Cloud upon the empty Shell how horridly and barbarously would it look And with what Amazement should we see it under us like an open Hell or a wide bottomless Pit So deep and hollow and vast so broken and confus'd so every way deform'd and monstrous c. To this I must say as far as I can conceive of the Sea-Channel if it were empty and had a Sword upon it and Trees as the Land has I can fancy no other Prospect could be there than what the Earth now affords us We have Mountains now that appear as high to us as perhaps any would if we then stood in any part of the Sea-Channel and so for any other suppos'd Unevennesses Indeed to look upon many places of it naked without a Sword on them might not seem so well so draw off the Skin from the most beautious Creature on the Earth and see how it will look as for other Ghastliness I fancy none for when all is said it is but a Veil spread over half the Earth allow'd to afford a quarter of a Mile depth to the Sea taking one place with another thorowout and not being above two Miles deep at the deepest part and what is this in a Philosophical Consideration when compar'd with the vast Body it lies upon It 's a place fit to receive such a poor Lake as the Sea otherwise not worth naming being not comparably so much to the Body of the Earth as the thickness of a Leaf of the thinnest Paper drawn from one half part of a Globe of three feet Diameter takes from the bulk of that Globe Next the Author tells us there are three things particularly to be consider'd concerning the Sea-Channel viz. It s general Irregularity the vast Hollowness of its Cavity and the Declivity of its sides which lie shelving tho with some Unevenness from top to bottom And these he thinks may be aptly explain'd according to his Hypothesis by the fall of the Earth and are not explainable any other way and he gives us two Figures for representing the Fall of the Earth to effect these things The like he says for the Rise of original Islands which he counter-distinguishes from such as are factitious these being made either by the Aggestion of Sands or the Sea 's leaving the tops
it 's said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And Orpheus stil'd Nature 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Deum Naturam and the ancient Latins us'd Naturus as well as Natura they gave it therefore an Hermaphroditical Figure but still with many Breasts the Types of Mountains Secondly The very learned Joannes Reuchlin tells us that the whole Ornament of Nature is from the admirable variety of things found in it And D. Hakewill tells us he ever conceiv'd that Variety and Disparity in that Variety serving for Ornament Use and Delight might thereby serve to set forth the Wisdom Power and Goodness of the Creator no less than his greatest and most glorious Works We shall therefore consider of what use Mountains are for promoting that Variety of which we are sufficiently put in mind by the learned D. Brown in his judicious Account of his Travels p. 89. where he says thus Tho Austria be more Northern than Stiria or Carinthia the Heats are there much greater for there may be as much difference as to the temperature of air and as to heat and cold in one Mile as in ten degrees of Latititude and he that would cool and refresh himself in the Summer had better go up to the top of the next Hill than remove into a far more Northern Country And beneath In the hot Country of Arabia Travellers complain much of the Cold they suffer in passing the Hills The Mountains of Italy and Spain are cover'd with Snow and Ice all the Summer so is Mount Atlas when in Great Britain there is no such thing Hence it 's easie to find of what Importance the Elevations of Mountains are for diversifying Effects on the Earth for it 's manifest that the Sun that Father of Generation joining with the central or seminal Mover in the Earth does not only diversifie Effects here by his gradual Approaches according to the Rectitude of his Rayes on either side the Aequator But does it rather in a greater measure according to the various Reflexions of his Rayes through the various Sites and Elevations of the Earth whence the Atmosphere must be greatly varied in deep Valleys on the tops of Mountains and in their various Acctivities according as they regard several Faces of the Heavens Earth and Seas And since in respect of Elevations as I have quoted from Dr. Brown there may be as much difference as to the Temperature of the Air in one Mile of height as in ten Degrees of Latitude I wonder the Antediluvian Earth is suppos'd without this Advantage the Beauty of Nature consisting in diversify'd Effects and it being evident that nothing can diversifie so much as such Varieties of Elevations Is it that the suppos'd Richness of the Antediluvian Soil could have supply'd all this We answer that such a rich and fertile Soil is no way proper for many of Nature's Productions which delight rather in such Soils as are generally most barren The learned Poet knew this when he said Nec verò terrae serre omnes omnia possunt Fluminibus salices crassisque paludibus alni Nascuntur steriles saxosis montibus orni Littora myrthetis laetissima denique apertos Bacchus amat colles aquilonem frigora taxi c. All Soils produce not all things here below Willows delight in Rivers Alders grow In muddy Marshes and the Wild Ash stands On rocky Mountains Myrtles on the Sands Beside the Sea the Vine loves open Hills The Yew the cold North-Wind and Winter chills We know that many Herbs set in a fat and moist Soil lose their Nature and Vertue because they love Drought And Hippocrates tells us that Mountain Plants are of a more smart and vehement operation than others And here a learned Botanist has a large Field to expatiate in setting forth the variety of Plants according to the various Sites and Elevations of the Earth The like may be said of Animals how many Species of them are there which seem to be made for Mountains and Mountains for them Of which a Man might say as Virgil does of his Goats Pascuntur verò sylvas summa Lycaei Horrentes rubos amantes ardua dumos Goats and such other Animals delighting in such course Food which unless eaten by them would fall to nothing And as Dr. Hakewill tells us It 's observ'd that the Inhabitants of Mountains by reason of the Clearness of the Air the Dryness of the Soil and a more temperate Dyet thereby occasion'd are for the most part stronger of Limb healthier of Body quicker of Sense longer of Life stouter of Courage and of Wit sharper than the Inhabitants of the Valley And Mountains seem appointed by Providence to guard the lower Countries from the violence of blasting and fierce Winds to bridle the Fury of the enrag'd Sea to mark out the Bounds and Borders of Nations to stop the sudden Invasions of Enemies and to preserve Hay Corn Cattel Houses and Men from the danger of Land Floods