Oeconomy of it we have all the evidence and ground that can be in arguing from things visible to things invisible that there is an Author of Nature Superiour both to Humane Power and Humane Wisdom Before we proceed to give any further proofs or discoveries of the Author of Nature let us reflect a little upon those we have already insisted upon which have been taken wholly from the Material World and from the common course of Nature The very existence of Matter is a proof of a Deity for the Idea of it hath no connexion with existence as we shall show hereafter however we will take leave now to set it down with the rest in order as they follow one another 1. The existence of Matter 2. The Motion of Matter 3. The just quantity and degree of that Motion 4. The first form of the Universe upon Motion imprest both as to the Divisions of Matter and the Leading Motions 5. The Laws for communication and regulation of that Motion 6. The regular effects of it especially in the Animate World 7. The Oeconomy of Nature and fit Subordination of one part of the World to another The five first of these Heads are prerequisites and preparatives to the formation of a World and the two last are as the image and character of its Maker of his Power Goodness and Wisdom imprest upon it Every one of them might well deserve a Chapter to it self if the subject was to be treated on at large but this is only an occasional dissertation to state the Powers of Matter lest they should be thought boundless and the Author of Nature unnecessary as the Epicuraeans pretend but notwithstanding their vain confidence and credulity I defie them or any man else to make sence of the Material World without placing a God at the Center of it To these considerations taken wholly from the Corporeal World give me leave to add one of a mixt nature concerning the Union of our Soul and Body This strange effect if rightly understood doth as truly discover the Author of Nature as many Effects that are accounted more Supernatural The Incarnation as I may so say of a Spiritual Substance is to me a kind of standing miracle That there should be such an union and connexion reciprocally betwixt the motions of the Body and the actions and passions of the Soul betwixt a substance Intellectual and a parcel of organiz'd Matter can be no effect of either of those substances being wholly distinct in themselves and remote in their natures from one another For instance When my Finger is cut or when 't is burnt that my Soul thereupon should feel such a smart and violent pain is no consequence of Nature or does not follow from any connexion there is betwixt the Motion or Division of that piece of Matter I call my Finger and the passion of that Spirit I call my Soul for these are two distinct Essences and in themselves independent upon one another as much as the Sun and my Body are independent and there is no more reason in strict Nature or in the essential chain of Causes and Effects that my Soul should suffer or be affected with this Motion in the Finger than that the Sun should be affected with it nay there is less reason if less can be for the Sun being Corporeal as the finger is there is some remote possibility that there might be communication of Motion betwixt them but Motion cannot beget a thought or a passion by its own force Motion can beget nothing but Motion and if it should produce a thought the Effect would be more noble than the Cause Wherefore this Union is not by any necessity of Nature but only from a positive Institution or Decree establisht by the Author of Nature that there should be such a communication betwixt these two substances for a time viz. during the Vitality of the Body 'T is true indeed if Thought Apprehension and Reason was nothing but Corporeal Motion this Argument would be of no force but to suppose this is to admit an absurdity to cure a difficulty to make a Thought out of a local Motion is like making a God out of a Stock or a Stone for these two are as remote in their Nature and have as different Idea's in the Mind as any two disparate things we can propose or conceive Number and Colour a Triangle and Vertue Free-will and a Pyramid are not more unlike more distant or of more different forms than Thought and local Motion Motion is nothing but a Bodies changing its place and situation amongst other Bodies and what affinity or resemblance hath that to a Thought How is that like to Pain or to a doubt of the Mind to Hope or to Desire to the Idea of God to any act of the Will or Understanding as judging consenting reasoning remembring or any other These are things of several orders that have no similitude nor any mixture of one another And as this is the nature of Motion so on the other hand in a Thought there are two things Consciousness and a â—epresentation Consciousness is in all Thoughts indifferently whether distinct or confus'd for no Man thinks but he is conscious that he thinks nor perceives any thing but he is conscious that he perceives it there is also in a Thought especially if it be distinct a representation 't is the image of that we think upon and makes its Object present to the Mind Now what hath local Motion to do with either of these two Consciousness or Representativeness How doth it include either of them or hold them any way affixt to its Nature I think one may with as good sence and reason ask of what colour a Thought is green or scarlet as what sort of Motion it is for Motion of what sort soever can never be conscious not represent things as our Thoughts do I have noted thus much in general only to show the different nature of Motion and Cogitation that we may be the more sensible that they have no mutual connexion in us nor in any other Creature from their essence or essential properties but by a supervenient power from the Author of Nature who hath thus united the Soul and the Body in their operations We have hitherto only consider'd the ordinary course of Nature and what indications and proofs of its Author that affords us There is another remarkable Head of Arguments from effects extraordinary and supernatural such as Miracles Prophecies Inspirations Prodigies Apparitions Witchcraft Sorceries c. These at one step lead us to something above Nature and this is the shortest way and the most popular several Arguments are suited to several tempers and God hath not left himself without a proper witness to every temper that is not wilfully blind Of these witnesses we now speak of the most considerable are Miracles and the most considerable Records of them are the Books of Scripture which if we consider only as an History and
and Power in the Created World This hath a vast extent and variety and would be sufficient to entertain their time in that happy state much longer than a thousand years As you will easily grant if you allow me but to point at the several heads of those Speculations The Contemplation of the Created World divides it self into three parts that of the Intellectual World that of the Corporal And the Government and Administration of both which is usually call'd Providence These three drawn into one thought with the reasons and proportions that result from them compose that GRAND IDEA which is the treasury and comprehension of all Knowledge Whereof we have spoken more largely in the last Chapter of the Second Book of this Theory under the name of the Mundane Idea But at present we shall only mention such particulars as may be thought proper subjects for the meditations and enquiries of those who shall enjoy that happy state which we now treat of As to the Intellectual World excepting our own Souls we know little in this region of darkness where we are at present more than bare names We hear of Angels and Archangels of Cherubins and Seraphins of Principalities and Powers and Thrones and Dominions We hear the sound of these words with admiration but we know little of their natures wherein their general notion and wherein their distinction consists what peculiar excellencies they have what offices and employments of all this we are ignorant Only in general we cannot but suppose that there are more orders and degrees of Intellectual Beings betwixt us and the Almighty than there are kinds or species of living Creatures upon the face of the Earth betwixt Man their Lord and Master and the least worm that creeps upon the ground Nay than there are Stars in Heaven or Sands upon the Sea-shore For there is an infinite distance and interval betwixt us and God Almighty and all that is fill'd with created Beings of different degrees of perfection still approaching nearer and nearer to their Maker And when this invisible World shall be open'd to us when the Curtain is drawn and the Celestial Hierarchy set in order before our eyes we shall despise our selves and all the petty glories of a mortal life as the dirt under our feet As to the Corporeal Universe we have some share already in the Contemplation and knowledge of that tho' little in comparison of what will be then discover'd The doctrine of the Heavens fix'd Stars Planets and Comets both as to their matter motion and form will be then clearly demonstrated and what are mysteries to us now will become matter of ordinary conversation We shall be better acquainted with our neighbouring Worlds and make new discoveries as to the state of their affairs The Sun especially the Great Monarch of the Planetary Worlds whose Dominion reaches from Pole to Pole and the greatness of his Kingdom is under the whole Heaven Who sends his bright Messengers every day through all the regions of his vast Empire throwing his beams of light round about him swifter and further than a thought can follow This noble Creature I say will make a good part of their study in the succeeding World Eudoxus the Philosopher wish'd he might die like Phaeton in approaching too near to the Sun provided he could fly so near it and endure it so long till he had discover'd its beauty and perfection VVho can blame his curiosity who would not venture far to see the Court of so great a Prince who hath more VVorlds under his command than the Emperors of the Earth have Provinces or Principalities Neither does he make his Subjects slaves to his pleasure or tributaries to serve and supply his wants on the contrary They live upon him he nourishes and preserves them gives them fruits every year corn and wine and all the comforts of life This glorious Body which now we can only gaze upon and admire will be then better understood A mass of Light and Flame and Ethereal matter ten thousand times bigger than this Earth Enlightning and enlivening an Orb that exceeds the bulk of our Globe as much as that does the least sand upon the Sea-shore may reasonably be presum'd to have some great Being at the Centre of it But what that is we must leave to the enquiries of another life The Theory of the Earth will be a common lession there carried through all its vicissitudes and periods from first to last till its entire revolution be accomplish'd I told you in the Preface The Revolution of World was one of the greatest Speculations that we are capable of in this life and this little World where we are will be the first and easiest instance of it seeing we have Records Historical or Prophetical that reach from the Chaos to the end of the new Heavens and new Earth which course of time makes up the greatest part of the Circle or Revolution And as what was before the Chaos was but in my opinion the first remove from a Fixt Star so what is after the thousand years Renovation is but the last step to it again The Theory of humane Nature is also an useful and necessary speculation and will be carried on to perfection in that state Having fixt the true distinction betwixt Matter and Spirit betwixt the Soul and the Body and the true nature and laws of their union The original contract and the terms ratified by Providence at their first conjunction It will not be hard to discover the springs of action and passion how the thoughts of our mind and the motions of our body act in dependance one upon another What are the primary differences of Genius's and complexions and how our Intellectuals or Morals depend upon them What is the Root of Fatality and how far it extends By these lights they will see into their own and every Man's breast and trace the foot-steps of the Divine wisdom in that strange composition of Soul and Body This indeed is a mixt speculation as most others are and takes in something of both Worlds Intellectual and Corporeal and may also belong in part to the Third Head we mention'd Providence But there is no need of distinguishing these Heads so nicely provided we take in under some or other of them what may be thought best to deserve our knowledge now or in another World As to Providence what we intend chiefly by it here is the general oeconomy of our Religion and what is reveal'd to us in Scripture concerning God Angels and Mankind These Revelations as most in Sacred Writ are short and incompleat as being design'd for practice more than for speculation or to awaken and excite our thoughts rather than to satisfie them Accordingly we read in Scripture of a Triune Deity of God made flesh in the Womb of a Virgin Barbarously crucified by the Iews Descending into Hell rising again from the Dead visibly ascending into Heaven And sitting at the right hand of God the
the proud yea and all that do wickedly shall be as stubble and the day that cometh shall burn them up saith the Lord of Hosts that it shall leave them neither root nor branch And that nature her self and the Earth shall suffer in that fire the Prophet Zephany tells us c. 3. 8. All the Earth shall be devoured with the fire of my jealousie Lastly This consumption of the Earth by fire even to the foundations of it is exprest livelily by Moses in his Song Deut. 32. 22. A fire is kindled in my anger and shall burn unto the lowest Hell and shall consume the Earth with her increase and set on fire the foundations of the Mountains If we reflect upon these Witnesses and especially the first and last Moses and S. Peter at what a great distance of time they writ their Prophecies and yet how well they agree we must needs conclude that they were acted by the same Spirit and a Spirit that see thorough all the Ages of the World from the beginning to the end These Sacred Writers were so remote in time from one another that they could not confer together nor conspire either in a false testimony or to make the same prediction But being under one common influence and inspiration which is always consistent with it self they have dictated the same things tho' at two thousand years distance sometimes from one another This besides many other considerations makes their authority incontestable And upon the whole account you see that the doctrine of the future Conflagration of the World having run through all Ages and Nations is by the joynt consent of the Prophets and Apostles adopted into the Christian Faith CHAP. IV. Concerning the time of the Conflagration and the end of the World What the Astronomers say upon this Subject and upon what they ground their Calculations The true notion of the Great Year or of the Platonick Year stated and explained HAVING in this First Section laid a sure foundation as to the Subject of our Discourse the truth and certainty of the Conflagration whereof we are to treat we will now proceed to enquire after the Time Causes and Manner of it We are naturally more inquisitive after the End of the World and the Time of that Fatal Revolution than after the Causes of it For these we know are irresistible whensoever they come and therefore we are only sollicitous that they should not overtake us or our near posterity The Romans thought they had the fates of their Empire in the Books of the Sibyls which were kept by the Magistrates as a Sacred Treasure We have also our Prophetical Books more sacred and more infallible than theirs which contain the fate of all the Kingdoms of the Earth and of that glorious Kingdom that is to succeed And of all futurities there is none can be of such importance to be enquired after as this last scene and close of all humane affairs If I thought it possible to determine the time of the Conflagration from the bare intuition of Natural Causes I would not treat of it in this place but reserve it to the last after we had brought into view all those Causes weigh'd their force and examin'd how and when they would concur to produce this great effect But I am satisfied that the excitation and concourse of those Causes does not depend upon Nature only and tho' the Causes may be sufficient when all united yet the union of them at such a time and in such a manner I look upon as the effect of a particular Providence and therefore no foresight of ours or inspection into Nature can discover to us the time of this conjuncture This method therefore of Prediction from Natural Causes being laid aside as impracticable all other methods may be treated of in this place as being independent upon any thing that is to follow in the Treatise and it will be an ease to the Argument to discharge it of this part and clear the way by degrees to the principal point which is the Causes and Manner of the Conflagration Some have thought it a kind of impiety in a Christian to enquire after the End of the World because of that check which our Saviour gave his Disciples when after his Resurrection enquiring of him about the time of his Kingdom He answer'd It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father hath put in his own power And before his death when he was discoursing of the Consummation of all things He told them expresly that tho' there should be such and such previous Signs as he had mention'd yet Of that day and hour knoweth no man No not the Angels that are in Heaven but my Father only Be it so that the Disciples deserv'd a reprimand for desiring to know by a particular revelation from our Saviour the state of future times when many other things were more necessary for their instruction and for their ministery Be it also admitted that the Angels at that distance of time could not see thorow all events to the End of the World it does not at all follow from thence that they do not know it now when in the course of Sixteen Hundred Years many things are come to pass that may be marks and directions to them to make a judgment of what remains and of the last period of all things However there will be no danger in our enquiries about this matter seeing they are not so much to discover the certainty as the uncertainty of that period as to humane knowledge Let us therefore consider what methods have been used by those that have been curious and busie to measure the duration of the World The Stoicks tell us When the Sun and the Stars have drunk up the Sea then the Earth shall be burnt A very fair Prophecy but how long will they be a drinking For unless we can determine that we cannot determine when this combustion will begin Many of the Ancients thought that the Stars were nourish'd by the vapours of the Ocean and of the moist Earth and when that nourishment was spent being of a fiery nature they would prey upon the Body of the Earth it self and consume that after they had consum'd the Water This is old-fashion'd Philosophy and now that the nature of those Bodies is better known will scarce pass for currant 'T is true we must expect some dispositions towards the combustion of the World from a great drought and desiccation of the Earth But this helps us nothing on our way for the question still returns When will this immoderate drought or dryness happen and that 's us ill to resolve as the former Therefore as I said before I have no hopes of deciding the question by Physiology or Natural Causes let us then look up from the Earth to the Heavens To the Astronomers and the Prophets These think they can define the age and duration of the World The one
