Selected quad for the lemma: fire_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
fire_n	cold_a	particle_n	zone_n	14	3	13.8028	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A58184	Three physico-theological discourses ... wherein are largely discussed the production and use of mountains, the original of fountains, of formed stones, and sea-fishes bones and shells found in the earth, the effects of particular floods and inundations of the sea, the eruptions of vulcano's, the nature and causes of earthquakes : with an historical account of those two late remarkable ones in Jamaica and England ... / by John Ray ...	Ray, John, 1627-1705.	1693 (1693)	Wing R409; ESTC R14140	184,285	437

A supposed Nitrous Pabulum or Fewel which it receives from the Air. 3. A Sulphureous or unctuous Pabulum which it acts and preys upon passing generally by the Name of Fewel This ' fore-mentioned subtil Body agitating the supposed Nitrous Particles it receives from the Air doth by their help as by Wedges to use that rude similitude penetrate the unctuous Bodies upon which it acts and divide them into their immediate component Particles and at length perchance into their first Principles which Operation is called the Chymical Anatomy of mix'd Bodies So we see Wood for Example divided by Fire into Spirit Oyl Water Salt and Earth That Fire cannot live without those Particles it receives from the Air is manifest in that if you preclude the access of all Air it is extinguished immediately and in that where and when the Air is more charged with them as in cold Countries and cold Weather the Fire rages most That likewise it cannot be continued without an unctuous Pabulum or Fewel I appeal to the Experience of all Men. Now then in the rarified Air in the Torrid Zone the nitrous Particles being proportionably scattered and thin set the Fire that might be kindled there would burn but very languidly and remisly as we said just now And so the Eruptions of Vulcano's if any such happened would not be like to do half the Execution there that they would do in cold Countries And yet I never read of any spreading Conflagration caused by the Eruptions of any Vulcano's either in hot Countries or in cold They usually cast out abundance of thick Smoak like Clouds darkning the Air and likewise Ashes and Stones sometimes of a vast bigness and some of them as Vesuvius Floods of Water others as Aetna Rivers of melted Materials running down many Miles as for the Flames that issue out of their Mouths at such times they are but transient and mounting upwards seldom set any thing on fire But not to insist upon this I do affirm that there hath not as yet been nor for the future can be any such drying or parching of the Earth under the Torrid Zone as some may imagine That there hath not yet been I appeal to Experience the Countries lying under the Course of the Sun being at this day as fertile as ever they were and wanting no more Moisture now than of old they did having as constant and plentiful Rains in their Seasons as they then had That they shall for the future suffer any more Drought than they have heretofore done there is no reason to believe or imagine the Face of the Earth being not altered nor naturally alterable as to the main more at present than it was heretofore I shall now add the Reason why I think there can be no such Ex●iccation of the Earth in those parts It 's true indeed were there nothing to hinder them the Vapours exhaled by the Sun-beams in those hot Regions would be cast off to the North and to the South a great way and not fall down in Rain there but toward the Poles But the long and continued Ridges or Chains of exceeding high Mountains are so disposed by the great and wise Creator of the World as at least in our Continent to run East and West as Gassendus in the Life of Peireskius well observes such are Atlas Taurus and the Alps to name no more They are I say thus disposed as if it were on purpose to obviate and stop the Evagation of the Vapours Northward and reflect them back again so that they must needs be condensed and fall upon the Countries out of which they were elevated And on the South-side being near the Sea it is likely that the Wind blowing for the most part from thence hinders their excursion that way This I speak by presumption because in our Country for at least three quarters of the Year the Wind blows from the great Atlantick Ocean which was taken notice of by Iulius Caesar in the Fifth of his Commentaries De Bello Gallico Corus ventus qui magnam partem omnis temporis in his locis flare consuevit As for any Desiccation of the Sea I hold that by mere natural Causes to be impossible unless we could suppose a Transmutation of Principles or simple Bodies which for Reasons alledged in a former Discourse I cannot allow I was then and am still of Opinion that God Almighty did at first create a certain and determinate number of Principles or variously figured Corpuscles intransmutable by the force of any natural Agent even Fire itself which can only separate the Parts of heterogeneous Bodies yet not an equal number of each kind of these Principles but of some abundantly more as of Water Earth Air Aether and of others fewer as of Oyl Salt Metals Minerals c. Now that there may be some Bodies indivisible by Fire is I think demonstrable For how doth or can Fire be conceived to divide one can hardly imagine any other way than by its small parts by reason of their violent Agitation insinuating themselves into compound Bodies and separating their parts which allowing yet still there is a term of Magnitude below which it cannot divide viz. it cannot divide a Body into smaller parts than those whereof itself is compounded For taking suppose one least Part of Fire 't is clear that it cannot insinuate itself into a Body as little or less than itself and what is true of one is true of all I say we can imagine no other way than this unless perchance by a violent stroke or shock the parts of the Body to be divided may be put into so impetuous a motion as to fall in sunder of themselves into lesser Particles than those of the impellent Body are which I will not suppose at present Now it is possible that the Principles of some other simple Bodies may be as small as the Particles of Fire But however that be it is enough if the Principles of simple Bodies be by reason of their perfect solidity naturally indivisible Such a simple Body I suppose Water separated from all Heterogeneous Mixtures to be and consequently the same quantity thereof that was at first created doth still remain and will continue always in despight of all natural Agents unless it pleases the Omnipotent Creator to dissolve it And therefore there can be no Desiccation of the Seas unless by turning all its Water into Vapour and suspending it in the Air which to do what an immense and long-continuing Fire would be requisite to the maintenance whereof all the inflammable Materials near the Superficies of the Earth would not afford Fuel enough The Sun we see is so far from doing it that it hath not made one step towards it these four thousand Years there being in all likelihood as great a quantity of Water in the Ocean now as was immediately after the Flood and consequently there would probably remain as much in it should the World last four thousand Years longer This