which overflow the Plains by the rising of Rivers And hence as Alexander ab Alexandro acquaints us many of the Antients paid a Veneration to Mountains extended on the Sea-Coast as to a Deity the Sea being thereby kept from over-flowing the Land Again the Author having excluded Mountains from his Antediluvian Earth he excludes Metals and Minerals of course for no Mountains no Mines nor Minerals And it will be hard to give an Instance in natural History of any Mines in level Countries unless some Fragments of Metalline Ores are carry'd thither by a Torrent from some adjacent Mountain For Metalline-Ores lie not in Horizontal Beds as they are all in level Countries but in Beds either standing perpendicular to or some degree rais'd above the Horizon the Reasons of which I may set forth in some other Tract The Author speaking of these Mineral Productions in the Sixth Chapter of his Second Book says thus As for subterraneous things Metals and Minerals I believe the Antediluvians had none and the happier they no Gold nor Silver nor courser Mettals the Use of these is either imaginary or in such Works as by the Constitution of their World they had little occasion for And Minerals are either for Medicine which they had no need of farther than Herbs or for Materials to certain Arts which were not then in use or were supply'd by other ways These subterraneous things Metals and metalick Minerals are factitious not original Bodies coaeval with the Earth but are made in process of time after long Operations and Concoctions by the Action of the Sun within the Bowels of the Earth And if the Stamina or Principles of them rose from the lower Regions that lye under the Abysse as I am apt to think they do it does not seem probable that they could be drawn through such a Masse of Waters or that the Heat of the Sun could on a sudden penetrate so deep and be able to loosen and raise them into the exterior Earth I have intimated before
Form and State compared with ours There being little new in this Chapter I have the less to consider in it neither will it concern me here to mind whether others have duly explain'd the Form of the Earth or not I shall therefore only take notice of one Passage here because it relates to what I have elsewhere urg'd where the Author argues against some Divines who say that God Almighty made the Mountains and Sea-Channel immediately when he made the World which Point he states as follows Let us consider the Earth in that transient in complete Form which it had when the Abysse encompass'd the whole Body of it We both agree that the Earth was once in this state and they say it came immediately out of this State into its present Form there being made by a supernatural Power a great Channel or Ditch in one part of it which drew off the Waters from the rest and the Soil which was squeez'd and forc'd out of this Ditch made the Mountains Against this he urges as follows If the Mountains were taken out of the Channel of the Sea then they are equal to it and would fill it up if they were thrown in again But these Proportions upon examination will not agree for tho the Mountains of the Earth are very great yet they do not equal by much the great Ocean the Ocean extends to half the surface of the Earth and if you suppose the greatest depth of the Ocean to answer the height of the greatest Mountains and the middle depth to the middle sort of Mountains the Mountains ought to cover all the dry Land to make them answer to all the capacity of the Ocean whereas we suppos'd them upon a reasonable Computation to cover but the tenth part of the dry Land and consequently neither they nor the Sea-channel could have been produc'd in this manner because of their great disproportion to one another And the same thing appears if we compare the Mountains with the Abysse which cover'd the Earth before this Channel was made for this Channel being made great enough to contain all the Abysse the Mountains taken out of it must also be equal to all the Abysse but the aggregate of the Mountains will not answer this by many degrees for suppose the Abysse was but half as deep as the Ocean to make this Calculus Answer all the dry Land ought to be cover'd with Mountains and with Mountains as high as the Ocean is deep or doubly high to the depth of the Abysse because they are but upon one half of the Globe Now whatever may be said of that Opinion of the Divines which I do not take upon me here to maintain the Reasoning which the Author here urges against them is no way conclusive but contrary to his own Assertions and suppositions If he will be just to the Divines in allowing the whole Acclivity of the Earth with the Mountains to have been then taken out of the Sea Channel and plac'd where they are For then I say he has suppos'd that the Sea covers half the Globe of the Earth and allows it as I conceive two Miles deep in the deepest part as it is esteem'd in the computation of the most Judicious and that there is a general declivity from all Shoars to the bottom of the Sea in all its parts tho that declivity be not every where even but sometimes interrupted and the depth of the bottom of it be various So again He has suppos'd in the second Chapter that the whole Earth being as it were a Mountain above the Sea there is a general Acclivity in it from the Sea-shores to its Mediterranean Mountains and that this general Acclivity makes a Mile in height to the foot of the said Mountains and that some of those Mountains are raised a Mile or more from the foot of them to their Summit which makes an height proportional to the Deepest parts of the Sea Hence I say according to the Authors own suppositions if all the rise of the Earth above the level of the Sea taking both the general acclivity of it with the Mountains were par'd off and turn'd upside down into the Sea-Channel they must of necessity fill it the highest Mountains answering to the deepest parts of the Sea and the general acclivity of the Earth with the other Mountains to the general declivity and other deeper parts of it Or it may be represented briefly thus The Author supposes the Sea to cover half the Globe and that taking one part with another of it it makes a quarter of a Mile depth throughout Now I believe the Author and all Men will agree that if all the Mountains taken with the general acclivity of the Earth were cast into a level they would make an Area over the other half part of the Globe a quarter of a Mile in height above the level of the Sea and consequently according to his own Hypothesis it must be able to fill the Channel of the Sea if empty For a Conclusion to this Book the Author considers the other Planets which he conceives to be of the same Fabrick and to have undergone the like fate and forms with our Earth Particularly as to Venus he says 't is a remarkable passage that St. Austin has preserv'd out of Varro