attested or admit an effect whereof they cannot see any possible causes And so having stated and propos'd the whole difficulty and try'd all ways offer'd by others and found them ineffectual let us now apply our selves by degrees to unty the knot The excessive quantity of water is the great difficulty and the removal of it afterwards Those eight Oceans lay heavy upon my thoughts and I cast about every way to find an expedient or to find some way whereby the same effect might be brought to pass with less Water and in such a manner that that Water might afterwards conveniently be discharg'd The first thought that came into my mind upon that occasion was concerning the form of the Earth which I imagin'd might possibly at that time be different from what it is at present and come nearer to plainness and equality in the surface of it and so might the more easily be overflow'd and the Deluge perform'd with less water This opinion concerning the plainness of the first Earth I also found in Antiquity mention'd and refer'd to by several Interpreters in their Commentaries upon Genesis either upon occasion of the Deluge or of that Fountain which is said Gen. 2. 6. to have watered the face of the whole Earth And a late eminent person the honour of his profession for Integrity and Learning in his discourse concerning the Origination of mankind hath made a like judgment of the State of the Earth before the Deluge that the face of it was more smooth and regular than it is now But yet upon second thoughts I easily see that this alone would not be sufficient to explain the Deluge nor to give an account of the present from of the Earth unequal and Mountainous as it is 'T is true this would give a great advantage to the waters and the Rains that fell for forty days together would have a great power over the Earth being plain and smooth but how would these waters be dispos'd of when the Deluge ceas'd or how could it ever cease Besides what means the disruption of the great Deep or the great Abysse or what answers to it upon this supposition This was assuredly of no less consideration than the Rains nay I believe the Rains were but preparatory in some measure and that the violence and consummation of the Deluge depended upon the disruption of the great Abysse Therefore I saw it necessary to my first thought concerning the smoothness and plainness of the Ante-diluvian Earth to add a second concerning the disruption and dissolution of it for as it often happens in Earthquakes when the exteriour Earth is burst asunder and a great Flood of waters issues out according to the quantity and force of them an Inundation is made in those parts more or less so I thought if that Abysse lay under ground and round the Earth and we should suppose the Earth in this manner to be broken in several places at once and as it were a general dissolution made we might suppose that to make a general Deluge as well as a particular dissolution often makes a particular But I will not anticipate here the explication we intend to give of the universal Deluge in the following Chapters only by this previous intimation we may gather some hopes it may be that the matter is not so desperate as the former representation might possibly make us fansie it Give me leave to add farther in this place that it hath been observ'd by several from the contemplation of Mountains and Rocks and Precipices of the Chanel of the Sea and of Islands and of Subterraneous Caverns that the surface of the Earth or the exteriour Region which we inhabit hath been broke and the parts of it dislocated And one might instance more particularly in several parcels of Nature that retain still the evident marks of fraction and ruine and by their present form and posture show that they have been once in another state and situation one to another We shall have occasion hereafter to give an account of these Phaenomena from which several have rightly argu'd and concluded some general rupture or ruine in the superficial parts of the Earth But this ruine it is true they have imagin'd and explain'd several ways some thinking that it was made the third day after the foundation of the Earth when they suppose the Chanel of the Sea to have been form'd and Mountains and Caverns at the same time by a violent depression of some parts of the Earth and an extrusion and elevation of others to make them room Others suppose it to have come not all at once but by degrees at several times and in several Ages from particular and accidental causes as the Earth falling in upon Fires under ground or water eating away the lower parts or Vapours and Exhalations breaking out and tearing the Earth 'T is true I am not of their opinion in either of these Explications and we shall show at large hereafter when we have propos'd and stated our own Theory how incompetent such causes are to bring the Earth into that form and condition we now find it in But in the mean time we may so far make use of these Opinions in general as not to be startled at this Doctrine concerning the breaking or dissolution of the exteriour Earth for in all Ages the face of Nature hath provok'd men to think of and observe such a thing And who can do otherwise to see the Elements displac'd and disorder'd as they seem to lie at present the heaviest and grossest bodies in the highest places and the liquid and volatile kept below an huge mass of Stone or Rock rear'd into the Air and the water creeping at its feet whereas this is the more light and active body and by the law of Nature should take place of Rocks and Stones So we see by the like disorder the Air thrown down into Dungeons of the Earth and the Earth got up among the Clouds for there are the tops of the Mountains and under their roots in Holes and Caverns the Air is often detain'd By what regular action of Nature can we suppose things first produc'd in this posture and form not to mention how broke and torn the inward substance of the Earth is which of it self is an uniform mass close and compact but in the condition we see it it lies hollow in many places with great vacuities intercepted betwixt the portions of it a thing which we see happens in all ruines more or less especially when the parts of the ruines are great and inflexible Then what can have more the figure and meen of a ruine than Crags and Rocks and Cliffs whether upon the Sea shore or upon the sides of Mountains what can be more apparently broke than they are and those lesser Rocks or great bulky Stones that lie often scatter'd near the feet of the other whether in the Sea or upon the Land are they not manifest fragments and pieces of those greater
by Promethâ—us and the imploying of Wind or Water to turn the Mills and grind their Corn was scarce known before the Romans and that we may think nothing Eternal here they tell us the Ages and Genealogies of their very Gods The measures of Time for the common uses of life the dividing it into Hours with the Instruments for those purposes are not of an unknown date Even the Arts for preparing Food and Clothing Medicines and medicaments Building Civil and Military Letters and Writing which are the foundations of the World Civil These with all their retinue of lesser Arts and Trades that belong to them History and Tradition tell us when they had their beginning or were very imperfect and how many of their Inventors and Inventresses were deifi'd The World hath not stood so long but we can still run it up to those Artless Ages when mortals liv'd by plain Nature when there was but one Trade in the World one Calling to look to their Flocks and afterwards to Till the Ground when Nature grew less liberal And may we not reasonably think this the beginning of Mankind or very near it If Man be a creature both naturally sagacious to find out its own conveniencies and naturally sociable and inclin'd to live in a Community a little time would make them find out and furnish themselves with what was necessary in these two kinds for the conveniencies of single life and the conveniencies of Societies they would not have liv'd infinite Ages unprovided of them If you say Necessity is the mother of Arts and Inventions and there was no necessity before and therefore these things were so slowly invented This is a good answer upon our suppoâ—tion that the World began but some Ages before these were found out and was abundant with all things at first and Men not very numerous and therefore were not put so much to the use of their wits to find out ways for living commodiously But this is no answer upon their supposition for if the World was Eternal and Men too there were no first Ages no new and fresh Earth Men were never less numerous nor the Earth more fruitful and consequently there was never less necessity at any time than is now This also brings to mind another argument against this opinion viz. from the gradual increase of Mankind 'T is certain the World was not so populous one or two thousand years since as it is now seeing 't is observ'd in particular Nations that within the space of two or three hundred years notwithstanding all casualties the number of Men doubles If then the Earth had stood from Everlasting it had been over-stockt long ere this and would not have been capable to contain its Inhabitants many Ages and Millions of Ages ago Whereas we find the Earth is not yet sufficiently Inhabited and there is still room for some Millions And we must not flie to universal Deluges and Conflagrations to destroy Mankind for besides that the Earth was not capable of a Deluge in this present form nor would have been in this form after a Conflagration Aristotle doth not admit of these universal changes nor any that hold the form of the Earth to be Eternal But to return to our Arts and Inventions We have spoken of practical Arts and Inventions useful in humane life then for Theoretical Learning and Sciences there is nothing yet finish'd or compleat in these and what is known hath been chiefly the production of latter Ages How little hath been discover'd till of late either of our own Bodies or of the body of the Earth and of the functions or motions of nature in either What more obvious one would think than the Circulation of the Bloud What can more excite our curiosity than the flowing and ebbing of the Sea Than the nature of Metals and Minerals These are either yet unknown or were so at least till this last Age which seems to me to have made a greater progress than all Ages before put together since the beginning of the World How unlikely is it then that these Ages were Eternal That the Eternal Studies of our Forefathers could not effect so much as a few years have done of late And the whole mass of knowledge in this Earth doth not seem to be so great but that a few Ages more with two or three happy Genius's in them may bring to light all that we are capable to understand in this state of mortality To these arguments concerning the novelty of the Earth and the Origin of Mankind I know there are some shuffling excuses made but they can have little effect upon those instances we have chosen And I would ask those Eternalists one fair question What mark is there that they could expect or desire of the novelty of a World that is not found in this Or what mark is there of Eternity that is found in this If then their opinion be without any positive argument and against all appearances in Nature it may be justly rejected as unreasonable upon all accounts 'T is not the bold asserting of a thing that makes it true or that makes it credible against evidence If one should assert that such an one had liv'd from all Eternity and I could bring witnesses that knew him a sucking Child and others that remembred him a School-boy I think it would be a fair proof that the Man was not Eternal So if there be evidence either in Reason or History that it is not very many Ages since Nature was in her minority as appears by all those instances we have given above some whereof trace her down to her very infancy This I think may be taken for a good proof that she is not Eternal And I do not doubt but if the History of the World was writ Philosophically giving an account of the several states of Mankind in several Ages and by what steps or degrees they came from their first rudeness or simplicity to that order of things both intellectual and Civil which the World is advanc'd to at present That alone would be a full conviction that the Earth and Mankind had a beginning As the story of Rome how it rise from a mean Original by what degrees it increas'd and how it chang'd its form and government till it came to its greatness doth satisfie us very well that the Roman Empire was not Eternal Thus much concerning the Temporal Original of the Earth We are now to consider the manner of it and to shew how it rise from a Chaos I do not remember that any of the Ancients that acknowledge the Earth to have had an Original did deny that Original to have been from a Chaos We are assur'd of both from the authority of Moses who saith that in the beginning the Earth was Tohu Bohu without form and void a fluid dark confus'd mass without distinction of Elements made up of all variety of parts but without Order or any determinate Form which is the true
settle into the same form which they had when they were last liquid and are always solid within and smooth without unless they be cast in a mould that hinders the motion and flux of the parts So that the first concrete state or consistent surface of the Chaos must be of the same form or figure with the last liquid state it was in for that is the mould as it were upon which it is cast as the shell of an Egg is of a like form with the surface of the liquor it lies upon And therefore by analogy with all other liquors and concretions the form of the Chaos whether liquid or concrete could not be the same with that of the present Earth or like it And consequently that form of the first or primigenial Earth which rise immediately out of the Chaos was not the same nor like to that of the present Earth Which was the first and preparatory Proposition we laid down to be prov'd And this being prov'd by the authority both of our Reason and our Religion we will now proceed to the Second which is more particular CHAP. V. The Second Proposition is laid down viz. That the face of the Earth before the Deluge was smooth regular and uniform without Mountains and without a Sea The Chaos out of which the World rise is fully examin'd and all its motions observ'd and by what steps it wrought it self into an habitable World Some things in Antiquity relating to the first state of the Earth are interpreted and some things in the Sacred Writings The Divine Art and Geometry in the construction of the first Earth is observ'd and celebrated WE have seen it prov'd in the foregoing Chapter That the form of the first or Ante-diluvian Earth was not the same nor like the form of the present Earth this is our first discovery at a distance but 't is only general and negative tells us what the form of that Earth was not but tells us not expresly what it was that must be our next enquiry and advancing one step further in our Theory we lay down this Second Proposition That the face of the Earth before the Deluge was smooth regular and uniform without Mountains and without a Sea This is a bold step and carries us into another World which we have never seen nor ever yet heard any relation of and a World it seems of very different scenes and prospects from ours or from any thing we have yet known An Earth without a Sea and plain as the Elysian fields if you travel it all over you will not meet with a Mountain or a Rock yet well provided of all reqnisite things for an habitable World and the same indeed with the Earth we still inhabit only under another form And this is the great thing that now comes into debate the great Paradox which we offer to be examin'd and which we affirm That the Earth in its first rise and formation from a Chaos was of the form here describ'd and so continu'd for many hundreds of years To examine and prove this we must return to the beginning of the World and to that Chaos out of which the Earth and all Sublunary things arose 'T is the motions and progress of this which we must now consider and what form it setled into when it first became an habitable World Neither is it perhaps such an intricate thing as we imagine at first sight to trace a Chaos into an habitable World at least there is a particular pleasure to see things in their Origin and by what degrees and successive changes they rise into that order and state we see them in afterwards when compleated I am sure if ever we would view the paths of Divine Wisdom in the works and in the conduct of Nature we must not only consider how things are but how they came to be so 'T is pleasant to look upon a Tree in the Summer cover'd with its green Leaves deckt with Blossoms or laden with Fruit and casting a pleasing shade under its spreading Boughs but to consider how this Tree with all its furniture sprang from a little Seed how Nature shap'd it and fed it in its infancy and growth added new parts and still advanc'd it by little and little till it came to this greatness and perfection this methinks is another sort of pleasure more rational less common and which is properly the contemplation of Divine Wisdom in the works of Nature So to view this Earth and this Sublunary World as it is now compleat distinguisht into the several orders of Bodies of which it consists every one perfect and admirable in its kind this is truly delightful and a very good entertainment of the mind But to see all these in their first Seeds as I may so say to take in pieces this frame of Nature and melt it down into its first principles and then to observe how the Divine Wisdom wrought all these things out of confusion into order and out of simplicity into that beautiful composition we now see them in this methinks is another kind of joy which pierceth the mind more deep and is more satisfactory And to give our selves and others this satisfaction we will first make a short representation of the Chaos and then shew how according to Laws establisht in Nature by the Divine Power and Wisdom it was wrought by degrees from one from into another till it setled at length into an habitable Earth and that of such a frame and structure as we have describ'd in this second Proposition By the Chaos I understand the matter of the Earth and Heavens without from or order reduc'd into a fluid mass wherein are the materials and ingredients of all bodies but mingled in confusion one with another As if you should suppose all sorts of Metals Gold Silver Lead c. melted down together in a common mass and so mingled that the parts of no one Metal could be discern'd as distinct from the rest this would be a little Metallick Chaos Suppose then the Elements thus mingled Air Water and Earth which are the principles of all Terrestrial Bodies mingled I say without any order of higher or lower heavier or lighter solid or volatile in such a kind of confus'd mass as is here represented in this first Scheme pag. 36 fig. 1 Let this then represent to us the Chaos in which the first change that we should imagine to happen would be this that the heaviest and grossest parts would sink down towards the middle of it for there we suppose the center of its gravity and the rest would float above These grosser parts thus sunk down and compress'd more and more would harden by degrees and constitute the interiour parts of the Earth The rest of the mass which swims above would be also divided by the same principle of gravity into two orders of Bodies the one liquid like Water the other Volatile like Air. For the more fine and active parts disentangling
themselves by degrees from the rest would mount above them and having motion enough to keep them upon the wing would play in those open place where they constitute that body we call AIR The other parts being grosser than these and having a more languid motion could not fly up separate from one another as these did but setled in a mass together under the Air upon the body of the Earth composing not only Water strictly so called but the whole mass of liquors or liquid bodies belonging to the Earth And these first separations being thus made the body of the Chaos would stand in that form which it is here represented in by the second Scheme pag. 37 fig 2. The liquid mass which encircled the Earth was not as I noted before the mere Element of Water but a collection of all Liquors that belong to the Earth I mean of all that do originally belong to it Now seeing there are two chief kinds of Terrestrial Liquors those that are fat oily and light and those that are lean and more Earthy like common Water which two are generally found in compound liquors we cannot doubt but there were of both sorts in this common mass of liquids And it being well known that these two kinds mixt together if left to themselves and the general action of Nature separate one from another when they come to settle as in Cream and thin Milk Oil and Water and such like we cannot but conclude that the same Effect would follow here and the more oily and light part of this mass would get above the other and swim upon it The whole mass being divided into two lesser masses and so the Globe would stand as we see it in this Third Figure pag 38. fig 3. Hitherto the changes of the Chaos are easie and unquestionable and would be dispatcht in a short time we must now look over again these two great masses of the Air and Water and consider how their impurities or grosser parts would be dispos'd of for we cannot imagine but they were both at first very muddy and impure And as the Water would have its sediment which we are not here concern'd to look after so the great Regions of the Air would certainly have their sediment too for the Air was as yet thick gross and dark there being an abundance of little Terrestrial particles swimming in it still after the grossest were sunk down which by their heaviness and lumpish figure made their way more easily and speedily The lesser and lighter which remain'd would sink too but more slowly and in a longer time so as in their descent they would meet with that oily liquor upon the face of the Deep or upon the watery mass which would entangle and stop them from passing any further whereupon mixing there with that unctious substance they compos'd a certain slime or fat soft and light Earth spread upon the face of the Waters as 't is represented in this fourth Figure pag. 39. fig 4. This thin and tender Orb of Earth increas'd still more and more as the little Earthy parts that were detain'd in the Air could make their way to it Some having a long journey from the upper Regions and others being very light would float up and down a good while before they could wholly disengage themselves and descend But this was the general rendezvous which sooner or later they all got to and mingling more and more with that oily liquor they suckt it all up at length and were wholly incorporate together and so began to grow more stiff and firm making both but one substance which was the first concretion or firm and consistent substance that rise upon the face of the Chaos And the whole Globe stood in this posture as in Figure the fifth pag 40. fig. 5. It may be you will say we take our liberty and our own time for the separation of these two liquors the Oily and the Earthy the lighter and the heavier and suppose that done before the Air was clear'd of Earthy particles that so they might be catcht and stopt there in their descent Whereas if all these particles were fallen out of the Air before that separation was made in the liquid mass they would fall down through the Water as the first did and so no concretion would be made nor any Earthy crust form'd upon the face of the Waters as we here suppose there was 'T is true there could be no such Orb of Earth form'd there if the Air was wholly purg'd of all its Earthy parts before the Mass of liquids began to purifie it self and to separate the Oily parts from the more heavy But this is an unreasonable and incredible supposition if we consider the mass of the Air was many thousand times greater than the Water and would in proportion require a greater time to be purified the particles that were in the Regions of the Air having a long way to come before they reacht the Watery mass and far longer than the Oily particles had to rise from any part of that mass to the surface of it Besides we may suppose a great many degrees of littleness and lightness in these Earthy particles so as many of them might float in the Air a good while like Exhalations before they fell down And lastly We do not suppose the separation of these two liquors wholly made and finisht before the purgation of the Air began though we represent them so for distinction sake Let them begin to purifie at the same time if you please these parts rising upwards and those falling downwards they will meet in the middle and unite and grow into one body as we have describ'd And this body or new concretion would be increas'd daily being sed and supply'd both from above and below and having done growing it would become more dry by degrees and of a temper of greater consistency and firmness so as truly to resemble and be fit to make an habitable Earth such as Nature intended it for But you will further object it may be that such an effect as this would indeed be necessary in some degree and proportion but not in such a proportion and in such quantity as would be sufficient to make this crust or concrete Orb an habitable Earth This I confess appear'd to me at first a real difficulty till I consider'd better the great disproportion there is betwixt the Regions of the Air and the Circumference of the Earth or of that exteriour Orb of the Earth we are now a making which being many thousand times less in depth and extent than the Regions of the Air taken as high as the Moon though these Earthy particles we speak of were very thinly dispers'd through those vast tracts of the Air when they came to be collected and amass'd together upon the surface of a far lesser Sphere they would constitute a body of a very considerable thickness and solidity We see the Earth sometimes covered with Snow two or