Church to St. Ives and above two Miles distant from the Sea almost covered with the Sand little being extant above it but the Steeple and Ridge of the Roof Nay a great part of St. Ives itself lies bu●ied in the Sand and I was told there that in one Night there had been a whole Street of Houses so covered with Sand that in the Morning they were fain to dig their way out of their Houses through it All along the Western Shoar of Wales there are great Hills of Sand thus blown up by the Wind. We observed also upon the Coast of Flanders and Holland the like sandy Hills or Downs from which Westerly Winds drive the Sand a great way into the Country But there are not many places liable to this Accident viz. where the bottom of the Sea is sandy and where the Wind most frequently blows from off the Sea where the Wind sets from the Land toward the Sea this happens not where it is indifferent it must in reason carry off as much as it brings on unless other Causes hinder SECT II. The Second possible Cause of the World's Destruction in a Natural Way the Extinction of the Sun II. THE possibility of the Sun's extinction Of which Accident I shall give an Account in Dr. More 's words in the last Chapter of his Treatise of the Immortality of the Soul This saith he though it may seem a Panick Fear at first sight yet if the matter be throughly examined there will appear no contemptible Reasons that may induce Men to suspect that it may at last fall out there having been at certain times such near Offers in Nature towards this sad Accident already Pliny speaks of it as a thing not unfrequent that there should be Prodigiosi longiores Solis defectus qualis occiso Dictatore Caesare Antoniano bello totius anni pollore continuo Hist. Nat. lib. 2. cap. 30. Prodigious and lasting defects of the Sun such as happened when Caesar the Dictator was slain and in the War with Anthony when it was continually pale and gloomy for a whole Year The like happened in Iustinian's time as Cedrenus writes when for a whole Year together the Sun was of a very dim and duskish Hue as if he had been in a perpetual Eclipse And in the time of Irene the Empress it was so dark for seventeen days together that the Ships lost their way in the Sea and were ready to run one against another as Theophanes reports But the late accurate Discovery of the Spots of the Sun by Scheiner and the appearing and disappearing of Fixt Stars and Comets and the excursions of these last do argue it more than possible that after some vast Periods of Time the Sun may be so inextricably inveloped by the Maculae that he may quite lose his Light and then you may easily guess what would become of the Inhabitants of the Earth For without his vivisick heat neither could the Earth put forth any Vegetables for their sustenance neither if it could would they be able to bear the extremity of the Cold which must needs be more rigorous and that perpetually than it is now under the Poles in Winter time But this accident tho' it would indeed extinguish all Life yet being quite contrary to a Dissolution by Fire of which the Apostle speaks I shall pass it over without further consideration and proceed to a Third SECT III. The Third possible Cause of the World's Destruction The Eruption of the Central Fire III. THE Possibility of the Eruption of the Central Fire if any such there be inclosed in the Earth It is the Hypothesis of Monsieur des Cartes that the Earth was originally a Star or great Globe of Fire like the Sun or one of the Fixt Stars situate in the Center of a Vortex continually whirling round with it That by degrees it was covered over or incrustated with Maculae arising on its Surface like the Scum on a boyling Pot which still increasing and growing thicker and thicker the Star losing its light and activity and consequently the motion of the Celestial Vortex about it growing more weak languid and unable to resist the vigorous incroaehments of the neighbouring Vortex of the Sun it was at last drawn in and wholly absorpt by it and forced to comply with its motion and make one in the Quire of the Sun's Satellites This whole Hypothesis I do utterly disallow and reject Neither did the Author himself if we may believe him think it ture that the Earth was thus generated For he saith Quinimo ad res naturales meliùs explicandas earum causas altiùs hic repetam quàm ipsas unquam extitisse existimem Non enim dubium est quin mundus ab initio fuerit creatus cum omni sua perfectione ità ut in eo Sol Terra Luna Stellae extiterint Hoc fides Christiana nos docet hócque etiam ratio naturalis planè persuadet Attendendo enim ad immensam Dei potentiam non possumus existimare illum unquam quidquam fecisse quod non omnibus suis numeris fuerit absolutum That is Moreover for the better explicating of Natural Things I shall bring them from higher or more remote Causes than I think they ever had For there is no doubt but the World was originally created in its full perfection so that in it were contained both Sun and Moon and Earth and Stars c. For this the Christian Faith teacheth us and this also Natural Reason doth plainly persuade for attending to the immense Power of God we cannot think that he ever made any thing that was not complete in all points But thô he did not believe that the Earth was generated or formed according to his Hypothesis yet surely he was of Opinion that it is at present such a Body as he represented it after its perfect Formation viz. with a Fire in the middle and so many several Crusts or Coats inclosing it else would he have given us a mere Figment or Romance instead of a Body of Philosophy But tho' I do reject the Hypothesis yet the being of a Central Fire in the Earth is not so far as I understand any way repugnant to Reason or Scripture For first of all the Scripture represents Hell as a Lake of Fire Mark 9. 43 44 c. Revel 20. 10 14 15. and likewise as a low place beneath the Earth So Pslam 86. 13. and Deut. 32. 22. it is called the nethermost hell Prov. 15. 24. The way of life is above to the wise that he may depart from hell beneath 2. Many of the Ancients understand that Article of the Creed He descended into Hell of our Saviour's Descent into that local Hell beneath the Earth where he trimphed over the Devil and all the Powers of Darkness And particularly Irenaeus interprets that saying of our Saviour That the Son of man should be three days in the heart of the earth of his being three days in