which is as follows That about the time of the great Deluge there was a wonderful alteration or Catastrophe happen'd to the Planet Venus and that she chang'd her colour form figure and magnitude This the Author says is a great Presumption that she suffer'd her Dissolution about the same time that our Earth did Now First the Author seems not to have quoted Austin's Passage right saying that the Planet Venus chang'd her colour form figure and magnitude Austin's words being ut mutaret colorem magnitudinem figuram cursum Secondly This Passage I conceive has been answer'd aptly enough long since by Ralegh tho no great Philosopher where he says It is not improbable that the Flood of Ogyges being so great as Histories have reported it was accompany'd with much alteration of the Air sensibly discover'd in those parts and some unusual face of the Skies Varro in his Book de gente Populi Romani as cited by St. Austin reports out of Castor that so great a Miracle happen'd in the Star of Venus as never was seen before nor in after times for the Colour the Greatness the Figure and the Course of it were chang'd This fell out as Adrastus Cyzicenus and Dion Neapolites famous Mathematicians affirm'd in the time of Ogyges Now Concerning the Course of that or any other Planet I do not remember that I have any where read of so good Astrologers flourishing among the Greeks or elsewhere in those days as were likely to make any Calculation of the Revolutions of the Planets so exact that it should need no Reformation Of the Colour and Magnitude I see no reason why the difference found in the Star of Venus should
be held miraculous considering that lesser Mists and Fogs than those which cover'd Greece with so long darkness do familiarly present our Senses with as great alterations in the Sun and Moon That the Figure should vary questionless was very strange yet I cannot hold it any Prodigy for it stands well with good reason that the side of Venus which the Sun beholds being enlightn'd by him the opposite half should remain shadowed whereby that Planet would unto our Eyes descrying only that part whereon the Light falls appear to be horn'd as the Moon seems if distance as in other things did not hinder the apprehension of our Senses A worthy Astrologer now living who by the help of Perspectives has found in the Stars many things unknown to the Ancients affirms so much to have been discover'd in Venus by his late observations Whether some watery disposition of the Air might present as much to them that liv'd with Ogyges as Galilaeus has seen with his Instrument I cannot tell sure I am that the discovery of a Truth formerly unknown rather convinces men of Ignorance than Nature of Errour So far Ralegh Neither shall I add more here concerning the other Planets being willing first to see whether we can establish any thing certain concerning this Planet we inhabit concerning which we have much more hopes to arrive at some solid Knowledge than of Bodies so remote from us and I little pleasing my self in opining concerning things undeterminable by Man I shall conclude this Book by considering one thing which the Author greatly insists on in several parts of it viz. That the first order of things is regular and simple and that the deformity of this present Earth as it appears all broken and its incommodiousness shew that the present state of it was not original nor dispos'd according to the Laws and order of Gravity and he intimates that in the primigenious Mass the Earth must have held the lower place and the other Elements their proper Seats according to the said Order and as he represents in his Hypothesis Now the true Doctrine as I conceive of the Site and Figure of the Earth and other Elements runs thus Altho the Earth be a terminated Body and seems to have a certain Figure yet the Elements have no proper and natural Figure as Aristotle has truly said because if they had a natural Form they would be corrupted if they lost it But beside this Reason of Aristotle there is another viz. That to each similar Body any Figure agrees it having none proper to it nor does this hold only in the four Elements but in all similar Bodies and it therefore agrees to the Elements because they are similar and the reason why similar Bodies have no proper Figure is because a Figure was not necessary to them a Figure being constituted by Nature for actions as an Arm has such a Figure because by the benefit of that Figure the Arm exercises its actions and by this Figure the Arm is an Arm and such a Figure being lost it is no longer an Arm so in artificial things an Hatchet is therefore an Hatchet because it has such a Figure which being lost the Hatchet is no longer an Hatchet but only Iron and Matter because the action of the Hatchet flows from the Figure which is to cut A Figure is therefore necessary in compounded things but not in similar because the use of Similars is not any Operation but only this that they be the matter of others Now tho the Elements have not a proper Figure yet of necessity their place must be circular and of a spherical Figure as Aristotle says by reason of the extreme evenness of all their parts so that an Element being all ev'n it has not whereby Angles should be made And this must be understood of pure Elements or such as continue fluid but our Earth of which Mountains are made is not pure Elementary Earth or a simple Body but is a certain Compound and aggregate of many Bodies and when a Man considers the infinite variety of Soils and Fossils of which it consists and their differing degrees of Gravity he cannot imagine that an even Surface could be thence made ev'n in that respect without considering any protrusive force of an inward Mover And whatsoever even rotundity the Earth were to have according to its natural Constitution since it agrees most to the advantage of things that certain parts of the Earth should be high rais'd others lying lower it was fit they should have such a Site that so through the differing Complexion of divers parts of the Earth the diversities of Minerals Plants and Animals might arise And since things were first instituted by God not only for having a Being in themselves but that they might be the Principles of others therefore they were produc'd in a perfect State in which they might be the Principles of others And therefore as Philo says the World was created in its Perfection and not left crude and all Plants in their first Rise were laden with their Fruits otherwise than now for now all things are generated in their seasons and not all together So Macrobius says If we grant particular things to have had a Beginning Nature first form'd all Animals perfect and then gave them a perpetual Law that they should continue a sucession by Propagation And so Plutarch says It s probable that the first Generation was entire and accomplisht from the Earth