though I believe to ingenuous persons that are not prejudic'd by the forms and opinions of the Schools against every thing that looks like a novelty or invention thus much might be sufficient yet for the satisfaction of all we will as a farther proof of our Theory or that part of it which concerns the dissolution of the Earth descend to particular explication of three or four of the most considerable and remarkable things that occur in the fabrick of this present Earth namely The great Chanel of the Ocean Subterraneous Cavities and Subterraneous Waters and lastly Mountains and Rocks These are the wonders of the Earth as to the visible frame of it and who would not be pleas'd to see a rational account of these of their Origin and of their properties Or who would not approve of an Hypothesis when they see that Nature in her greatest and strangest works may easily be understood by it and is in no other way that we know of intelligible We will speak first of Subterraneous Cavities and Waters because they will be of easier dispatch and an introduction to the rest That the inside of the Earth is hollow and broken in many places and is not one firm and united mass we have both the Testimony of Sence and of easie Observations to prove How many Caves and Dens and hollow passages into the ground do we see in many Countries especially amongst Mountains and Rocks and some of them endless and bottomless so far as can be discover'd We have many of these in our own Island in Derbishire Somersetshire Wales and other Counties and in every Continent or Island they abound more or less These hollownesses of the Earth the Ancients made prisons or storehouses for the Winds and set a God over them to confine them or let them loose at his pleasure For some Ages after the Flood as all Antiquity tells us These were the first houses men had at least in some parts of the Earth here rude mortals shelter'd themselves as well as they could from the injuries of the Air till they were beaten out by wild beasts that took possession of them The Ancient Oracles also us'd to be given out of these Vaults and recesses under ground the Sibyls had their Caves and the Delphick Oracle and their Temples sometimes were built upon an hollow Rock Places that are strange and solemn strike an awe into us and incline us to a kind of superstitious timidity and veneration and therefore they thought them fit for the seats and residences of their Deities They fansied also that steams rise sometimes or a sort of Vapour in those hollow places that gave a kind of Divine fury or inspiration But all these uses and employments are now in a great measure worn out we know no use of them but to make the places talkt on where they are to be the wonders of the Countrey to please our curiosity to gaze upon and admire but we know not how they came nor to what purpose they were made at first It would be very pleasant to read good descriptions of these Subterraneous places and of all the strange works of Nature there how she furnisheth these dark neglected Grottoes they have often a little Brook runs murmuring through them and the roof is commonly a kind of petrefied Earth or Icy fret-work proper enough for such rooms But I should be pleas'd especially to view the Sea-caves or those hollow Rocks that lie upon the Sea where the waves Roll in a great way under ground and wear the hard Rock into as many odd shapes and figures as we see in the Clouds 'T is pleasant also to see a River in the middle of its course throw itself into the mouth of a Cave or an opening of the Earth and run under ground sometimes many miles still pursuing its way through the dark pipes of the Earth till at last it find an out-let There are many of these Rivers taken notice of in History in the several parts of the Earth as the Rhone in France Guadiana in Spain and several in Greece Alpheus Lycus and Erasinus then Niger in Africa Tigris in Asia c. And I believe if we could turn Derwent or any other River into one of the holes of the Peak it would groap its way till it found an issue it may be in some other Country These Subterraneous Rivers that emerge again shew us that the holes of the Earth are longer and reach farther than we imagine and if we could see into the ground as we ride or walk we should be affrighted to see so often Waters or Caverns under us But to return to our dry Caves these commonly stand high and are sometimes of a prodigious greatness Strabo mentions some in the Mountains towards Arabia that are capable to receive four thousand men at once The Cave of Engedi hid David and six hundred men so as Saul when he was in the mouth of it did not perceive them In the Mountains of the Traconites there are many of these vast dens and recesses and the people of that Country defended themselves a long time in those strong Holds against Herod and his Army They are plac'd among such craggy Rocks and Precipices that as Iosephus tells us Herod was forc'd to make a sort of open chests and in those by chains of Iron he let down his Souldiers from the top of the Mountains to go fight them in their dens I need add no more instances of this kind In the Natural History of all Countries or the Geographical descriptions of them you find such places taken notice of more or less yet if there was a good collection made of the chief of them in several parts it might be of use and would make us more sensible how broken and torn the body of the Earth is There are Subterraneous Cavities of another nature and more remarkable which they call Volcano's or fiery Mountains that belch out flames and smoke and ashes and sometimes great stones and broken Rocks and lumps of Earth or some metallick mixture and throw them to an incredible distance by the force of the eruption These argue great vacuities in the bowels of the Earth and magazines of combustible matter treasur'd up in them And as the Exhalations within these places must be copious so they must lie in long Mines or Trains to do so great execution and to last so long 'T is scarce credible what is reported concerning some eruptions of Vesuvius and Aetna The Eruptions of Vesuvius seem to be more frequent and less violent of late The flame and smoke break out at the top of the Mountain where they have eaten away the ground and made a great hollow so as it looks at the top when you stand upon the brimes of it like an Amphitheater or like a great Caldron about a mile in circumference and the burning Furnace lies under it The outsides of the Mountain is all spread with Ashes but the inside
much more for you wade up to the mid-leg in Ashes to go down to the bottom of the Cavity and 't is extremely heavy and troublesome to get up again The inside lies sloping and one may safely go down if it be not in a raging fit but the middle part of it or center which is a little rais'd like the bottom of a Platter is not to be ventur'd upon the ground there lies false and hollow there it always smoaks and there the Funnel is suppos'd to be yet there is no visible hole or gaping any where when it doth not rage Naples stands below in fear of this fiery Mountain which hath often cover'd its Streets and Palaces with its Ashes and in sight of the Sea which lies by the side of them both and as it were in defiance to it threatens at one time or another to burn that fair City History tells us that some eruptions of Vesuvius have carry'd Cinders and Ashes as far as Constantinople this is attested both by Greek and Latin Authors particularly that they were so affrighted with these Ashes and darkness that the Emperor left the City and there was a day observ'd yearly for a memorial of this calamity or prodigy Aetna is of greater same than Vesuvius and of greater fury all Antiquity speaks of it not only the Greeks and Romans but as far as History reacheth either real or fabulous there is something recorded of the Fires of Aetna The Figure of the Mountain is inconstant by reason of the great consumptions and ruines it is subject to The Fires and Aestuations of it are excellently describ'd by Virgil upon occasion of Aeneas his passing by those Coasts Horrificis juxta tonat Aetna ruinis Interdumque atram prorumpit ad aethera nubem Turbine fumantem piceo candente favillâ AttollÃtque globos flammarum sydera lambit Interdum scopulos avolsáque viscera Montis Erigit eructans liquefactáque saxa sub auras Cum gemitu glomerat fundóque exaesluat into Fama est Enceladi semustum fulmine corpus Urgeri mole hâc ingentémque insuper Aetnam Impositam ruptis flammam expirare caminis Et fessum quoties mutet latus intremere omnem Murmure Trinacriam coelum subtexere fumo Aetna whose ruines make a thunder Sometimes black clouds of smoak that rowl about Mingled with flakes of fire it belches out And sometimes Balls of flame it darts on high Or its torn bowels flings into the Sky Within deep Cells under the Earth a store Of fire-materials molten Stones and Ore Iâ— gathers then spews out and gathers more Emceladus when thunder-struck by Jove Was buri'd here and Aetna thrown above And when to change his wearied side he turns The Island trembles and the Mountain burns Not far from Aetna lies Strâ—mbolo and other adjacent Islands where there are also such magazines of Fire and throughout all Regions and Countries in the West-Indies and in the East in the Northern and Southern parts of the Earth there are some of these Volcano's which are sensible evidences that the Earth is incompact and full of Caverns besides the roarings and bellowings that use to be heard before an eruption of these Volcano's argue some dreadful hollowness in the belly or under the roots of the Mountain where the Exhalations struggle before they can break their Prison The Subterraneous Cavities that we have spoke of hitherto are such as are visible in the surface of the Earth and break the skin by some gaping Orifice but the Miners and those that work under ground meet with many more in the bowels of the Earth that never reach to the top of it Burrows and Chanels and Clefts and Caverns that never had the comfort of one beam of light since the great fall of the Earth And where we think the ground is firm and solid as upon Heaths and Downs it often betrays its hollowness by sounding under the Horses feet and the Chariot-wheels that pass over it We do not know when and where we stand upon good ground if it was examin'd deep enough and to make us further sensible of this we will instance in two things that argue the unsoundness and hollowness of the Earth in the inward recesses of it though the surface be intire and unbroken These are Earthquakes and the communication of Subterraneous waters and Seas Of which two we will speak a little more particularly Earthquakes are too evident demonstrations of the hollowness of the Earth being the dreadful effects or consequences of it for if the body of the Earth was sound and compact there would be no such thing in Nature as an Earthquake They are commonly accompanied with an heavy dead found like a dull thunder which ariseth from the Vapours that are striving in the womb of Nature when her throes are coming upon her And that these Caverns where the Vapours lie are very large and capacious we are taught sometimes by sad experience for whole Cities and Countries have been swallow'd up into them as Sodom and Gomorrha and the Region of Pentapolis and several Cities in Greece and in Asia and other parts Whole Islands also have been thus absort in an Earthquake the pillars and props they stood upon being broken they have sunk and faln in as an house blown up I am also of opinion that those Islands that are made by divulsion from a Continent as Sicily was broken off from Italy and Great Britain as some think from France have been made the same way that is the Isthmus or necks of Land that joyn'd these Islands with their Continents before have been hollow and being either worn by the water or shak'd by an Earthquake have sunk down and so made way for the Sea to overflow them and of a Promontory to make an Island For it is not at all likely that the neck of Land continu'd standing and the Sea overflow'd it and so made an Island for then all those passages between such Islands and their respective Continents would be extremely shallow and unnavigable which we do not find them to be Nor is it any more wonder if such a neck of Land should fall than that a Mountain should sink or any other Tract of Land and a Lake rise in its place which hath often happen'd Plato supposeth his Atlantis to have been greater than Asia and Africa together and yet to have sunk all into the Sea whether that be true or no I do not think it impossible that some arms of the Sea or Sinus's might have had such an original as that and I am very apt to think that for some years after the Deluge till the fragments were well setled and adjusted great alterations would happen as to the face of the Sea and the Land many of the fragments would change their posture and many would sink into the water that stood out before the props failing that bore them up or the joynts and corners whereby they lean'd upon one another and thereupon a new face
thus much may suffice for a summary Explication of the causes of the Sea-chanel and Islands according to our Hypothesis CHAP. XI Concerning the Mountains of the Earth their greatness and irregular Form their Situation Causes and Origin WE have been in the hollows of the Earth and the Chambers of the Deep amongst the damps and steams of those lower Regions let us now go air our selves on the tops of the Mountains where we shall have a more free and large Horizon and quite another face of things will present it self to our observation The greatest objects of Nature are methinks the most pleasing to behold and next to the great Concave of the Heavens and those boundless Regions where the Stars inhabit there is nothing that I look upon with more plaesure than the wide Sea and the Mountains of the Earth There is something august and stately in the Air of these things that inspires the mind with great thoughts and passions We do naturally upon such occasions think of God and his greatness and whatsoever hath but the shadow and appearance of INFINITE as all things have that are too big for our comprehension they fill and over-bear the mind with their Excess and cast it into a pleasing kind of stupor and admiration And yet these Mountains we are speaking of to confess the truth are nothing but great ruines but such as show a certain magnificence in Nature as from old Temples and broken Amphitheaters of the Romans we collect the greatness of that people But the grandeur of a Nation is less sensible to those that never see the remains and monuments they have left and those who never see the mountainous parts of the Earth scarce ever reflect upon the causes of them or what power in Nature could be sufficient to produce them The truth is the generality of people have not sence and curiosity enough to raise a question concerning these things or concerning the Original of them You may tell them that Mountains grow out of the Earth like Fuzz-balls or that there are Monsters under ground that throw up Mountains as Moles do Mole-hills they will scarce raise one objection against your doctrine or if you would appear more Learned tell them that the Earth is a great Animal and these are Wens that grow upon its body This would pass current for Philosophy so much is the World drown'd in stupidity and sensual pleasures and so little inquisitive into the works of God and Nature There is nothing doth more awaken our thoughts or excite our minds to enquire into the causes of such things than the actual view of them as I have had experience my self when it was my fortune to cross the Alps and Appennine Mountains for the sight of those wild vast and indigested heaps of Stones and Earth did so deeply strike my fancy that I was not easie till I could give my self some tolerable account how that confusion came in Nature 'T is true the height of Mountains compar'd with the Diameter of the Earth is not considerable but the extent of them and the ground they stand upon bears a considerable proportion to the surface of the Earth and if from Europe we may take our measures for the rest I easily believe that the Mountains do at least take up the tenth part of the dry Land The Geographers are not very careful to describe or note in their Charts the multitude or situation of Mountains They mark the bounds of Countries the site of Cities and Towns and the course of Rivers because these are things of chief use to civil affairs and commerce and that they design to serve and not Philosophy or Natural History But Cluverius in his description of Ancient Germany Switzerland and Italy hath given Maps of those Countries more approaching to the natural face of them and we have drawn at the end of this Chapter such a Map of either Hemisphere without marking Countries or Towns or any such artificial things distinguishing only Land and Sea Islands and Continents Mountains and not Mountains and 't is very useful to imagine the Earth in this manner and to look often upon such bare draughts as shew us Nature undrest for then we are best able to judge what her true shapes and proportions are 'T is certain that we naturally imagine the surface of the Earth much more regular than it is for unless we be in some Mountainous parts there seldom occur any great inequalities within so much compass of ground as we can at once reach with our Eye and to conceive the rest we multiply the same Iden and extend it to those parts of the Earth that we do not see and so fansie the whole Globe much more smooth and uniform than it is But suppose a man was carri'd asleep out of a Plain Country amongst the Alps and left there upon the top of one of the highest Mountains when he wak'd and look'd about him he would think himself in an inchanted Country or carri'd into another World every thing would appear to him so different to what he had ever seen or imagin'd before To see on every hand of him a multitude of vast bodies thrown together in confusion as those Mountains are Rocks standing naked round about him and the hollow Valleys gaping under him and at his feet it may be an heap of frozen Snow in the midst of Summer He would hear the thunder come from below and see the black Clouds hanging beneath him Upon such a prospect it would not be easie to him to perswade himself that he was still upon the same Earth but if he did he would be convinc'd at least that there are some Regions of it strangely rude and ruine-like and very different from what he had ever thought of before But the Inhabitants of these wild places are even with us for those that live amongst the Alps and the great Mountains think that all the rest of the Earth is like their Country all broken into Mountains and Valleys and Precipices They never see other and most people think of nothing but what they have seen at one time or another These Alps we are speaking of are the greatest range of Mountains in Europe and 't is prodigious to see and to consider of what extent these heaps of Stones and Rubbish are one way they overspread Savoy and Dauphiné and reach through France to the Pyrenean Mountains and so to the Ocean The other way they run along the skirts of Germany through Stiria Pannonia and Dalmatia as far as Thrace and the Black Sea Then backwards they cover Switzerland and the parts adjacent and that branch of them which we call the Appennines strikes through Italy and is as it were the back-bone of that Country This must needs be a large space of ground which they stand upon Yet 't is not this part of Europe only that is laden with Mountains the Northern part is as rough and rude in the face of the Country as in