by the vertue and perfection of the Maker without having need of those Instruments and Vessels which Nature has since invented and made in Females which bear and ingender by reason of its impotence and imbecility If we consider Animals in which Nature is much more polite than in forming this Compost of the Earth we see how little the common Laws of Gravity and even'ness in Figure are observ'd in them What Mountain seems so enormous in the body of the Earth as the Bunch on a Camels back in that Quadrupede or the Bill of a Bill bird in that Bird or the head of a Rana piscatrioc in that Fish If it be said that these are organical Bodies and that those parts are form'd so for certain uses I think it as easie to shew Analagous uses in the various Site and parts of the Earth And so as to Gravity in Animals why is the upper Jaw plac'd above the lower Or why in Man are the Heart Liver and Spleen plac'd above the Pancreas Reins and Bladder Is it that they are lighter And why is the Soul it self in the Body The Globe of the Earth therefore as well as the particular Bodies in it have been set in order by an Understanding Principle and have every where a rational distribution of parts for their proper Uses for otherwise as Plutarch says If each thing were left to itself all would return into a Chaodical Confusion And I think Gassendus as he reflects on D. Flud has
needless here to insert Now concerning the first Difficulty which the Author has endeavoured here to explain in reference to the Source and Origine of the Antediluvian Waters I have this to offer He supposes that copious Vapours were continually rais'd from the Torrid Zone and the parts of the Temperate Zones next it and that they were hindred by the heat of the Sun from condensing into Clouds or Rains there being then no Mountains or other Cause to stay and compress them till having past through the Temperate Zones they came towards the extreme parts of the Earth or the Poles where they were continually condenst into Clouds Rains and Dews Now this I conceive is what no Meteorologist can allow for first though I should grant there were no Mountains before the Deluge for the existence of which from the Beginning I have already argued at least there must have been other Causes no less powerful to stop and compress the Vapours then arising notwithstanding the Author either has not taken notice of them or has here forgot them Certainly there were Woods before the Flood and those in a great plenty which to use the common Expression are known to attract Vapours as freely as Mountains and the Author allows the Trees then to have been of an imcomparably more vast and lofty growth than now the largest of our Trees being but shrubs to the Trees then and would not these attract Vapours in a plentiful measure whence Clouds and Rains would be produc'd to serve all the parts of the Earth It 's known that in several parts of the West-Indies wont to be much infested with Rains and Tempests after the Woods were there cut down those effects ceast Georg. Agricola tells us of a Valley in a Mountainous Tract in Germany which in Autumn and Winter was wont to be continually invested with thick Fogs hindring the sight of the Sun but at length the Woods being there cut down and some Adits driven in Mines for the Waters to pass those Fogs ceast I know also some Woods in England standing much on a Level which always cast forth a great smoak and have a Cloud over them against Rain the Country people thence taking their Prediction of it We know that in the Isle of Ferro there being not Fountains to supply the Inhabitants with fresh Water there grows a Tree over which a Cloud settles itself every Morning and resolves into Water which streams down from the Branches and is receiv'd in Vessels underneath for use And can we think but some of those stately Antediluvian Trees in case there had been no Rains would have perform'd this good natur'd Office to Man as indeed they had been bound to do it to Beasts for Men possibly might have then been supply'd with fresh Water in all the parts of the Earth by the means of Wells but how should the Beasts be supply'd remote from Rivers These Instances from natural History I think are sufficient to shew that Woods as well as Mountains attract Vapours and cause Rains and must have done it in the Antediluvian Earth Secondly to pass by Mountains and Woods and to consider the Quality of the Primaeval Earth which the Author supposes to have been at first soft and boggy can it be imagin'd that Vapours rais'd from it in the Torrid Zone and in the parts of the Temperate Zones next it should be convey'd to the Polar Zones for a Series of Ages without being condens'd into Clouds and Rains by the way when at the same time the Days and Nights are suppos'd to have been constantly of an equal length and when the Weakness of the Sun's Action arising from the Obliqueness of its Rayes in a good part of the intermediate Distance is duly consider'd Now this plainly shews that the Vapours rais'd by the Sun in the torrid and temperate Zones could never reach near the Poles before they were condens'd into Clouds and Rains even tho the Earth were all smooth and the Sun always kept the Aequinox Root as the Author supposes the state of things then was Thirdly how should Vegetation have been maintain'd for sixteen Hundred Years without Rains to refresh the Plants It 's true there are some parts now which have little Rain but either they lye near the Seas where they are plentifully supply'd with Vapours or have some annual Inundations as Aegypt c. which could not have held in the Antediluvian Earth Indeed the Earth being suppos'd soft at first it might possibly have supply'd Moisture for some Ages but after five Hundred or a Thousand Years what Moisture could that Earth have afforded And to talk of the Sun 's pumping up Waters from the Abysse lying two or three Miles deep in the Earth to supply Waters for the Rivers to run when the other Moisture was spent it seems to me too inconsistent to deserve naming Again it 's known that Rains are no less necessary now and then for purging the Air than a Dose of Physick may be for the Body of Man And tho it may be said that the Air then could not have been infested with evil Vapours as now the Quality of that Soil not affording them Yet as Purges are sometimes prescrib'd not only to evacuate the Body of evil Humours but in Cases of mere Plenitude when the Humours are not peccant so the Atmosphere then could not but be sometimes troubled with an Hazyness and Stagnation through the great plenty of Particles rais'd by the Sun 's constant Action and unless it were now and then purg'd by Rains Winds and fiery Meteors which are all deny'd it could not have been duly qualifi'd for the support of Animals and Vegetables to which I may add that were it not for Rains many times all the Fruits of Countries would be destroy'd by Insects devouring them in their first tender growth Lastly whereas the Author says that when the Vapours were arriv'd in the frigid Zones they would continually be there condens'd into Clouds Rains and Dews I reply if that holds true which I have suggested from Dr. Brown that the Sun keeping in the Aequator it would be always Night or Twilight in a more considerable part of the frigid Zones the Sun never rising above the Horizon and since the Author supposes those Zones to have been continually invested with Clouds which at least must have caus'd a Cimmerian Darkness there whether we can conceive any thing but continu'd Frosts and Snows to have been there which must have made them incapable of being Sources for those Waters he has suppos'd As to the second Difficulty the Author meets with here viz. for making the Waters flow on the even Surface of the Antediluvian Earth to explain which he has suppos'd that Earth to have been of an oval Figure in which the Polar Parts were higher than the Aequinoctial to afford a Descent to the Waters to form Channels to the extreme Parts of the Temperate Zones next the Torrid there are many things here
to oppose First the Author 's main Reason for the oval Figure of the Earth seems not to me to hold good where he says in his Latin Copy since the Bulk of Waters in the first Formation of the Earth when it was yet an aqueous Globe was much more agitated under the Aequator than the Water towards the Poles where it made less Circles those Parts so greatly agitated endeavouring to recede from the Centre of their Motion since they could not wholly spring up and fly away by reason of the Air every where pressing on them nor much flow back without the Resistance of the said Air they could not otherwise disingage themselves than by flowing off to the sides and so making the aqueous Globe somewhat oval This I say is contrary to Experiment for the more rapid any Course of Waters is the more it draws all neighbouring Waters to joyn with them in their Course and forces them not to recede from them into calmer Parts where the rapidness of their Course is check'd by a slower Motion and if this should be done to some distance can it be imagin'd but their native Gravity when rais'd considerably above their level long ere they reacht the Polar Parts would make them fall back again to the lower Aequinoctial Current And the native Nitency of the Waters in both Hemispheres on each side the Torrid Zone would much more strongly repel any Waters there rais'd above their level than the Rapidness of the Aequinoctial Current could force them off Again since the Earth consider'd as a Spherical Body is allow'd to be above 7000 Miles Diameter and since to enlarge a Circle into a moderate oval Figure its Area must be made a quarter as big again at least one way of its Diameter as it was before as Mr. Warren has demonstrated it follows that the Antediluvian Earth at each Pole must have been near 900 Miles extent in the suppos'd oval State more than if it had been exactly round And since this Earth inclos'd an Orb of Waters within it I desire to know how many Miles Depth of the 900 Miles the Author allows to his Orb of Waters he must allow it Miles enough to make an oval Orb for so his Water was suppos'd to be before the Orb of Earth was form'd upon it and consequentially to what is said he cannot allow his Orb of Waters to be less than 450 Miles deep at each Pole to make any thing of an oval Now to say that any Detrusion of Waters toward the Poles by the resistence of of the superambient Air could form a Mountain of Waters at each of the said Poles about 450 Miles in Height above their Spherical Convexity seems to me a strange and unaccountable Paradox in Hydrography especially the Orb under the Abysse being suppos'd Spherical as the Author has represented it in all his Schemes so that there was nothing to bear on the Detrusion of the Waters It 's true as the Author says in his Answer to Mr. Warren we see the Waters flowing towards and upon the Shoars by the Pressure of the Air under the Moon tho it be an Ascent both upon the Land and into the Rivers but I answer this flowing is only to the Height of some few Fathoms and besides it 's maintain'd by a bulk of Waters then swoln in the Sea near as high as any protruded on the Land and carrying a Pondus able to support them But what Force shall be able to support a Body of Waters in a violent State carried 450 Miles in height above their natural tendency as they all are when past the spherical Convexity For the Author owns the Demonstration of Archimedes concerning the spherical Figure of Water to be true and says that a fluid Body be it Water or any other Liquor always casts it self into a smooth and spherical Surface and if any parts by chance or by some agitation become higher than the rest they do not continue so long but glide down every way into the lower places till they all come to make a Surface of the same height and of the same distance every where from the Center By what agitation or resistence then of the superambient Air can Waters be driven on and held together for 450 Miles ascent in the open Air so as not to diverge and fall off by their natural tendency Besides if according to what I have said before the Author allows his Abyss Orb to be 450 Miles deep at the Poles he must allow it of a depth proportional to its oval Figure in its other parts and so for his Orb of Earth and how this can stand with the proportion he seems to assign to his Orbs according to what I have set forth l. 1. c. 6. and how a Deluge according to these proportions could be caus'd and the Waters go off so as to make an habitable World may require his consideration Again since the Sun according to the Authors Hypothesis moving always in the Aequinox before the Flood would constantly have held as remote if not more from the suppos'd rainy Region than it is now from us in the depth of Winter and since we find the Mountains now which are of any considerable height even in the temperate Zones are so cold that they are generally cover'd with Snows notwithstanding the Sun shines more on them than on the Countries lying beneath them and that even in the Summer when the Sun is nearest to them and the days are much longer than the nights it follows that the two Polar Mountains in all respects must always have had Colds in the greatest excess both in regard of their great distance from the Sun and of their being Mountains and of their having little or no Day nay if it were constant Day at the Poles themselves and there were as much Day as Night in the suppos'd rainy Regions as the Author can pretend to no more there this could not protect them against continual Frosts and Snows as appears by what I have said of the Mountains in the temperate Zones I may add that as Mr. Warren has observ'd several Navigators attempting to find out a nearer Course to China have been frozen to death tho they sail'd not so far North as the suppos'd rainy Regions in the oval Earth and chose the most seasonable time for their Enterprize viz. When the Sun was on this side the Equator and the days then in those Regions were much longer than the Nights if they had any Night at all Besides what experience all other Saylers have had of the great Colds and continued Frosts and Snows in those Countries notwithstanding the Vapours of the Sea or any nearness of the Sun and length of days which might help to remit them Lastly Whereas the Author conceivs the present Earth to be also of an oval Figure we know the general Sense of Men according to all experience and observation to be contrary and that whether the Constitution