That the Earth rise at first from a Chaos for besides Reason and Antiquity Scripture it self doth assure us of that and that one point being granted we have deduc'd from it all the rest by a direct chain of consequences which I think cannot be broken easily in any part or link of it Besides the great hinge of this Theory upon which all the rest turns is the distinction we make of the Ante diluvian Earth and Heavens from the Post-diluvian as to their form and constitution And it will never be beaten out of my head but that S. Peter hath made the same distinction sixteen hundred years since and to the very same purpose so that we have sure footing here again and the Theory riseth above the character of a bare Hypothesis And whereas an Hypothesis that is clear and proportion'd to Nature in every respect is accounted morally certain we must in equity give more than a moral certitude to this Theory But I mean this only as to the general parts of it for as to particularities I look upon them only as problematical and accordingly I affirm nothing therein but with a power of revocation and a liberty to change my opinion when I shall be better inform'd Neither do I know any Author that hath treated a matter new remote and consisting of a multitude of particulars who would not have had occasion if he had liv'd to have seen his Hypothesis fully examin'd to have chang'd his mind and manner of explaining things in many material instances To conclude both this Chapter and this Section we have here added a Map or Draught of the Earth according to the Natural face of it as it would appear from the Moon if we were a little nearer to her or as it was at first after the Deluge before Cities were built distinctions of Countries made or any alteâ—ations by humane industry 'T is chiefly to expose more to view the Mountains of the Earth and the proportions of Sea and Land to shew it as it lies in it self and as a Naturalist ought to conceive and consider it 'T is true there are far more Mountains upon the Earth than what are here represented for more could not conveniently be plac'd in this narrow Scheme But the best and most effectual way of representing the body of the Earth as it is by Nature would be not in plain Tables but by a rough Globe expressing all the considerable inequalities that are upon the Earth The smooth Globes that we use do but nourish in us the conceit of the Earth's regularity and though they may be convenient enough for Geographical purposes they are not so proper for Natural Science nothing would be more useful in this respect than a rough Globe of the largest dimensions wherein the Chanel of the Sea should be really hollow as it is in Nature with all its unequal depths according to the best soundings and the shores exprest both according to matter and form little Rocks standing where there are Rocks and Sands and Beaches in the places where they are found and all the Islands planted in the Sea-chanel in a due form and in their solid dimensions Then upon the Land should stand all the ranges of Mountains in the same order or disorder that Nature hath set them there And the in-land Seas and great Lakes or rather the beds they lie in should be duly represented as also the vast desarts of Sand as they lie upon the Earth And this being done with care and due Art would be a true Epitome or true model of our Earth Where we should see besides other instructions what a rude Lump our World is which we are so apt to dote upon CHAP. XII A short review of what hath been already treated of and in what manner The several Faces and Schemes under which the Earth would appear to a Stranger that should view it first at a distance and then more closely and the Application of them to our subject All methods whether Philosophical or Theological that have been offer'd by others for the Explication of the Form of the Earth are examin'd and disprov'd A conjecture concerning the other Planets their Natural Form and State compared with ours WE have finish'd the Three Sections of this Book and in this last Chapter we will make a short review and reflection upon what hath been hitherto treated of and add some further confirmations of it The Explication of the Universal Deluge was the first proposal and design of this Discourse to make that a thing credible and intelligible to the mind of Man And the full Explication of this drew in the whole Theory of the Earth Whose original we have deduc'd from its first Source and shew'd both what was its primaeval Form and how it came into its present Form The summ of our Hypothesis concerning the Universal Deluge was this That it came not to pass as was vulgarly believ'd by any excess of Rains or any Inundation of the Sea nor could ever be effected by a meer abundance of Waters unless we suppose some dissolution of the Earth at the same time namely when the Great Abyss was broken open And accordingly we shewed that without such a dissolution or if the Earth had been always in the same form it is in now no mass of water any where to be found in the World could have equall'd the height of the Mountains or made such an Universal Deluge Secondly We shewed that the form of the Earth at first and till the Deluge was such as made it capable and subject to a Dissolution And thirdly That such a dissolution being suppos'd the Doctrine of the Universal Deluge is very reasonable and intelligible And not only the Doctrine of the Deluge but the same supposition is a Key to all Nature besides shewing us how our Globe became Terraqueous what was the original of Mountains of the Sea-chanel of Islands of subterraneous Cavities Things which without this supposition are as unintelligible as the universal Flood it self And these things reciprocally confirming one another our Hypothesis of the Deluge is arm'd both breast and back by the causes and by the effects It remains now that as to confirm our Explication of the Deluge we shew'd all other accounts that had been given of it to be ineffectual or impossible so to confirm our doctrine concerning the dissolution of the Earth and concerning the Original of Mountains Seas and all inequalities upon it or within it we must examine what causes have been assign'd by others or what accounts given of these things That seeing their defectiveness we may have the more assurance and satisfaction in our own method And in order to this let us observe first the general forms under which the Earth may be consider'd or under which it doth appear accordingly as we view it more nearly or remotely And the first of these and the most general is that of a Terraqueous Globe If a Philosopher should come out of
another World out of curiosity to see our Earth the first discovery or observation he would make would be this that it was a Terraqueous Globe Thus much he might observe at a great distance when he came but near the borders of our World This we discern in the Moon and most of the Planets that they are divided into Sea and Land and how this division came would be his first remark and inquiry concerning our Earth and how also those subdivisions of Islands or little Earths which lie in the Water how these were form'd and that great Chanel that contains them both The second form that the Earth appears under is that of an uneven and Mountainous Globe When our Traveller had got below tho Circle of the Moon he would discern the bald tops of our Mountains and the long ranges of them upon our Continents We cannot from the Earth discern Mountains and Valleys in the Moon directly but from the motion of the light and shadows which we see there we easily collect that there are such inequalities And accordingly we suppose that our Mountains would appear at a great distance and the shady Valleys lying under them and that this curious person that came to view our Earth would make that his second Enquiry how those Mountains were form'd and how our Globe came to be so rude and irregular for we may justly demand how any irregularity came into Nature seeing all her first motions and her first forms are regular and whatsoever is not so is but secondary and the consequence of some degeneracy or of some decay The Third visible form of our Earth is that of a broken Globe and broken throughout but in the outward parts and Regions of it This it may be you will say is not a visible form it doth not appear to the eye without reasoning that the surface of the Earth is so broken Suppose our new Visitant had now pass'd the middle Region of the Air and was alighted upon the top of Pick Teneriffe for his first resting place and that sitting there he took a view of the great Rocks the wide Sea and of the shores of Africk and Europe for we 'll suppose his piercing Eye to reach so far I will not say that at first sight he would pronounce that the surface of this Globe was broken unless he knew it to be so by comparison with some other Planet like to it but the broken form and figure of many parts of the Rocks and the posture in which they lay or great portions of them some inclin'd some prostrate some erected would naturally lead him to that thought that they were a ruine He would see also the Islands tore from the Continents and both the shores of the Continents and their inland parts in the same disorder and irregular situation Besides he had this great advantage in viewing the Earth at a distance that he could see a whole Hemisphere together which as he made his approaches through the Air would have much what the same aspect and countenance as 't is represented with in the great Scheme And if any man should accidentally hit upon that Scheme not knowing or thinking that it was the Earth I believe his first thought of it would be that it was some great broken body or ruin'd frame of matter and the original I am sure is more manifestly so But we 'll leave our Strange Philosopher to his own observations and wish him good Guides and Interpreters in his Survey of the Earth and that he would make a favourable report at his return home of our little dirty Planet In the mean time let us pursue in our own way this Third Idea of the Earth a little further as it is a broken Globe Nature I know hath dissembled and cover'd this form as much as may be and time hath helpt to repair some of the old breaches or fill them up besides the changes that have been made by Art and Humane industry by Agriculture Planting and Building Towns hath made the face of the Earth quite another thing from what it was in its naked rudeness As mankind is much alter'd from its Pristine state from what it was four thousand years ago or towards the first Ages after the Flood when the Nations liv'd in simplicity or barbarousness so is the Earth too and both so disguis'd and transform'd that if one of those Primitive Fathers should rise from the dead he would scarce know this to be the same World which he liv'd in before But to discern the true form of the Earth whether intire or broken regular or disorder'd we must in the first place take away all those ornaments or additions made by Art or Nature and view the bare carcass of the Earth as it hath nothing on it but Rocks and Mountains Desarts and Fields and hollow Valleys and a wide Sea Then secondly We must in our imagination empty this Chanel of the Sea take out all the Waters that hinder the sight of it and look upon the dry Ditch measure the depth and breadth of it in our mind and observe the manner of its construction and in what a wild posture all the parts of it lie according as it hath been formerly represented And lastly We must take off the cover of all Subterraneous places and deep Caverns to see the inside of the Earth and lay bare the roots of Mountains to look into those holes and Vaults that are under them fill'd sometimes with Fire sometimes with Water and sometimes with thick Air and Vapours The object being thus prepar'd we are then to look fix'dly upon it and to pronounce what we think of this disfigur'd mass whether this Exteriour frame doth not seem to be shatter'd and whether it doth more aptly resemble a new-made World or the ruines of one broken I confess when this Idea of the Earth is present to my thoughts I can no more believe that this was the form wherein it was first produc'd than if I had seen the Temple of Ierusalem in its ruines when defac'd and sack'd by the Babylonians I could have perswaded my self that it had never been in any other posture and that Solomon had given orders for building it so So much for the form of the Earth It remains now that we examine what causes have been assign'd by others of these irregularities in the form of the Earth which we explain by the dissolution of it what accounts any of the Ancients have given or attempted to give how the Earth swell'd into Mountains in certain places and in others was depress'd into low Valleys how the body of it was so broken and how the Chanel of the Sea was made The Elements naturally lie in regular forms one above another and now we find them mixt confounded and transpos'd how comes this disturbance and disordination in Nature The Explications of these things that have been given by others may be reduc'd to two general sorts Philosophical or
for suppose the Abyss was but half as deep as the deep 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 Abyss because they are but upon one half of the Globe And this is the first argument against the reciprocal production of Mountains and the Sea their incongruency or disproportion Secondly We are to consider that a great many Mountains of the Earth are far distant from any Seas as the great in-land Mountains of Asia and of Africk and the Sarmatick Mountains and others in Europe how were these great bodies slung thorow the Air from their respective Seas whence they were taken to those places where they stand What appearance is there in common reason or credibility that these huge masses of Earth and Stone that stand in the middle of Continents were dug out of any Seas We think it strange and very deservedly that a little Chapel should be transported from Palestine to Italy over Land and Sea much more the transportation of Mount Atlas or Taurus thorow the Air or of a range of Mountains two or three thousand miles long would surely upon all accounts appear incongruous and incredible Besides neither the hollow form of Mountains nor the stony matter whereof they commonly consist agrees with that supposition that they were prest or taken out of the Chanel of the Sea Lastly We are to consider that the Mountains are not barely laid upon the Earth as a Tomb-stone upon a Grave nor stand as Statues do upon a Pedestal as this opinion seems to suppose but they are one continued substance with the body of the Earth and their roots reach into the Abyss as the Rocks by the Sea-side go as deep as the bottom of the Sea in one continu'd mass And 't is a ridiculous thing to imagine the Earth first a plain surface then all the Mountains set upon it as Hay-cocks in a Field standing upon their flat bottoms There is no such common surface in Nature nor consequently any such super-additions 'T is all one frame or mass only broken and disjoynted in the parts of it To conclude 'T is not only the Mountains that make the inequalities of the Earth or the irregularity of its surface every Country every Province every Field hath an unequal and different situation higher or lower inclin'd more or less and sometimes one way sometimes another you can scarce take a miles compass in any place where the surface of the ground continues uniform and can you imagine that there were Moulds or Stones brought from the Sea-chanel to make all those inequalities Or that Earthquakes have been in every County and in every Field The inner Veins and Lares the beds or Strata of the Earth are also broken as well as the surface These must proceed from universal causes and all those that have been alledg'd whether from Philosophy or Theology are but particular or Topical I am fully satisfied in contemplation of these things and so I think every unprejudic'd person may be that to such an irregular variety of situation and construction as we see every where in the parts of the Earth nothing could answer but some universal concussion or dislocation in the nature of a general ruine We have now finisht this first part of our Theory and all that concerns the Deluge or dissolution of the Earth and we have not only establisht our own Hypothesis by positive arguments but also produc'd and examin'd all suppositions that have been offer'd by others whether Philosophical or Theological for the Explication of the same things so as nothing seems now to remain further upon this subject For a conclusion of all we will consider if you please the rest of the Earths or of the Planets within our Heavens that appertain to the same common Sun to see so far as we can go by rational conjectures if they be not of the same Fabrick and have undergone the like fate and forms with our Earth It is now acknowledg'd by the generality of Learned Men that the Planets are Opake bodies and particularly our next neighbour the Moon is known to be a Terraqueous Globe consisting of Mountains and Valleys as our Earth does and we have no reason to believe but that she came into that form by a dissolution or from like causes as our Earth did Mercury is so near the Sun that we cannot well discern his face whether spotted or no nor make a judgment of it But as for Venus and Mars if the spots that be observed in them be their Waters or their Sea as they are in the Moon 't is likely They are also Terraqueous Globes and in much what a like form with the Moon and the Earth and for ought we know from like causes Particularly as to Venus 't is a remarkable passage that S. Austin hath preserv'd out of Varro he saith 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 is a great presumption that she suffer'd her dissolution about the same time that our Earth did I do not know that any such thing is recorded concerning any of the other Planets but the body of Mars looks very rugged broken and much disorder'd Saturn and Iupiter deserve a distinct consideration as having something particular and different from the rest of the Planets Saturn is remarkable for his Hoop or Ring which seems to stand off or higher than his body and would strongly induce one to believe that the exteriour Earth of that Planet at its dissolution did not all fall in but the Polar parts sinking into the Abyss the middle or Aequinoctial parts still subsisted and bore themselves up in the nature of an Arch about the Planet or of a Bridge as it were built over the Sea of Saturn And as some have observ'd concerning the figure of Iupiter that it is not wholly Sphaerical but a Sphaeroid protuberant in the Aequator and deprest towards the Poles So I should suspect Saturn to have been much more so before his disruption Namely That the Body of that Planet in its first state was more flat and low towards the Poles and also weaker and thinner and about the Aequator higher fuller and stronger Built By reason of which figure and construction the Polar parts did more easily fall in or were suckt in as Cupping-glasses draw in the Flesh when the Abyss below grew more empty Whereas the middle parts about the Aequator being a more just Arch and strongly built would not yield or sink but stood firm and unbroken and continues still in its first posture Planets break in different ways according to the quality of their matter the manner of their construction and the Nature of the Causes that act upon them Their dissolutions are sometimes total as in
same World that our first fore-fathers did nor scarce to be the same race of Men. Our life now is so short and vain as if we came into the World only to see it and leave it by that time we begin to understand our selves a little and to know where we are and how to act our part we must leave the stage and give place to others as meer Novices as we were our selves at our first entrance And this short life is imploy'd in a great measure to preserve our selves from necessity or diseases or injuries of the Air or other inconveniencies to make one Man easie ten must work and do drudgery The Body takes up so much time we have little leisure for Contemplation or to cultivate the mind The Earth doth not yield us food but with much labour and industry and what was her free-will offering before or an easie liberality can scarce now be extorted from her Neither are the Heavens more favourable sometimes in one extreme sometimes in another The Air often impure or infectious and for a great part of the year Nature her self seems to be sick or dead To this vanity the external Creation is made subject as well as Mankind and so must continue till the restitution of all things Can we imagine in those happy Times and Places we are treating of that things stood in this same posture are these the fruits of the Golden Age and of Paradise or consistent with their happiness And the remedies of these evils must be so universal you cannot give them to one place or Region of the Earth but all must participate For these are things that flow from the course of the Heavens or such general Causes as extend at once to all Nature If there was a perpetual Spring and perpetual Aequinox in Paradise there was at the same time a perpetual Aequinox all the Earth over unless you place Paradise in the middle of the Torrid Zone So also the long-lives of the Ante-diluvians was an universal Effect and must have had an universal Cause 'T is true in some single parts or Regions of the present Earth the Inhabitants live generally longer than in others but do not approach in any measure the Age of their Ante-diluvian fore-fathers and that degree of longaevity which they have above the rest they owe to the calmness and tranquility of their Heavens and Air which is but an imperfect participation of that cause which was once Universal and had its effect throughout the whole Earth And as to the fertility of this Earth though in some spots it be eminently more fruitful than in others and more delicious yet that of the first Earth was a fertility of another kind being spontaneous and extending to the production of Animals which cannot be without a favourable concourse from the Heavens also Thus much in general We will now go over those three forementioned Characters more distinctly to show by their unsuitableness to the present state of Nature that neither the whole Earth as it is now nor any part of it could be Paradisiacal The perpetual Spring which belong'd to the Golden Age and to Paradise is an happiness this present Earth cannot pretend to nor is capable of unless we could transfer the Sun from the Ecliptick to the Aequator or which is as easie perswade the Earth to change its posture to the Sun If Archimedes had found a place to plant his Machines in for removing of the Earth all that I should have desir'd of him would have been only to have given it an heave at one end and set it a little to rights again with the Sun that we might have enjoy'd the comfort of a perpetual Spring which we have lost by its dislocation ever since the Deluge And there being nothing more indispensably necessary to a Paradisiacal state than this unity and equality of Seasons where that cannot be 't is in vain to seek for the rest of Paradise The spontaneous fruitfulness of the ground was a thing peculiar to the primigenial soil which was so temper'd as made it more luxuriant at that time than it could ever be afterwards and as that rich temperament was spent so by degrees it grew less fertile The Origin or production of Animals out of the Earth depended not only upon this vital constitution of the soil at first but also upon such a posture and aspect of the Heavens as favour'd or at least permitted Nature to make her best works out of this prepar'd matter and better than could be made in that manner after the Flood Noah we see had orders given him to preserve the Races of living Creatures in his Ark when the Old World was destroy'd which is an argument to me that Providence foresaw that the Earth would not be capable to produce them under its new form and that not only for want of fitness in the soil but because of the diversity of Seasons which were then to take place whereby Nature would be disturb'd in her work and the subject to be wrought upon would not continue long enough in the same due temper But this part of the second Character concerning the Original of Animals deserves to be further examin'd and explain'd The first principles of Life must be tender and ductile that they may yield to all the motions and gentle touches of Nature otherwise it is not possible that they should be wrought with that curiosity and drawn into all those little fine threds and textures that we see and admire in some parts of the Bodies of Animals And as the matter must be so constituted at first so it must be kept in a due temper till the work be finisht without any excess of heat or cold and accordingly we see that Nature hath made provision in all sorts of Creatures whether Oviparous or Viviparous that the first rudiments of Life should be preserv'd from all injuries of the Air and kept in a moderate warmth Eggs are enclos'd in a Shell or Film and must be cherish'd with an equal gentle heat to begin formation and continue it otherwise the work miscarries And in Viviparous Creatures the materials of life are safely lodg'd in the Females womb and conserv'd in a fit temperature 'twixt heat and cold while the Causes that Providence hath imploy'd are busie at work fashioning and placing and joyning the parts in that due order which so wonderful a Fabrick requires Let us now compare these things with the birth of Animals in the new-made World when they first rose out of the Earth to see what provision could be made there for their safety and nourishment while they were a making and when newly made And though we take all advantages we can and suppose both the Heavens and the Earth favourable a fit soil and a warm and constant temper of the Air all will be little enough to make this way of production feasible or probable But if we suppose there was then the same inconstancy of the Heavens