were Cattle in it but Dwarfish no Gold nor Silver in it and therefore despis'd by all Men whereas it 's now as pleasant a Counrry almost in all respects as France Spain or Italy Indeed in refetence to the Civil or Moral World it might be said that by the Golden Age is meant the Ancient simplicity which the Poets or others would represent in our Forefathers as leading a quiet and calm Life free from all Treachery Voluptuousness and other burthensome circumstances to humane Nature as we find some of the Ancients formerly had so great a hatred and detestation of Pleasures Superfluities and Voluptuousness that in the Temple of the Town of Thebes there was a famous square Pillar erected on which were engraven Curses and Execrations against King Menis who was the first that withdrew the Egyptians from a simple and sober Life without Mony and Riches But it cannot be thought that ever this Humour was general in the World though it might happen sometimes in one place and sometimes in another according to the vicissitude of humane Affairs Or we may say with Natalis Comes what is the Golden Age but a common liberty of all Men in a City well govern'd by Laws where wild Beasts live freely with domestick Animals Dogs with Hares Lambs with Wolves and the like For in a time of Peace good Men live safe under the protection of the Laws among Cut-throats and Thieves Some by the Golden Age understand the time when Men were govern'd by the Law of Nature written in their Hearts before the written Law was in being And others by the four Ages will have four sorts of Men to be signified But to pass from the Moral World to the Natural though as to the place which God appointed for Paradise it must be allow'd to have been adorn'd with all advantages and delights from the Beginning yet as to the rest of the Earth I know not what warrant we have from the Scriptures or other History Or what may be suggested from Reason for any advantagious furniture it had for supplying Men with Necessaries or Pleasures Indeed the Scriptures tell us of the Longaevity of the Antediluvian Patriarchs and we have suggested Conjectures already of what it may be imputed too but as to the great Fertility ascrib'd to the Primigenial Soil that of necessity must have added to the inconvenience of Habitation by an overgrowth without Persons to cultivate it and it seems likely to me that Adam as soon as he was turn'd out of Paradise was hardly put to his shifts Plutarch also sufficiently tells us what Conveniencies for the support of humane Life a recent World could afford so that a Golden Age in any such respect seems to me to have been represented rather for gratifying the Fancy than the Judgment And all I can bring it to is this that as the Ancients by the Golden Age in the moral World would represent an Ideal state of pure Nature and of Innocency so by all their Flourishes on the then Course of external Nature they would personate an Idaeal state of it correspondent to the other Having thus far shewn how little the Author's Hypothesis is backt by the Sentiments of the Ancients concerning Paradise I shall now briefly set forth what as far as my Reading has gone seems to me most probable in this matter The Learned Mr. Gregory on that passage of Zach. C. 6.12 Behold the man whose name is East whom he makes out to be Christ lays down this as a Ground That the special Presence of God as he superintends this World ever was and is in that part of the Heav'n or Heav'ns which answers to the Aequinoctial East of the holy Land To make this good he says the Ancients always attributed to the Gods the Eastern parts as Porphyry says and those parts are called by Varro and Festus the Seats of the Gods c. He proves it also from Reason according to Aristotle thus The first Mover viz. God must of necessity be present either to the Center or Circumference of his Orb and since Motions are most rapid in the nearest distance to the Impression and since that part of the Sphere is most rapidly mov'd which is most remote from the Poles therefore the movers Place is about the middle Line and this he thinks is the reason why the Aequinoxes are believ'd to be of so sacred an Import and signification in Astrology for by them as Ptolomy says it 's judg'd concerning things Divine and the Service belonging to the House of God Now the Philosophers meaning is not as if the Mover presented himself alike unto the whole Circumference but assisting especially to that part from whence the motion does begin viz. the East whence Averrhoes rightly says some Religious worship God that way Since therefore the Aequinoctial East passes through the whole Circle of necessity 't is to be meant of some certain Position nor is it possible to mean it but of the horizontal Segment of the then habitable World the uttermost bounds whereof from Sun to Sun they absolutely term'd East and West In the Philosophers time the Circle of this Horizon past through the Pillars of Hercules in the West Calpe and Abyla and the Altars of Alexander in the East And at the Pillars of Hercules the Arabians fixt their Great Meridian Now this Meridian passes through the tenth degree of Longitude from that of Ptolomy and the River Hyphasis on the furthest banks of which Alexanders Altars were rais'd as being the place where his Journeys ended is plac'd by Ptolomy in 131.35 the difference of Longitude is about 120 degrees the second part of which is 60. and because the Meridian of Jerusalem is 70 degrees from that of Ptolomy that is 60 from the Arabian the Holy City was as it was anciently term'd Vmbilicus Terrae being precisely plac'd betwixt the East and West of the habitable World Therefore the Aequinoctial East of Jerusalem is the Aequinoctial East of the whole and answering to the first movers Receipt which therefore was said to be in Oriente aequinoctiali Now the Notion of Paradise in the Christian acceptation was that part of the Heaven where the Throne of God and the Lamb is it being as Zoroaster terms it in the Chaldean Oracles the all enlightned recess of Souls And Irenaeus says as he heard from Disciples of the Apostles the Receipt of just and perfect Men is a certain Paradise in the Eastern part of the third Heaven and many others of the Fathers agree with him herein And Paâ— 68.32.33 David says according to the Arabick Translation Sing unto God ye Kingdoms of the Earth O sing praises to the Lord Selah to him that rides upon the heaven of heavens in the Eastern part Gen. 2.8 It 's said And the Lord planted a Garden Eastward or toward the East In the Apostolical Constitutions it 's said And turning toward the East let them pray unto God who sits upon