that is now the same vicissitude of seasons and the same inequality of heat and cold I do not think it at all possible that they could be so form'd or being new-form'd preserv'd and nourish'd 'T is true some little Creatures that are of short dispatch in their formation and find nourishment enough wheresoever they are brâ—d might be produc'd and brought to perfection in this way notwithstanding any inequality of Seasons because they are made all at a heat as I may so say begun and ended within the compass of one Season But the great question is concerning the more perfect kinds of Animals that require a long stay in the womb to make them capable to sustain and nourish themselves when they first come into the World Such Animals being big and strong must have a pretty hardness in their bones and force and firmness in their Muscles and Joynts before they can bear their own weight and exercise the common motions of their body And accordingly we see Nature hath ordain'd for these a longer time of gestation that their limbs and members might have time to acquire strength and solidity Besides the young ones of these Animals have commonly the milk of the Dam to nourish them after they are brought forth which is a very proper nourishment and like to that which they had before in the womb and by this means their stomachs are prepar'd by degrees for courser food Whereas our Terrigenous Animals must have been wean'd as soon as they were born or as soon as they were separated from their Mother the Earth and therefore must be allow'd a longer time of continuing there These things being consider'd we cannot in reason but suppose that these Terrigenous Animals were as long or longer a perfecting than our Viviparous and were not separated from the body of the Earth for ten twelve eighteen or more months according as their Nature was and seeing in this space of time they must have sufferâ—d upon the common Hypothesis all vicissitudes and variety of seasons and great excesses of heat and cold which are things incompatible with the tender principles of life and the formation of living Creatures as we have shown before we may reasonably and safely conclude that Nature had not when the World began the same course she hath now or that the Earth was not then in its present posture and constitution Seeing I say these first spontaneous Births which both the Holy Writ Reason and Antiquity seem to allow could not be finish'd and brought to maturity nor afterwards preserv'd and nourisht upon any other supposition Longaeviâ—y is the last Character to be consider'd and as inconsistent with the present state of the Earth as any other There are many things in the story of the first Ages that seem strange but nothing so prodigy-like as the long lives of those Men that their houses of Clay should stand eight or nine hundred years and upwards and those we build of the hardest Stone or Marble will not now last so long This hath excited the curiosity of ingenious and learned men in all Ages to enquire after the possible Causes of that longaveity and if it had been always in conjunction with innocency of life and manners and expir'd when that expir'd we might have thought it some peculiar blessing or reward attending that but 't was common to good and bad and lasted till the Deluge whereas mankind was degenerate long before Amongst Natural Causes some have imputed it to the sobriety and simplicity of their diet and manner of living in those days that they eat no flesh and had not all those provocations to gluttony which Wit and Vice have since invented This might have some effect but not possibly to that degree and measure that we speak of There are many Monastical persons now that live abstemiously all their lives and yet they think an hundred years a very great age amongst them Others have imputed it to the excellency of their Fruits and some unknown vertue in their Herbs and Plants in those days But they may as well say nothing as say that which can neither be prov'd nor understood It could not be either the quantity or quality of their food that was the cause of their long lives for the Earth was said to be curst long before the Deluge and probably by that time was more barren and juiceless for the generality than ours is now yet we do not see that their longaevity decreast at all from the beginning of the World to the Flood Methusalah was Noah's Grandfather but one intire remove from the Deluge and he liv'd longer than any of his Fore-fathers That food that will nourish the parts and keep us in health is also capable to keep us in long life if there be no impediments otherwise for to continue health is to continue life as that fewel that is fit to raise and nourish a flame will preserve it as long as you please if you add fresh fewel and no external causes hinder Neither do we observe that in those parts of the present Earth where people live longer than in others that there is any thing extraordinary in their food but that the difference is chiefly from the Air and the temperateness of the Heavens And if the Ante-diluvians had not enjoy'd that advantage in a peculiar manner and differently from what any parts of the Earth do now they would never have seen seven eight or nine hundred years go over their heads though they had been nourish'd with Nectar and Ambrosia Others have thought that the long lives of those Men of the old World proceeded from the strength of their Stamina or first principles of their bodies which if they were now as strong in us they think we should still live as long as they did This could not be the sole and adaequate cause of their longaevity as will appear both from History and Reason Shem who was born before the Flood and had in his body all the vertue of the Ante-diluvian Stamina and constitution fell three hundred years short of the age of his fore-fathers because the greatest part of his life was past after the Flood That their Stamina were stronger than ours are I am very ready to believe and that their bodies were greater and any race of strong Men living long in health would have children of a proportionably strong constitution with themselves but then the question is How was this interrupted We that are their posterity why do not we inherit their long lives how was this constitution broken at the Deluge and how did the Stamina fail so fast when that came why was there so great a Crisis then and turn of life or why was that the period of their strength We see this longaevity sunk half in half immediately after the Flood and after that it sunk by gentler degrees but was still in motion and declension till it was â—ixt at length before David's time in that which hath
been the common standard of Man's Age ever since As when some excellent fruit is transplanted into a worse Climate and Soil it degenerates continually till it comes to such a degree of meanness as suits that Air and Soil and then it stands That the Age of Man did not fall all on a sudden from the Antediluvian measure to the present I impute it to the remaining Stamina of those first Ages and the strength of that pristine constitution which could not wear off but by degrees We see the Blacks do not quit their complexion immediately by removing into another Climate but their posterity changeth by little and little and after some generations they become altogether like the people of the Country where they are Thus by the change of Nature that happened at the Flood the unhappy influence of the Air and unequal Seasons weaken'd by degrees the innate strength of their bodies and the vigour of their parts which would have been capable to have lasted several more hundreds of years if the Heavens had continued their course as formerly or the Earth its position To conclude this particular If any think that the Ante-diluvian longaevity proceeded only from the Stamina or the meer strength of their bodies and would have been so under any constitution of the Heavens let them resolve themselves these Questions first Why these Stamina or this strength of constitution fail'd Secondly Why did it fail so much and so remarkably at the Deluge Thirdly Why in such proportions as it hath done since the Deluge And lastly Why it hath stood so long immovable and without any further diminution Within the compass of five hundred years they sunk from nine hundred to ninety and in the compass of more than three thousand years since they have not sunk ten years or scarce any thing at all Who considers the reasons of these things and the true resolution of these questions will be satisfi'd that to understand the causes of that longaevity something more must be consider'd than the make and strength of their bodies which though they had been made as strong as the Behemoth or Leviathan could not have lasted so many Ages if there had not been a particular concurrence of external causes such as the present state of Nature doth not admit of By this short review of the three general Characters of Paradise and the Golden Age we may conclude how little consistent they are with the present from and order of the Earth Who can pretend to assign any place or Region in this Terraqueous Globe Island or Continent that is capable of these conditions or that agrees either with the descriptions given by the ancient Heathens of their Paradise or by the Christian Fathers of Scripture Paradise But where then will you say must we look for it if not upon this Earth This puts us more into despair of finding it than ever 't is not above nor below in the Air or in the subterraneous Regions no doubtless 't was upon the surface of the Earth but of the Primitive Earth whose form and properties as they were different from this so they were such as made it capable of being truly Paradisiacal both according to the forementioned Characters and all other qualities and privileges reasonably ascrib'd to Paradise CHAP. III. The Original differences of the Primitive Earth from the present or Post-diluvian The three Characters of Paradise and the Golden Age found in the Primitive Earth A particular Explication of each Character WE have hitherto only perplext the Argument and our selves by showing how inexplicable the state of Paradise is according to the present order of things and the present condition of the Earth We must now therefore bring into view that Original and Ante-diluvian Earth where we pretend its seat was and show it capable of all those privileges which we have deny'd to the present in vertue of which privileges and of the order of Nature establisht there that primitive Earth might be truly Paradisiacal as in the Golden Age and some Region of it might be peculiarly so according to the receiv'd Idea of Paradise And this I think is all the knowledge and satisfaction that we can expect or that Providence hath allow'd us in this Argument The Primigenial Earth which in the first Book Chap. 5. we rais'd from a Chaos and set up in an habitable form we must now survey again with more care to observe its principal differences from the present Earth and what influence they will have upon the question in hand These differences as we have said before were chiefly three The form of it which was smooth even and regular The posture and situation of it to the Sun which was direct and not as it is at present inclin'd and oblique And the Figure of it which was more apparently and regularly Oval than it is now From these three differences flow'd a great many more inferiour and subordinate and which had a considerable influence upon the moral World at that time as well as the natural But we will only observe here their more immediate effects and that in reference to those general Characters or properties of the Golden Age and of Paradise which we have instanc'd in and whereof we are bound to give an account by our Hypothesis And in this respect the most fundamental of those three differences we mention'd was that of the right posture and situation of the Earth to the Sun for from this immediately follow'd a perpetual Aequinox all the Earth over or if you will a perpetual Spring and that was the great thing we found a wanting in the present Earth to make it Paradisiacal or capable of being so Wherefore this being now found and establisht in the Primitive Earth the other two properties of Longaevity and of Spontaneous and Vital fertility will be of more easie explication In the mean time let us view a little the reasons and causes of that regular situation in the first Earth The truth is one cannot so well require a reason of the regular situation the Earth had then for that was most simple and natural as of the irregular situation it hath now standing oblique and inclin'd to the Sun or the Ecliptick Whereby the course of the year is become unequal and we are cast into a great diversity of Seasons But however stating the first aright with its circumstances we shall have a better prospect upon the second and see from what causes and in what manner it came to pass Let us therefore suppose the Earth with the rest of its fellow Planets to be carried about the Sun in the Ecliptick by the motion of the liquid Heavens and being at that time perfectly uniform and regular having the same Center of its magnitude and gravity it would by the equality of its libration necessarily have its Axis parallel to the Axis of the same Ecliptick both its Poles being equally inclin'd to the Sun And this posture I call a right
the Heavens or Aether The Ancients both the Stoicks and Aristotle have suppos'd that there was something of an Aethereal Element in the Male-geniture from whence the vertue of it chiefly proceeded and if so why may we not suppose at that time some general impression or irradiation of that purer Element to fructifie the new-made Earth Moses saith there was an incubation of the Spirit of God upon the mass and without all doubt that was either to form or fructifie it and by the mediation of this active principle but the Ancients speak more plainly with express mention of this Aether and of the impregnation of the Earth by it as betwixt Male and Female As in the place before-cited Tum Pater omnipotens faecundis imbribus Aether Conjugis in gremium laetae descendit omnes Magnus alit magno commixtus corpore foetus Which notion I remember S. Austin saith Virgil did not take from the fictions of the Poets but out of the Books of the Philosophers Some of the gravest Authors amongst the Romans have reported that this vertue hath been convey'd into the Wombs of some Animals by the Winds or the Zephyri and as I easily believe that the first fresh Air was more impregnated with this Aethereal principle than ours is so I see no reason but those balmy dews that fell every night in the Primitive Earth might be the Vehicle of it as well as the Male-geniture is now and from them the teeming Earth and those vital Seeds which it contain'd were actuated and receiv'd their first fruitfulness Now this Principle howsoever convey'd to those rudiments of life which we call Eggs is that which gives the first stroke towards Animation and this seems to be by exciting a ferment in those little masses whereby the parts are loosen'd and dispos'd for that formation which is to follow afterwards And I see nothing that hinders but that we may reasonably suppose that these Animal productions might proceed thus far in the Primigenial Earth And as to their progress and the formation of the Body by what Agents or Principles soever that great work is carried on in the womb of the Female it might by the same be carried on there Neither would there be any danger of miscarrying by excess of Heat or Cold for the Air was always of an equal temper and moderate warmth And all other impediments were remov'd and all principles ready whether active or passive so as we may justly conclude that as Eve was the Mother of all living as to Mankind so was the Earth the Great Mother of all living Creatures besides The Third Character to be explain'd and the most extraordinary in appearance is that of LONGAEVITY This sprung from the same root in my opinion with the other though the connexion it may be is not so visible We show'd in the foregoing Chapter that no advantage of Diet or of strong Constitutions could have carried their lives before the Flood to that wonderful length if they had been expos'd to the same changes of Air and of Seasons that our Bodies are But taking a perpetual Aequinox and fixing the Heavens you fix the life of Man too which was not then in such a rapid flux as it is now but seem'd to stand still as the Sun did once without declension There is no question but every thing upon Earth and especially the Animate World would be much more permanent if the general course of Nature was more steddy and uniform A stabiâ—ity in the Heavens makes a stability in all things below and that change and contrariety of qualities that we have in these Regions is the fountain of corruption and suffers nothing to be long in quiet Either by intestine motions and fermentations excited within or by outward impressions Bodies are no sooner well constituted but they are tending again to dissolution The Aether in their little pores and chinks is unequally agitated and differently mov'd at different times and so is the Air in their greater and the Vapours and Atmosphere round about them All these shake and unsettle both the texture and continuity of Bodies Whereas in a fixt state of Nature where these principles have always the same constant and uniform motion when they are once suited to the forms and compositions of Bodies they give them no further disturbance they enjoy a long and lasting peace without any commotions or violence within or without We find our selves sensible changes in our Bodies upon the turn of the Year and the change of Seasons new fermentations in the Bloud and resolutions of the Humours which if they do not amount to diseases at least they disturb Nature and have a bad effect not only upon the fluid parts but also upon the more solid upon the Springs and Fibres in the Organs of the Body to weaken them and unfit them by degrees for their respective functions For though the change is not sensible immediately in these parts yet after many repeated impressions every year by unequal heat and cold driness and moisture contracting and relaxing the Fibres their tone at length is in a great measure destroy'd and brought to a manifest debility and the great Springs failing the lesser that depend upon them fall in proportion and all the symptoms of decay and old age follow We see by daily experience that Bodies are kept better in the same medium as we call it than if they often change their medium as sometimes in Air sometimes in Water moisten'd and dry'd heated and cool'd these different states weaken the contexture of the parts But our Bodies in the present state of Nature are put into an hundred different mediums in the course of a Year sometimes we are steept in Water or in a misty foggy Air for several days together sometimes we are almost frozen with cold then fainting with heat at another time of the Year and the Winds are of a different nature and the Air of a different weight and pressure according to the Weather and the Seasons These things would wear our Bodies though they were built of Oak and that in a very short time in comparison of what they would last if they were always incompast with one and the same medium under one and the same temper as it was in the Primitive Earth The Ancients seem to have been sensible of this and of the true causes of those long periods of life for wheresoever they assign'd a great longaevity as they did not only to their Golden Age but also to their particular and topical Paradises they also assign'd there a constant serenity and equality of the Heavens and sometimes expresly a constant Aequinox as might be made appear from their Authors And some of our Christian Authors have gone farther and connected these two together as Cause and Effect for they say that the Longaevity of the Ante-diluvian Patriarchs proceeded from a favourable Aspect and influence of the Heavens at that time which Aspect of the Heavens being rightly
should not the flame of life as well as any other flame if you give it fewel continue in its force without languishing or decay You will say it may be The case is not the same in a simple Body such as a Lamp or a Fire and in an Organical Body which being variously compounded of multiplicity of parts and all those parts put in connexion and dependance one upon another if any one fail it will disorder the whole frame and therefore it must needs be more difficult for such a body to continue long in the same state than for a simple Body that hath no variety of parts or operations I acknowledge such a Body is much more subject to diseases and accidents than a more simple but barring all diseases and accidents as we do it might be of as long a duration as any other if it was suppli'd with nourishment adequately to all its parts As this Lamp we speak of if it consisted of twenty branches and each of these branches was to be fed with a different Oil and these Oils could be all mix'd together in some common Cistern whence they were to be distributed into the several branches either according to their different degrees of lightness one rising higher than another or according to the capacity and figure of the little pipes they were to pass thorough such a compounded Lamp made up of such artifices would indeed be more subject to accidents and to be out of order by the obstruction of some of the little pipes or some unfit qualities in the Oils but all these casualties and disorders excepted as they are in our case if it was suppli'd with convenient liquors it would burn as long as any other though more plain and simple To instance yet for more plainness in another sort of Machine supppose a Mill where the Water may represent the nourishment and humours in our Body and the frame of Wood and Stone the solid parts if we could suppose this Mill to have a power of nourishing it self by the Water it receiv'd and of repairing all the parts that were worn away whether of the Wood work or of the Stone feed it but with a constant stream and it would subsist and grind for ever And 't is the same thing for all other Artificial Machines of this nature if they had a faculty of nourishig themselves and repairing their parts And seeing those natural Machines we are speaking of the Body of Man and of other Animals have and enjoy this faculty why should they not be able to preserve themselves beyond that short period of time which is now the measure of their life Thus much we have said to shew the difficulty propos'd and inforce it We must now consider the true answer and resolution of it and to that purpose bring into view again those causes which we have assign'd both of the long periods of life before the Flood and of the short ones since That there was a perpetual Aequinox and stability of the Heavens before the Flood we have show'd both from History and Reason neither was there then any thing of Clouds Rains Winds Storms or unequal weather as will appear in the following Chapter And to this steddiness of Nature and universal calmness of the External World we have imputed those long periods of life which Men enjoy'd at that time As on the contrary when that great change and revolution happen'd to Nature at the Deluge and the Heavens and the Earth were cast in another mould then was brought in besides many other new Scenes that shortness and vanity in the life of Man and a general instability in all sublunary things but especially in the Animate World It is not necessary to show more than we have done already how that Primitive state of Nature contributed to long life neither is it requir'd that it should actively contribute but only be permissive and suffer our Bodies to act their parts for if they be not disturb'd nor any harm done them by External Nature they are built with art and strength enough to last many hundreds of years And as we observ'd before concerning the posture of the Earth that that which it had at first being simple and regular was not so much to be accounted for as its present posture which is irregular so likewise for the life of Man the difficulty is not why they liv'd so long in the old World that was their due and proper course but why our Bodies being made after the same manner should endure so short a time now This is it therefore which we must now make our business to give an account of namely how that vicissitude of Seasons inconstancy of the Air and unequal course of Nature which came in at the Deluge do shorten Life and indeed hasten the dissolution of all Bodies Animate or Inanimate In our Bodies we may consider three several qualities on dispositions and according to each whereof they suffer decay First Their continuity Secondly That disposition whereby the are capable of receiving nourishment which we may call Nutribility and Thirdly The Tone or Tonick disposition of the Organs whereby they perform their several functions In all these three respects they would decay in any state of Nature but far sooner and faster in the present state than in the Primaeval As for their Continuity we have noted before that all consistent Bodies must be less durable now than under that first order of the World because of the unequal and contrary motions of the Elements or of the Air and Aether that penetrato and pervade them and 't is part of that vanity which all things now are subject to to be more perishable than in their first Constitution If we should consider our Bodies only as breathing Statues consisting of those parts they do and of that tenderness the Air which we breath and wherewith we are continually incompast changing so often 'twixt moist and dry hot and cold a slew and eager motion these different actions and restless changes would sooner weaken and destroy the union of the parts than if they were always in a calm and quiet medium But it is not the gross and visible Continuity of the parts of our Body that frist dacays there are finer Textures that are spoil'd insensibly and draw on the decay of the rest such are those other two we mention'd That disposition and temper of the parts whereby they are fit to receive their full nourishment and especially that construction and texture of the Organs that are preparatory to this Nutrition The Nutribility of the Body depends upon a certain temperament in the parts soft and yielding which makes them open to the Blood and Juices in their Circulation and passage through them and mixing intimately and universally hold fast and retain many of their Particles as muddy Earth doth the parts of the Water that runs into it and mixeth with it And when these Nutritious Particles retain'd are more than the
Body spends that Body is in its growth as when they are fewer 't is in its decay And as we compar'd the flesh and tender parts when they are young and in a growing disposition to a muddy soil that opens to the Water swells and incorporates with it so when they become hard and dry they are like a sandy Earth that suffers the Water to glide through it without incorporating or retaining many of its parts and the sooner they come to this temper the sooner follows their decay For the same Causes that set limits to our Growth set also limits to our Life and he that can resolve that Question why the time of our Growth is so short will also be able to resolve the other in a good measure why the time of our Life is so short In both cases that which stops our progress is external Nature whose course while it was even and steddy and the ambient Air mild and balmy preserv'd the Body much longer in a fresh and fit temper to receive its full nourishment and consequently gave larger bounds both to our Growth and Life But the Third thing we mention'd is the most considerable The decay of the Organick parts and especially of the Organs preparatory to Nutrition This is the point chiefly to be examin'd and explain'd and therefore we will endeavour to state it fully and distinctly There are several functions in the Body of an Animal and several Organs for the conduct of them and I am of opinion that all the Organs of the Body are in the nature of Springs and that their action is Tonical The action of the Muscles is apparently so and so is that of the Heart and the Stomach and as for those parts that make secretions only as the Glandules and Parenchymata if they be any more than merely passive as Strainers 't is the Tone of the parts when distended that performs the separation And accordingly in all other active Organs the action proceeds from a Tone in the parts And this seems to be easily prov'd both as to our Bodies and all other Bodies for no matter that is not fluid hath any motion or action in it but in vertue of some Tone If matter be fluid its parts are actually in motion and consequently may impel or give motion to other Bodies but if it be solid or consistent the parts are not separate or separately mov'd from one another and therefore cannot impel or give motion to any other but in vertue of their Tone they having no other motion themselves Accordingly we see in Artificial Machines there are but two general sorts those that move by some fluid or volatile matter as Water Wind Air or some active Spirit And those which move by Springs or by the Tonick disposition of some part that gives motion to the rest For as for such Machines as act by weights 't is not the weight that is the active principle but the Air or Aether that impels it 'T is true the Body of an Animal is a kind of mixt Machine and those Organs that are the Primary parts of it partake of both these principles for there are Spirits and Liquors that do assist in the motions of the Muscles of the Heart and of the Stomach but we have no occasion to consider them at present but only the Tone of the solid Organs This being observ'd in the first place Wherein the force of our Organs consists we might here immediately subjoyn how this force is weaken'd and destroy'd by the unequal course of Nature which now obtains and consequently our Life shorten'd for the whole state and Oeconomy of the Body depends upon the force and action of these Organs But to understand the business more distinctly it will be worth our time to examine upon which of the Organs of the Body Life depends more immediately and the prolongation of it that so reducing our Inquiries into a narrower compass we may manage them with more ease and more certainty In the Body of Man there are several Compages or setts of parts some whereof need not be consider'd in this question There is that Systeme that serves for sence and local-motion which is commonly call'd the ANIMAL Compages and that which serves for generation which is call'd the GENITAL These have no influence upon long Life being parts nourished not nourishing and that are fed from others as Rivers from their Fountain Wherefore having laid these aside there remain two Compages more the NATURAL and VITAL which consist of the Heart and Stomach with their appendages These are the Sources of Life and these are all that is absolutely necessary to the constitution of a Living Creature what parts we find more few or many of one sort or other according to the several kinds of Creatures is accidental to our purpose The form of an Animal as we are to consider it here lies in this little compass and what is superadded is for some new purposes besides that of meer Life as for Sense Motion Generation and such like As in a Watch besides the Movement which is made to tell you the hour of the day which constitutes a Watch you may have a fancy to have an Alarum added or a Minute-motion or that it should tell you the day of the Month and this sometimes will require a new Spring sometimes only new Wheels however if you would examine the Nature of a Watch and upon what its motion or if I may so say its Life depends you must lay aside those secondary Movements and observe the main Spring and the Wheels that immediately depend upon that for all the ret is accidental So for the Life of an Animal which is a piece of Nature's Clockwork if we would examine upon what the duration of it depends we must lay aside those additional parts or Systems of parts which are for other purposes and consider only the first principles and fountains of Life and the causes of their natural and necessary decay Having thus reduc'd our Inquiries to these two Organs The Stomach and the Heart as the two Master-Springs in the Mechanism of an Animal upon which all the rest depend let us now see what their action is and how it will be more or less durable and constant according to the different states of External Nature We determin'd before that the force and action of all Organs in the Body was Tonical and of none more remarkably than of these two the Heart and Stomach for though it be not clearly determin'd what the particular structure of these Organs or of their Fibres is that makes them Tonical yet 't is manifest by their actions that they are so In the Stomach besides a peculiar ferment that opens and dissolves the parts of the Meat and melts them into a fluor or pulp the coats of it or Fibres whereof they consist have a motion proper to them proceeding from their Tone whereby they close the Stomach and compress the Meat when it is
receiv'd and when turn'd into Chyle press it forwards and squeeze it into the Intestines and the Intestines also partaking of the same motion push and work it still forwards into those little Veins that convey it towards the Heart The Heart hath the same general motions with the Stomach of opening and shutting and hath also a peculiar ferment which rarifies the Bloud that enters into it and that Bloud by the Spring of the Heart and the particular Texture of its Fibres is thrown out again to make its Circulation through the Body This is in short the action of both these Organs and indeed the mystery of the Body of an Animal and of its operations and Oeconomy consists chiefly in Springs and Ferments The one for the solid parts the other in the fluid But to apply this Fabrick of the organick parts to our purpose we may observe and conclude that whatsoever weakens the Tone or Spring of these two Organs which are the Bases of all Vitality weaken the principle of Life and shorten the natural duration of it And if of two Orders or Courses of Nature the one be favourable and easie to these Tonick principles in the Body and the other uneasie and prejudicial that course of Nature will be attended with long periods of Life and this with short And we have shewn that in the Primitive Earth the course of Nature was even steddy and unchangeable without either different qualities of the Air or unequal Seasons of the Year which must needs be more easie to these principles we speak of and permit them to continue longer in their strength and vigour than they can possibly do under all those changes of the Air of the Atmosphere and of the Heavens which we now suffer yearly monthly and daily And though Sacred History had not acquainted us with the Longaevity of the Ante-diluvian Patriarchs nor profane History with those of the Golden Age I should have concluded from the Theory alone and the contemplation of that state of Nature that the forms of all things were much more permanent in that World than in ours and that the lives of Men and all other Animals had longer periods I confess I am of opinion that 't is this that makes not only these living Springs or Tonick Organs of the Body but all Artificial Springs also though made of the hardest Metal decay so fast The different pressure of the Atmosphere sometimes heavier sometimes lighter more rare or more dense moist or dry and agitated with different degrees of motion and in different manners this must needs operate upon that nicer contexture of Bodies which makes them Tonical or Elastick altering the figure or minuteness of the pores and the strength and order of the Fibres upon which that propriety depends bending and unbending closing and opening the parts There is a subtle and Aethereal Element that traverseth the pores of all Bodies and when 't is straiten'd and pent up there or stopt in its usual course and passage its motion is more quick and eager as a Current of Water when 't is obstructed or runs through a narrower Chanel and that strife and those attempts which these little active Particles make to get free and follow the same tracts they did before do still press upon the parts of the Body that are chang'd to redress and reduce them to their first and Natural posture and in this consists the force of a Spring Accordingly we may observe that there is no Body that is or will be Tonical or Elastick if it be left to it self and to that posture it would take naturally for then all the parts are at ease and the subtle matter moves freely and uninterruptedly within its pores but if by distention or by compression or by flexion or any other way the situation of the parts and pores be so alter'd that the Air sometimes but for the most part that subtiler Element is uneasie and comprest too much it causeth that renitency or tendency to restitution which we call the Tone or Spring of a Body Now as this disposition of Bodies doth far more easily perish than their Continuity so I think there is nothing that contributes more to its perishing whether in Natural or Artificial Springs than the unequal action and different qualities of the Aether Air and Atmosphere It will be objected to us it may be that in the beginning of the Chapter we instanc'd in Artificial things that would continue for ever if they had but the power of nourishing themselves as Lamps Mills and such like why then may not Natural Machines that have that power last for ever The case is not the same as to the Bodies of Animals and the things there instanc'd in for those were springless Machines that act only by some external cause and not in vertue of any Tone or interiour temper of the parts as our Bodies do and when that Tone or temper is destroy'd no nourishment can repair it There is something I say irreparable in the Tonical disposition of matter which when wholly lost cannot be restor'd by Nutrition Nutrition may answer to a bare consumption of parts but where the parts are to be preserv'd in such a temperament or in such a degree of humidity and driness warmth rarity or density to make them capable of that nourishment as well as of their other operations as Organs which is the case of our Bodies there the Heavens the Air and external Causes will change the qualities of the matter in spite of all Nutrition and the qualities of the matter being chang'd in a course of Nature where the Cause cannot be taken away that is a fault incorrigible and irreparable by the nourishment that follows being hinder'd of its effect by the indisposition or incapacity of the Recipient And as they say a fault in the first concoction cannot be corrected in the second so neither can a fault in the Prerequisites to all the concoctions be corrected by any of them I know the Ancients made the decay and term of Life to depend rather upon the humours of the Body than the solid parts and suppos'd an Humidum radicale and a Calidum innatum as they call them a Radical Moisture and Congenit heat to be in every Body from its birth and first formation and as these decay'd life decay'd But who 's wiser for this account what doth this instruct us in We know there is heat and moisture in the Body and you may call the one Radical and the other Innate if you please this is but a sort of Cant for we know no more of the real Physical Causes of that effect we enquir'd into than we did before What makes this heat and moisture fail if the nourishment be good and all the Organs in their due strength and temper The first and original failure is not in the fluid but in the solid parts which if they continued the same the humours would do so too Besides What befel this
Radical moisture and heat at the Deluge that it should decay so fast afterwards and last so long before There is a certain temper no doubt of the juices and humours of the Body which is more fit than any other to conserve the parts from driness and decay but the cause of that driness and decay or other inhability in the solid parts whence is that if not from external Nature 'T is thither we must come at length in our search of the reasons of the Natural decay of our Bodies we follow the fate and Laws of that and I think by those Causes and in that order that we have already describ'd and explain'd To conclude this Discourse we may collect from it what judgment is to be made of those Projectors of Immortality or undertakers to make Men live to the Age of Methusalah if they will use their methods and medicines There is but one method for this To put the Sun into his old course or the Earth into its first posture there is no other secret to prolong life Our Bodies will sympathize with the general course of Nature nothing can guard us from it no Elixir no Specifick no Philosopher's-stone But there are Enthusiasts in Philosophy as well as in Religion Men that go by no principles but their own conceit and fancy and by a Light within which shines very uncertainly and for the most part leads them out of the way of truth And so much for this disquisition concerning the Causes of Longaevity or of the long and short periods of Life in the different periods of the World That the Age of the Ante-diluvian Patriarchs is to be computed by Solar or common Years not by Lunar or Months Having made this discourse of the unequal periods of life only in reference to the Ante diluvians and their fam'd Longaevity lest we should seem to have proceeded upon an ill-grounded and mistaken supposition we are bound to take notice of and confute That Opinion which makes the Years of the Ante-diluvian Patriarchs to have been Lunar not Solar and so would bear us in hand that they liv'd only so many Months as Scripture saith they liv'd Years Seeing there is nothing could drive Men to this bold interpretation but the incredibility of the thing as they fansied They having no Notions or Hypothesis whereby it could appear intelligible or possible to them and seeing we have taken away that stumbling-stone and shew'd it not only possible but necessary according to the constitution of that World that the periods of Life should be far longer than in this by removing the ground or occasion of their misinterpretation we hope we have undeceiv'd them and let them see that there is no need of that subterfuge either to prevent an incongruity or save the credit of the Sacred Historian But as this opinion is inconsistent with Nature truly understood so is it also with common History for besides what I have already mention'd in the first Chapter of this Book Iosephus tells us that the Historians of all Nations both Greeks and Barbarians give the same account of the first Inhabitants of the Earth Manetho who writ the story of the Aegyptians Berosus who writ the Chaldaean History and those Authors that have given us an account of the Phoenician Antiquities besides Molus and Hestiaeus and Hieronymus the Aegyptian and amongst the Greeks Hesiodus Hecateus Hellanicus Acusilaus Ephorus and Nicolaus We have the Suffrages of all these and their common consent that in the first Ages of the World Men liv'd a thousand Years Now we cannot well suppose that all these Historians meant Lunar Years or that they all conspir'd together to make and propagate a Fable Lastly as Nature and Profane History do disown and confute this opinion so much more doth Sacred History not indeed in profess'd terms for Moses doth not say that he useth Solar Years but by several marks and observations or collateral Arguments it may be clearly collected that he doth not use Lunar As first because He distinguisheth Months and Years in the History of the Deluge and of the life of Noah for Gen. 7. 11. he saith in the six hundredth year of Noah's life in the second month c. It cannot be imagin'd that in the same verse and sentence these two terms of Year and Month should be so confounded as to signifie the same thing and therefore Noah's Years were not the same with Months nor consequently those of the other Patriarchs for we have no reason to make any difference Besides what ground was there or how was it proper or pertinent to reckon as Moses does there first second third Month as so many going to a Year if every one of them was a Year And seeing the Deluge begun in the six hundredth year of Noah's life and in the second Month and ended in the six hundredth and first Year Chap. 8. 13. the first or second Month all that was betwixt these two terms or all the duration of the Deluge made but one year in Noah's life or it may be not so much and we know Moses reckons a great many Months in the duration of the Deluge so as this is a demonstration that Noah's years are not to be understood of Lunar And to imagine that his Years are to be understood one way and those of his fellow-Patriarchs another would be an inaccountable fiction This Argument therefore extends to all the Ante-diluvians And Noah's life will take in the Post-diluvians too for you see part of it runs amongst them and ties together the two Worlds so that if we exclude Lunar years from his life we exclude them from all those of his Fathers and those of his Children Secondly If Lunar years were understood in the Ages of the Ante-diluvian Patriarchs the interval betwixt the Creation and the Deluge would be too short and in many respects incongruous There would be but 1656 months from the beginning of the World to the Flood which converted into common years make but 127 years and five months for that interval This perverts all Chronology and besides makes the number of people so small and inconsiderable at the time of the Deluge that destroying of the World then was not so much as destroying of a Country Town would be now For from one couple you cannot well imagine there could arise above five hundred persons in so short a time but if there was a thousaâ—d 't is not so many as we have sometimes in a good Country Village And were the Flood-gates of Heaven open'd and the great Abyss broken up to destroy such an handful of people and the Waters rais'd fifteen Cubits above the highest Mountains throughout the face of the Earth to drown a Parish or two is not this more incredible than our Age of the Patriarchs Besides This short interval doth not leave room for Ten Generations which we find from Adam to the Flood nor allows the Patriarchs age enough at the time when they are said