by Providence after the rest of Beings were completed But as what Moses has said of the Creation by most Christian Writers is understood of the whole System of Beings as well coelestial as terrestrial so we find when the antient Gentils speak of the Rise of things from a Chaos they mean the same Hesiod and Ovid and others that write of the Chaos are plain that the Heavens rose from it as well as the Earth And we know the Hermetick Philosophers who are lookt upon by some to be much more antient than Moses but certainly of great Antiquity tell us of a Cohabitation there was of Superiors and Inferiors in the Chaos and that upon the Separation of it the Superiors retir'd to their coelestial Abode Aristophanes also whom the Author admires above the rest plainly says in his Cosmogonia that the Chaos was before the Earth the Air and the Heavens Moreover when the Author says the Theogonia of the Antients was the same with their Cosmogonia and their Cosmogonia the same with their Geogonia it would be absurd to understand those Genealogies of the terrestrial Bodies exclusively to the coelestial For those Gentils being infected with Polytheism and making the chief Parts and Portions of the World Gods it 's manifest that they did not only make the chief parts of the Earth so they being known to have ador'd the whole Host of Heaven So again as to the Dissolution of the World by Fire we find the Antients generally understood it of the Heavens as well as of the Earth Hierom in his Comment on the 15th of Isaiah says Quae quidem Philosophorum mundi opinio est omnia quae cernimus igni peritura Seneca delivering the Opinion of the Stoicks says Sydera syderibus incurrent omni flagrante materiâ uno igne quicquid nunc ex disposito lucet ardebit Lucan says Communis mundo superest rogus ossibus astra Misturus and he expresses himself to the same purpose elsewhere Ovid from the Oracles of the Sibyls says Esse quoque in fatis reminiscitur affore tempus Quo mare quo tellus correptáque regia coeli Ardeat mundi moles operosa laboret The Sybils Verses are as follows Tunc ardens fluvius coelo manabit ab alto Igneus atque locos consumet funditus omnes Terrámque oceanúmque ingentem caerula ponti Stagnáque tum fluvios fontes Ditémque severum Caelestémque Polum caeli quoque lumina in unum Fluxa ruent formâ deletâ prorsus eorum Then from high Heaven vast streams of Fire shall flow Those Flames consuming all things here below The Earth the mighty Ocean the blue Main Lakes Rivers Fountains and what Dis does claim And Heaven it self whose Lights shall flow in one And Stars shall fall their Form destroy'd and gone So again it 's a common Opinion amongst Christian Divines that the Heavens will be destroy'd by Fire as well as the Earth Dr. Hakewill in his Apology says it seems to him the most likely opinion and most agreeable to Scripture and Reason that the whole World with all the parts thereof only Men Angels and Devils and the third Heavens the Mansion House of the Saints and Angels and the Place and Instruments appointed for the tormenting of the Damn'd excepted shall be totally and finally dissolv'd and annihilated which he proves by many forcible Arguments refuting the contrary Opinion and mentioning many learned Men of his thinking he has so far evinc'd it that it is not solidly answerable to whose Book for brevity sake I must remit the Reader So Salmeron on that passage of S. Peter 2.3 says Loquitur ergo hoc in loco de veris coelis de quibus David dixit Initio tu Domine terram fundasti Opera manuum tuarum sunt coeli ipsi peribunt nimirum per ignem ubi ostendit veros coelos veram terram verè peritura And beneath Quòd autem quidam ex patribus interpretabantur non de supremis veris coelis sed de aereis aqueis esse intelligendum ratione ipsius Textus revincuntur nam imprimis ostendimus nunquam coelorum nomine in plurali numero aereos elementares coelos accipi deinde post coelos nominatos subdit elementa verò calore solventur infra elementa ignis ardore tabescent quod aerem aquam sphaeram ignis spectare videtur Non possunt ergo per coelos accipi illa tria elementa cum bis coelos ab elementis contra distinguat Again Esay 34.4 it 's said All the Host of Heaven shall be dissolv'd and the Heavens shall be roul'd together as a scrole and all their Host shall fall down as the Leaf falls from the Vine and as a falling Fig from a Fig-tree Which words S. John Apoc. 6.13 seems to have borrowed from the Prophet And so I look upon the following Verses of Juvencus to be writ according to a Prophetick Truth Immortale nihil mundi compage tenetur Non orbis non regna hominum non aurea Roma Non mare non tellus non ignea sydera Coeli Nam statuit Genitor rerum irrevocabile tempus Quo cunctum torrens rapiet flamma ultima mundum I shall only add that those who by their insight in Symbolical Learning reach the mystical sense of the Prophets well know that what is symboliz'd by the Heavens will pass away in the day of the mystical Conflagration as well as what is symboliz'd by the Earth whence unless the whole shall be symbolically evacuated so that the Conflagration shall not concern external nature I shall ever believe that the one will be concern'd in it as well as the other homo cum dormierit non resurget dum non erunt Coeli And not to rest in mystery where I may be plain the mystical Conflagration is known to be the Baptism by Fire and the Spirit whence I conceive some Sects of Christians almost from the first times of Christianity as the Jacobites Aethiopians Copts Isini c. instead of baptizing with Water were wont to have their Children burnt by their Priests in the Cheeks or Foreheads with an Iron according to that Matth. 3. He will baptize you with the Holy Ghost and Fire Now when God is pleas'd to send that Baptism not only Sense symboliz'd by the Earth but Reason also symboliz'd by the Heavens passes away and is absorp'd in the Spirit and carryed above itself the Spirit being as much exalted above Reason as Reason is above Sense and this is a truth own'd by all Divines though none I conceive can apprehend how the thing is transacted but those to whom God has vouchsafed that Baptism they being brought into that State of mind which made S. Paul say Omnia mihi in Aenigmate facta sunt Nothing being able to perceive the ways of the Spirit but the Spirit and hence we find after the Apostles receiv'd it they were censur'd by the People of being intoxicated with