to have got Children One hundred twenty seven years for Ten Generations is very strait and of these you must take off forty six years for one Generation only or for Noah for he liv'd six hundred years before the Flood and if they were Lunar they would come however to forty six of our years so that for the other Nine Generations you would have but eighty one years that is nine years a-piece at which Age they must all be suppos'd to have begun to get Children which you cannot but think a very absurd supposition Thus it would be if you divide the whole time equally amongst the Nine Generations but if you consider some single instances as they are set down by Moses 't is still worse for Mahaleel and his Grandchild Enoch are said to have got Children at sixty five years of Age which if you suppose months they were but five years old at that time now I appeal to any one Whether it is more incredible that men should live to the age of nine hundred years or that they should beget Children at the age of five years You will say it may be 't is true these inconveniences follow if our Hebrew Copies of the Old Testament be Authentick but if the Greek Translation by the Septuagint be of better Authority as some would have it to be that gives a little relief in this case for the Septuagint make the distance from the Creation to the Flood six hundred years more than the Hebrew Text does and so give us a little more room for our Ten Generations And not only so but they have so conveniently dispos'd those additional years as to salve the other inconvenience too of the Patriarchs having Children so young for what Patriarchs are found to have got Children sooner than the rest and so soon that upon a computation by Lunar years they would be but meer Children themselves at that time to these more years are added and plac'd opportunely before the time of their getting Children so as one can scarce forbear to think that it was done on purpose to cure that inconvenience and to favour and protect the computation by Lunar years The thing looks so like an artifice and as done to serve a turn that one cannot but have a less opinion of that Chronology for it But not to enter upon that dispute at present methinks they have not wrought the cure effectually enough for with these six hundred Lunar years added the summ will be only one hundred seventy three common years and odd months and from these deducting as we did before for Noah forty six years and for Adam or the first Generation about eighteen for he was two hundred and thirty years old according to the Septuagint when he begot Seth there will remain but one hundred and nine years for eight Generations which will be thirteen years a-piece and odd months a low age to get children in and to hold for eight Generations together Neither is the other inconvenience we mention'd well cur'd by the Septuagint account namely the small number of people that would be in the World at the Deluge for the Septuagint account if understood of Lunar years adds but forty six common years to the Hebrew account and to the age of the World at the Deluge in which time there could be but a very small accession to the number of Mankind So as both these incongruities continue though not in the same degree and stand good in either account if it be understood of Lunar years Thirdly 'T is manifest from other Texts of Scripture and from other considerations that our first Fathers liv'd very long and considerably longer than men have done since whereas if their years be interpreted Lunar there is not one of them that liv'd to the age that Men do now Methusalah himself did not reach threescore and fifteen years upon that interpretation Which doth depress them not only below those that liv'd next to the Flood but below all following Generations to this day and those first Ages of the World which were always celebrated for strength and vivacity are made as weak and feeble as the last dregs of Nature We may observe that after the Flood for some time till the pristine Crasis of the Body was broken by the new course of Nature they liv'd five four three two hundred years and the Life of Men shortn'd by degrees but before the Flood when they liv'd longer there was no such decrease or gradual declension in their lives For Noah who was the last liv'd longer than Adam and Methusalah who was last but two liv'd the longest of all So that it was not simply their distance from the beginning of the World that made them live a shorter time but some change which happen'd in Nature after such a period of time namely at the Deluge when the declension begun Let 's set down the Table of both states A Table of the Ages of the Ante-diluvian Fathers  Years Adam 930 Seth 912 Enos 905 Cainan 910 Mahaleel 895 Iared 962 Enoch 365 Methusalah 969 Lamech 777 Noah 950 A Table of the Ages of the Post-diluvian Fathers from Shem to Joseph  Years Shem 600 Arphaxad 438 Salah 433 Eber 464 Peleg 239 Reu 239 Serug 230 Nahor 148 Terah 205 Abraham 175 Isaac 180 Iacob 147 Ioseph 110 From these Tables we see that Mens Lives were much longer before the Flood and next after it than they are now which also is confirm'd undeniably by Iacob's complaint of the shortness of his life in comparison of his Fore-fathers when he had liv'd one hundred and thirty years Gen. 47. 9. The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years few and evil have the days of the years of my life been and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my Fathers There was then 't is certain long-liv'd men in the World before Iacob's time when were they before the Flood or after We say both according as the Tables shew it But if you count by Lunar years there never were any either before or after and Iacob's complaint was unjust and false for he was the oldest Man in the World himself or at least there was none of his Fore-fathers that liv'd so long as he The Patrons of this opinion must needs find themselves at a loss how or where to break off the account of Lunar years in Sacred History if they once admit it If they say that way of counting must only be extended to the Flood then they make the Post-diluvian Fathers longer liv'd than the Ante-diluvian did the Flood bring in Longaevity how could that be the cause of such an effect Besides if they allow the Post-diluvians to have liv'd six hundred common years that being clearly beyond the standard of our lives I should never stick at two or three hundred years more for the first Ages of the World If they extend their Lunar account to the
follows mobility or a capacity of being mov'd by an External Power but not actual or necessary Motion springing from it self For dimensions or length breadth and depth which is the Idea of Matter or of a Body do no way include local Motion or translation of parts on the contrary we do more easily and naturally conceive simple Extension as a thing steddy and fixt and if we conceive Motion in it or in its parts we must superadd something to our first thought and something that does not flow from Extension As when we conceive a Figure a Triangle Square or any other we naturally conceive it fixt or quiescent and if afterwards we imagine it in Motion that is purely accidental to the Figure in like manner it is accidental to Matter that there should be Motion in it it hath no inward principle from whence that can flow and its Nature is compleat without it Wherefore if we find Motion and Action in Matter which is of it self a dead in-active Mass this should lead us immediately to the Author of Nature or to some External Power distinct from Matter which is the Cause of all Motion in the World In single Bodies and single parts of Matter we readily believe and conclude that they do not move unless something move them and why should we not conclude the same thing of the whole mass If a Rock or Mountain cannot move it self nor divide it self either into great gobbets or into small powder why should it not be as impossible for the whole mass of Matter to do so 'T is true Matter is capable both of motion and rest yet to conceive it undivided undiversified and unmov'd is certainly a more simple Notion than to conceive it divided and mov'd and this being first in order of Nature and an adequate conception too we ought to enquire and give our selves an account how it came out of this state and by what Causes or as we said before how Motion came first into the World In the second place That diversity which we see in Nature both as to the qualities of Matter and the compositions of it being one step further than bare Motion ought also to be a further indication of the Author of Nature and to put us upon enquiry into the Causes of this diversity There is nothing more uniform than simple Extension nothing more the same throughout all of a piece and all of a sort similar and like to it self every where yet we find the matter of the Universe diversified a thousand ways into Heavens and Earth Air and Water Stars Meteors Light Darkness Stones Wood Animals and all Terrestrial Bodies These diversifications are still further removes from the natural unity and identity of Matter and a further argument of some external and superiour power that hath given these different forms â—o the several portions of Matter by the intervention of Motion For if you exclude the Author of Nature and suppose nothing but Matter in the World take whether Hypothesis you will either that Matter is without Motion of it self or that it is of it self in Motion there could not arise this diversity and these compositions in it If it was without Motion then the case is plain for it would be nothing but an hard inflexible lump of impenetrable extension without any diversity at all And if you suppose it mov'd of it self or to have an innate Motion that would certainly hinder all sort of natural concretions and compositions and in effect destroy all Continuity For Motion if it be essential to Matter it is essential to every Atome of it and equally diffus'd throughout all its parts and all those parts or Atomes would be equal to one another and as little as possible for if Matter was divided into parts by its own innate Motion that would melt it down into parts as little as possible and consequently all equal to one another there being no reason why you should stop those divisions or the effect of this innate impetus in any one part sooner than in another or in any part indeed till it was divided as much as was possible Wherefore upon this principle or in this method all the Matter of the Universe would be one liquid or volatile mass smaller than pin dust nay than Air or Aether And there would be no diversity of forms only another sort of identity from the former when we suppos'd it wholly without motion And so upon the whole you see that Matter whether we allow it Motion or no Motion could not come into that variety of tempers and compositions in which we find it in the World without the influence and direction of a Superiour External Cause which we call the Author of Nature But there is still a further and stronger Argument from this Head if we consider not only the diversity of Bodies that the mass of Matter is cut into but also that that diversity is regular and in some parts of it admirably artful and ingenious This will not only lead us to an Author of Nature but to such an Author as hath Wisdom as well as Power Matter is a brute Being stupid and senseless and though we should suppose it to have a force to move it self yet that it should be able to meditate and consult and take its measures how to frame a World a regular and beautiful structure consisting of such and such parts and Regions and adapted to such and such purposes this would be too extravagant to imagine to allow it not only Motion from it self but Wit and Judgment too and that before it came into any Organical or Animate composition You 'll say it may be The Frame of the World was not the result of counsel and consultation but of necessity Matter being once in Motion under the conduct of those Laws that are essential to it it wrought it self by degrees from one state into another till at length it came into the present form which we call the World These are words thrown out at random without any pretence of ground only to see if they can be confuted And so they may easily be for we have shown already that if Matter had innate Motion it would be so far from running into the orderly and well dispos'd frame of the World that it would run into no frame at all into no forms or compositions or diversity of Bodies but would either be all fluid or all solid either every single particle in a separate Motion or all in one continued mass with an universal tremor or inclination to move without actual separation and either of these two states is far from the form of a World Secondly As to the Laws of Motion as some of them are essential to Matter so others are not demonstrable but upon supposition of an Author of Nature And thirdly Though all the Laws of Motion be admitted they cannot bring Matter into the form of a World unless some measures be taken at first by an
intelligent Being I say some measures be taken to determine the primary Motions upon which the rest depend and to put them in a way that leads to the formation of a World The mass must be divided into Regions and Centers fixt and Motions appropriated to them and it must be consider'd of what magnitude the first Bodies or the first divisions of Matter should be and how mov'd Besides there must be a determinate proportion and certain degree of motion imprest upon the Universal Matter to qualifie it for the production of a World if the dose was either too strong or too weak the work would miscarry and nothing but infinite Wisdom could see thorough the effects of every proportion or every new degree of Motion and discern which was best for the beginning progress and perfection of a World So you see the Author of Nature is no way excluded or made useless by the Laws of Motion nor if Matter was promiscuously mov'd would these be sufficient causes of themselves to produce a World or that regular diversity of Bodies that compose it But 't is hard to satisfie Men against their inclinations or their interest And as the regularity of the Universe was always a great stumbling-stone to the Epicuraeans so they have endeavour'd to make shifts of all sorts to give an account and answer to it without recourse to an Intelligent Principle and for their last refuge they say That Chance might bring that to pass which Nature and Necessity could not do The Atoms might hit upon a lucky sett of Motions which though it were casual and fortuitous might happily lead them to the forming of a World A lucky hit indeed for Chance to frame a World But this is a meer shuffle and collusion for if there was nothing in Nature but Matter there could be no such thing as Chance all would be pure Mechanical Necessity and so this answer though it seem very different is the same in effect with the former and Epicurus with his Atomists are oblig'd to give a just mechanical account how all the parts of Nature the most compound and elaborate parts not excepted rise from their Atoms by pure necessity There could be no accidental concourse or coalition of them every step every motion every composition was fatal and necessary and therefore 't is nonsence for an Epicuraean to talk of Chance as Chance is oppos'd to Necessity and if they oppose it to Counsel and Wisdom 't is little better than non-sence to say the World and all its furniture rise by Chance in that notion of it But it will deserve our patience a little to give a more full and distinct answer to this seeing it reacheth all their pleas and evasions at once What proof or demonstration of Wisdom and Counsel can be given or can be desir'd that is not found in some part of the World Animate or Inanimate We know but a little portion of the Universe a meer point in comparison and a broken point too and yet in this broken point or some small parcels of it there is more of Art Counsel and Wisdom shown than in all the works of Men taken together or than in all our Artificial World In the construction of the Body of an Animal there is more of thought and contrivance more of exquisite invention and fit disposition of parts than is in all the Temples Palaces Ships Theaters or any other pieces of Architecture the World ever yet see And not Architecture only but all other Mechanism whatsoever Engines Clock-work or any other is not comparable to the Body of a living Creature Seeing then we acknowledge these artificial works wheresoever we meet with them to be the effects of Wit Understanding and Reason is it not manifest partiality or stupidity rather to deny the Works of Nature which excel these in all degrees to proceed from an Intelligent Principle Let them take any piece of Humane Art or any Machine fram'd by the Wit of Man and compare it with the Body of an Animal either for diversity and multiplicity of Workmanship or curiosity in the minute parts or just connexion and dependance of one thing upon another or fit subserviency to the ends propos'd of life motion use and ornament to the Creature and if in all these respects they find it superiour to any work of Humane production as they certainly must do why should it be thought to proceed from inferiour and senceless Causes ought we not in this as well as in other things to proportion the Causes to the Effect and to speak truth and bring in an honest Verdict for Nature as well as Art In the composition of a perfect Animal there are four several frames or compages joyn'd together The Natural Vital Animal and Genital Let them examine any one of these apart and try if they can find any thing defective or superfluous or any way inept for matter or form Let them view the whole Compages of the Bones and especially the admirable construction texture and disposition of the Muscles which are joyn'd with them for moving the Body or its parts Let them take an account of the little Pipes and Conduits for the Juices and the Liquors of their form and distribution Or let them take any single Organ to examine as the Eye or the Ear the Hand or the Heart In each of these they may discover such arguments of Wisdom and of Art as will either convince them or confound them though still they must leave greater undiscover'd We know little the insensible form and contexture of the parts of the Body nor the just method of their Action We know not yet the manner order and causes of the Motion of the Heart which is the chief Spring of the whole Machine and with how little exactness do we understand the Brain and the parts belonging to it Why of that temper and of that form How Motions are propagated there and how conserv'd How they answer the several operations of the Mind Why such little discomposures of it disturb our Senses and upon what little differences in this the great differences of Wits and Genius's depend Yet seeing in all these Organs whose make and manner of action we cannot discover we see however by the Effects that they are truly fitted for those offices to which Nature hath design'd them we ought in reason to admire that Art which we cannot penetrate At least we cannot but judge it a thing absurd that what we have not wit enough to find out or comprehend we should not allow to be an argument of wit and understanding in the Author or Inventor of it This would be against all Logick common Sense and common Decorum Neither do I think it possible to the mind of Man while we attend to evidence to believe that these and such like works of Nature came by Chance as they call it or without Providence forecast and Wisdom either in the first Causes or in the proximate in the design