Ancients and yet in the present form of the Earth we find no such thing nor any foundation for it I cannot believe that this was so universally receiv'd upon a slight presumption only because it lay under the Course of the Sun if the Sun had the same Latitude from the Equator in his Course and Motion that he has now c. he instances several of the Ancient Philosophers Astronomers and Geographers who held that Zone uninhabitable and adds that some of the Ancient Philosophers whom he also names held that the Poles of the World did once change their Situation and were at first in another posture from what they are now till that Inclination happen'd c. and concludes that these Opinions of the Ancients must refer to that State of things which he has represented in his Antediluvian World To this I answer that it seems no wonder it should be the common receiv'd Opinion among the Ancients that the Torrid Zone was uninhabitable for navigation being not come to its perfection America undiscover'd and no trading establish'd by Land to those parts of Africa that lye under the Torrid Zone and the great heats found in the neighbouring Climates to it might naturally induce such a belief in them so that we may allow it to have past as a negative Tradition among them for that no Man had attempted a discovery but to conclude that this was a positive Tradition among them deriv'd from Antediluvian times on a suppos'd differing position which the Heavens or Earth then had it 's more than the thing will bear neither was that Opinion of the uninhabitableness of the Torrid Zone so general in Ancient times but some Patrons of the Earth merely upon a stress of reasoning always said nay to it Thus Plutarch tells us that Pythagoras as great a Man as any among the Greeks and more ancient than any the Author has nam'd for the contrary Opinion held the Torrid Zone habitable and a temperate Region as being in the midst betwixt that of the Summer and that of the Winter and certainly Pythagoras was as likely a Man as any among the Ancients to have known such a Tradition and to have faithfully convey'd it to posterity if there had been any ground for it himself and Orpheus being judg'd by many to have been knowing in the Mosaick Cabala concerning the true System of the World Ptolomy also says many contend that the parts near the Equinoctial are inhabited as being the most temperate Region because the Sun neither stays in the vertical points but makes swift recesses according to Latitude from the Equinoctial points whence the Summer is rendred temperate neither in the Solstices is it far from the Vertex wherefore the Winters must be very mild Bede quotes this passage and adds but what those habitations are we cannot say with any likely ground for Men have not pass'd thither even to this day wherefore what is said of it may be lookt upon rather as a conjecture than a true History Tertullian also held the Torrid Zone a temperate Region and plac'd Paradise in it and so did Nicephoras according to the Opinion of Theophilus the like did Bonaventure and Durandus of later years and Avicenna among the Arabians held that Region temperate Here also it may be noted that generally those that held the uninhabitableness of the Torrid Zone held likewise the two Polar Zones uninhabitable through continual frosts there so that the Tradition of the one ought to be held as well as that of the other which would destroy the Authors Hypothesis for the source of his Waters as I have intimated before As to those Philosophers mention'd by the Author to have held that the Poles of the World once chang'd their Situation I know no reason we have to follow them in it more than a multitude of other erroneous Opinions which we find amongst the ancient Philosophers Ignonorance in Cosmography being an Epidemical distemper amongst them so that Plutarch tells us Pythagoras was said to be the first who bethought him of the Obliqueness of the Zodiack which Invention some ascribe to Oenopides of Chius The same tells us Parmenides was the first who limited the places inhabited on the Earth to wit those that are in the two habitable Zones to the Tropick Circles What wonder then that the Ancients should lie under great mistakes in things relating to that Knowledge But the Author urges in his Answer to Mr. Warren that Diogenes Anaxagoras Empedocles Leucippus and Democritus say there was once a Change of the Poles therefore it must be lookt upon as a Tradition amongst the Ancients for which they are good Testimonies But I would ask the Author whether either of those Philosophers deliver their Opinion as a Tradition among the Ancients Plutarch whence he quotes their Opinions entitles his Book The Opinions of the Philosophers and delivers this as their particular Opinion and not as a Tradition and assigns the several Reasons they went upon which are all found to be erroneous and to expect that we should receive their Opinion as a Tradition and acquiesce in it without any farther Ground seems to me altogether as unreasonable as to say that because Diagoras Theodorus Cyreneus Evemeras Euripides mentioned also by Plutarch and others of the ancient Philosophers held there was no Deity therefore this must be lookt upon as a well-grounded Tradition and fit for us to receive that there is no Deity This is too hard putting upon our Reason Well but the Author grants their Reasons are false but says it would be as injudicious to exclude them from being Witnesses or fair Testimonies of such a thing because they do not Philosophise well about that Change as if we should deny that there was such a War as the Peloponesian War because the Historian has not assign'd the true Causes and Reasons of it or to deny that a Comet appear'd in such a Year because a Person that makes mention of it has not given a good account of the generation of it nor of the Causes of its form and motion I answer That I do not exclude them from being Witnesses meerly because of the false Reasons they give for what they say but because that they neither own themselves as Witnesses neither does it any way appear that what they deliver is as they are VVitnesses but meerly from their own fancy as it may be said of Diagoras and the rest that held a non-existence of a Deity And as to the Instances of the Peloponesian War and the Comet there is a vast disparity betwixt these and the other for the Peloponesian War and the Comet are notorious Facts convey'd down to us by every Historian and Astronomer nemine contradicente as they receiv'd it from time to time from unquestionable Hands But what are those five Philosophers to the whole Body of the Philosophers both before and after them who mention no such thing Nor do those five affirm