or in the execution in the preparation to them or in the finishing of them Wherefore in my judgment if any be of this perswasion it cannot be so much the effect of their understanding as of their disposition and inclination and in moral things mens opinions do as often spring from the one as from the other For my part I do generally distinguish of two sorts of opinions in all men Inclination-opinions and Reason'd-opinions Opinions that grow upon Mens Complexions and Opinions that are the results of their Reason and I meet with very few that are of a temperament so equal or a constitution so even pois'd but that they incline to one sett of Opinions rather than another antecedently to all proofs of Reason And when they have espous'd their opinions from that secret sympathy then they find out as good Reasons as they can to maintain them and say nay think sometimes that 't was for the sake of those Reasons that they first imbrac'd them We may commonly distinguish these Inclination-opinions from the Rational because we find them accompanied with more Heat than Light a great deal of eagerness and impatience in defending of them and but slender arguments One might give instances of this both in Sects of Religion and Philosophy in Platonists Stoicks and Epicureans that are so by their temper more than their reason but to our purpose it will be sufficient to instance in one hearty Epicurean Lucretius who is manifestly such more from his inclination and the bent of his Spirit than from the force of Argument For though his suppositions be very precarious and his reasonings all along very slight he will many times strut and triumph as if he had wrested the Thunder out of Iove's right hand and a Mathematician is not more confident of his demonstration than he seems to be of the truth of his shallow Philosophy From such a principle of natural Complexion as this I allow a man may be Atheistical but never from the calm dictate of his Reason yet he may be as confident and as tenacious of his Conclusion as if he had a clear and distinct evidence for it For I take it to be a true Maxim in Humane Nature that A strong inclination with a little evidence is equivalent to a strong evidence And therefore we are not to be surprisâ—d if we find Men confident in their opinions many times far beyond the degree of their evidence seeing there are other things besides evidence that incline the Will to one Conclusion rather than another And as I have instanc'd in Natural Complexion so Interest hath the same effect upon Humane Nature because it always begets an inclination to those opinions that favour our interest and a disinclination to the contrary And this principle may be another ingredient and secret perswasive to Atheism for when men have run themselves so deep into Vice and Immorality that they expect no benefit from a God 't is in a manner necessary to their quiet and the ease of their mind that they should fansie there is none for they are afraid if there be a God that he will not stand neuter and let them alone in another World This I say is necessary to the quiet of their mind unless they can attain that great Art which many labour after of non-reflection or an unthinking faculty as to God and a World to come but to return to our Argument after this short digression And as that regular diversity which we see in the forms of Nature and especially in the Bodies of Animals could not be from any blind principle either of Necessity or of Chance So in the last place that Subordination which we see in the parts of Nature and subserviency to one another the less Noble to the more Noble the Inanimate to the Animate and all things upon Earth unto Man must needs have been the effect of some Being higher than Matter that did wisely dispose all things so at first and doth still conserve them in the same order If Man had been born into the World and a numerous host of Creatures without any provision or accommodation made for their subsistence and conveniences we might have suspected that they had come by Chance and therefore were so ill provided for but which of them can complain through their various Kinds and Orders what is there awanting They are all fitted to their several Elements and their ways of living Birds Beasts and Fishes both by the form and shape of their Bodies the manner of their covering and the quality of their food Besides They are instructed in little Arts and Instincts for their conservation and not only for their proper conservation but also to find a way to make and bring up young ones and leave behind them a Posterity And all this in so fit a method and by such a pretty train of actions as is really admirable Man is the Master of all and of him a double care is taken that he should neither want what Nature can afford nor what Art can supply He could not be provided of all conveniences by Nature only especially to secure him against the inâ—uries of the Air but in recompence Nature hath provided materials for all those Arts which she see would be needful in Humane Life as Building Cloathing Navigation Agriculture c. That so Mankind might have both wherewithal to answer their occasions and also to imploy their time and exercise their ingenuity This Oeconomy of Nature as I may call it or well ordering of the great Family of living Creatures is an argument both of Goodness and of Wisdom and is every way far above the powers of brute Matter All regular administration we ascribe to conduct and judgment If an Army of Men be well provided for in things necessary both for Food Cloaths Arms Lodging Security and Defence so as nothing is awanting in so great a multitude we suppose it the effect of care and forecast in those persons that had the charge of it they took their measures at first computed and proportion'd one thing to another made good regulations and gave orders for convenient supplies And can we suppose the great Army of Creatures upon Earth manag'd and provided for with less fore-thought and Providence nay with none at all by meer Chance This is to recede from all rules and analogy of Reason only to serve a turn and gratifie an unreasonable humour To conclude this Argument There are two general Heads of things if I recollect aright which we make the marks and characters of Wisdom and Reason Works of Art and the Conduct of affairs or direction of means to an end and wheresoever we meet either with regular material works or a regular ordination of affairs we think we have a good title and warrant to derive them from an intelligent Author Now these two being found in the Natural World and that in an eminent degree the one in the Frame of it and the other in the
Mechanical By these you discover the footsteps of the Divine Art and Wisdom and trace the progress of Nature step by step as distinctly as in Artificial things where we see how the Motions depend upon one another in what order and by what necessity God made all things in Number Weiâ—ht and Measure which are Geometrical and Mechanical Principles He is not said to have made things by Forms and Qualities or any combination of Qualities but by these three principles which may be conceiv'd to express the subject of three Mathematical Sciences Number of Arithmetick Weight of Staticks and Measure and Proportion of Geometry If then all things were made according to these principles to understand the manner of their construction and composition we must proceed in the search of them by the same principles and resolve them into these again Besides The nature of the subject does direct us sufficiently for when we contemplate or treat of Bodies and the Material World we must proceed by the modes of Bodies and their real properties such as can be represented either to Sense or Imagination for these faculties are made for Corporeal Things but Logical Notions when appli'd to particular Bodies are meer shadows of them without light or substance No Man can raise a Theory upon such grounds nor calculate any revolutions of Nature nor render any service or invent any thing useful in Humane Life And accordingly we see that for these many Ages that this dry Philosophy hath govern'd Christendom it hath brought forth no fruit produc'd nothing good to God or Man to Religion or Humane Society To these True Principles of Philosophy we must joyn also the True System of the World That gives scope to our thoughts and rational grounds to work upon but the Vulgar System or that which Aristotle and others have propos'd affords no matter of contemplation All above the Moon according to him is firm as Adamant and as immutable no change or variation in the Universe but in those little removes that happen here below one quality or form shifting into another there would therefore be no great exercise of Reason or Meditation in such a World no long Series's of Providence The Regions above being made of a kind of immutable Matter they would always remain in the same form structure and qualities So as we might lock up that part of the Universe as to any further Inquiries and we should find it ten thousand years hence in the same form and state wherein we left it Then in this Sublunary World there would be but very small doings neither things would lie in a narrow compass no great revolution of Nature no new Form of the Earth but a few anniversary Corruptions and Generations and that would be the short and the long of Nature and of Providence according to Aristotle But if we consider the Earth as one of those many Planets that move about the Sun and the Sun as one of those innumerable fixt Stars that adorn the Universe and are the Centers of its greatest Motions and all this subject to fate and change to corruptions and renovations This opens a large Field for our Thoughts and gives a large subject for the exercise and expansion of the Divine Wisdom and Power and for the glory of his Providence In the last place Having thus prepar'd your Mind and the subject for the Contemplation of Natural Providence do not content your self to consider only the present face of Nature but look back into the first Sources of things into their more simple and original states and observe the progress of Nature from one form to another through various modes and compositions For there is no single Effect nor any single state of Nature how perfect soever that can be such an argument and demonstration of Providence as a Period of Nature or a revolution of several states consequential to one another and in such an order and dependance that as they flow and succeed they shall still be adjusted to the periods of the Moral World so as to be ready always to be Ministers of the Divine Justice or beneficence to Mankind This shows the manifold riches of the Wisdom and Power of God in Nature And this may give us just occasion to reflect again upon Aristotle's System and method which destroys Natural Providence in this respect also for he takes the World as it is now both for Matter and Form and supposeth it to have been in this posture from all Eternity and that it will continue to Eternity in the same so as all the great turns of Nature and the principal scenes of Providence in the Natural World are quite struck out and we have but this one Scene for all and a pitiful one too if compar'd with the Infinite Wisdom of God and the depths of Providence We must take things in their full extent and from their Origins to comprehend them well and to discover the Mysteries of Providence both in the Causes and in the Conduct of them That method which David followed in the Contemplation of the Little World or in the Body of Man we should also follow in the Great take it in its first mass in its tender principles and rudiments and observe the progress of it to a compleat form In these first stroaks of Nature are the secrets of her Art The Eye must be plac'd in this point to have a right prospect and see her works in a true light David admires the Wisdom of God in the Origin and formation of his Body My Body says He was not hid from thee when I was made in secret curiously wrought in the lower parts of the Earth Thine eyes did see my substance being yet unperfect and in thy Book all my members were written which in continuance were fashioned when as yet there was none of them or being at first in no form How precious are thy Thoughts to me O God c. This was the subject of David's Meditations how his Body was wrought from a shapeless mass into that marvellous composition which it had when fully fram'd and this he says was under the Eye of God all along and the model of it as it were was design'd and delineated in the Book of Providence according to which it was by degrees fashion'd and wrought to perfection Thine eyes did see my substance yet being imperfect in thy Book all my members were drawn c. Iob also hath aptly exprest those first rudiments of the Body or that little Chaos out of which it riseth Hast thou not poured me out as Milk and crudled me like Cheese Thou hast cloathed me with Skin and Flesh and fenced me with Bones and Sinews Where he notes the first Matter and the last Form of his Body its compleat and most incompleat state According to those examples we must likewise consider the Greater Bodies of Nature The Earth and the Sublunary World we must go to the Origin of them the Seminal Mass
Concerning miraculous Causes and how far the ministery of Angels may be engaged in this Work WE have given an account in the preceding Chapter of the ordinary preparatious of Nature for a general fire We now are to give an account of the extraordinary or of any new dispositions which towards the End of the World may be superadded to the ordinary state of Nature I do not by these mean things openly miraculous and supernatural but such a change wrought in Nature as shall still have the face of Natural Causes and yet have a greater tendency to the Conflagration As for example suppose a great Drought as we noted before to precede this fate or a general heat and dryness of the Air and of the Earth because this happens sometimes in a course of Nature it will not be lookt upon as prodigious 'T is true some of the Ancients speak of a Drought of Forty Years that will be a forerunner of the Conflagration so that there will not be a watery Cloud nor a Rainbow seen in the Heavens for so long time And this they impute to Elias who at his coming will stop the Rain and shut up the Heavens to make way for the last Fire But these are excessive and ill-grounded suppositions for half forty years drought will bring an universal sterility upon the Earth and thereupon an Universal Famine with innumerable diseases so that all mankind would be destroyed before the Conflagration could overtake them But we will readily admit an extraordinary drought and desiccation of all bodies to usher in this great fatality And therefore whatsoever we read in Natural History concerning former droughts of their drying up Fountains and Rivers parching the Earth and making the outward Turf take fire in several places filling the Air with fiery impressions making the Woods and Forests ready Fewel and sometimes to kindle by the heat of the Sun or a flash of Lightning These and what other effects have come to pass in former droughts may come to pass again and that in an higher measure and so as to be of more general extent And we must also allow that by this means a great degree of inflammability or easiness to be set on Fire will be superinduc'd both into the body of the Earth and of all things that grow upon it The heat of the Sun will pierce deeper into its bowels when it gapes to receive his beams and by chinks and widened pores makes way for their passage to its very heart And on the other hand it is not improbable but that upon this general relaxation and incalescency of the Body of the Earth the General Fire may have a freer efflux and diffuse it self in greater abundance every way so as to affect even these exteriour Regions of the Earth so far as to make them still more catching and more combustible From this external and internal heat acting upon the Body of the Earth all Minerals that have the seeds of fire in them will be open'd and exhale their effluvium's more copiously as Spices when warm'd are more odoriferous and fill the Air with their perfumes so the particles of fire that are shut up in several bodies will easily flie abroad when by a further degree of relaxation you shake off their chains and open the Prison-doors We cannot doubt but there are many sorts of Minerals and many sorts of Fire-stones and of Trees and Vegetables of this nature which will sweat out their oily and sulphureous atomes when by a general heat and driness their parts are loosen'd and agitated We have no experience that will reach so far as to give us a full account what the state of Nature will be at that time I mean after this drought towards the end of the world But we may help our imagination by comparing it with other seasons and temperaments of the Air. As therefore in the Spring the Earth is fragrant and the Fields and Gardens are fill'd with the sweet breathings of Herbs and Flowers especially after a gentle rain when their Bodies are softned and the warmth of the Sun makes them evaporate more freely So a greater degree of heat acting upon all the bodies of the Earth like a stronger fire in the Alembick will extract another sort of parts or particles more deeply incorporated and more difficult to be disintangled I mean oily parts and such undiscover'd parcels of fire as lie fix'd and imprison'd in hard bodies These I imagine will be in a great measure set a float on drawn out into the Air which will abound with hot and dry Exhalations more than with vapours and moisture in a wet season and by this means all Elements and elementary Bodies will stand ready and in a proximate disposition to be inflam'd Thus much concerning the last drought and the general effects of it In the next place we must consider the Earthquakes that will precede the Conflagration and the consequences of them I noted before that the cavernous and broken construction of the present Earth was that which made it obnoxious to be destroy'd by fire as its former construction over the Abyss made it obnoxious to be destroy'd with Water This hollowness of the Earth is most sensible in mountainous and hilly Countreys which therefore I look upon as most subject to burning but the plain Countreys may also be made hollow and hilly by Earth-quakes when the vapours not finding an easie vent raise the ground and make a forcible eruption as at the springing of a Mine And tho' plain Countreys are not so subject to Earthquakes as Mountainous because they have not so many cavities and subterraneous Vaults to lodge the vapours in yet every Region hath more or less of them And after this drought the vacuities of the Earth being every where enlarg'd the quantity of exhalations much encreas'd and the motion of them more strong and violent they will have their effects in many places where they never had any before Yet I do not suppose that this will raise new ridges of Mountains like the Alpes or Pyreneans in those Countreys that are now plain but that they will break and loosen the ground make greater inequalities in the surface and greater cavities within than what are at present in those places And by this means the fire will creep under them and find a passage thorow them with more ease than if they were compact and every where continued and unbroken But you will say it may be how does it appear that there will be more frequent Earth-quakes towards the end of the World If this precedent drought be admitted 't is plain that fiery exhalations will abound every where within the Earth and will have a greater agitation than ordinary and these being the causes of Earth-quakes when they are rarified or inflam'd 't is reasonable to suppose that in such a state of Nature they will more frequently happen than at other times Besides Earth-quakes are taken notice of in Scripture as signs
is burning will be the last consum'd And I am apt to think if they could keep in the same posture they stand in now and preserve themselves from falling the fire could never get an entire power over them But Mountains are generally hollow and that makes them subject to a double casualty First Of Earth-quakes Secondly Of having their roots eaten away by Water or by Fire but by Fire especially in this case For we suppose there will be innumerable subterraneous Fires smothering under ground before the general Fire breaks out and these by corroding the bowels of the Earth will make it more hollow and more ruinous And when the Earth is so far dissolv'd that the cavities within the Mountains are fill'd with Lakes of Fire then the Mountains will sink and fall into those boyling Caldrons which in time will dissolve them tho' they were as hard as Adamant There is another Engine that will tear the Earth with great violence and rend in pieces whatsoever is above or about those parts of it And that is the Element of Water so gentle in it self when undisturb'd But 't is found by experience that when Water falls into liquid Metals it flies about with an incredible impetuosity and breaks or bears down every thing that wou'd stop its motion and expansion This force I take to come from the sudden and strong rarefaction of its parts which make a kind of explosion when it is sudden and vehement And this is one of the greatest forces we know in Nature Accordingly I am apt to think that the marvellous force of Volcano's when they throw out lumps of Rocks great fragments of Earth and other heavy Bodies to such a vast height and distance that it is done by this way of explosion And that explosion made by the sudden rarefaction of Sea-waters that fall into Pans or receptacles of molten Ore and ardent Liquors within the cavities of the Mountain and thereupon follow the noises roarings and eruptions of those places 'T is observ'd that Volcano's are in Mountains and generally if not always near the Sea And when its waters by subterraneous passages are driven under the Mountain either by a particular Wind or by a great agitation of the Waves they meet there with Metals and fiery Minerals dissolv'd and are immediately according to our supposition rarefied and by way of explosion fly out at the mouth or funnel of the Mountain bearing before then whatsoever stands in their way Whether this be a true account or no of the present Volcano's and their Eruptions 't is manifest that such cases as we have mention'd will happen in the Conflagration of the Earth and that such eruptions or disruptions of the Earth will follow thereupon and that these will contribute very much to the sinking of Mountains the splitting of Rocks and the bringing of all strong Holds of Nature under the power of the General Fire To conclude this point the Mountains will all be brought low in that state of Nature either by Earthquakes or subterraneous fires Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill shall be made low Which will be literally true at the second coming of our Saviour as it was figuratively apply'd to his first coming Now being once level'd with the rest of the Earth the question will only be how they shall be dissolv'd But there is no Terrestrial Body indissolvable to Fire if it have a due strength and continuance and this last Fire will have both in the highest degrees So that it cannot but be capable of dissolving all Elementary compositions how hard or solid soever they be 'T is true these Mountains and Rocks as I said before will have the priviledge to be the last destroy'd These with the deep parts of the Sea and the Polar Regions of the Earth will undergo a flower fate and be consum'd more leisurely The action of the last Fire may be distinguish'd into two Times or two assaults The first assault will carry off all Mankind and all the works of the Earth that are easily combustible and this will be done with a quick and sudden motion But the second assault being employ'd about the consumption of such Bodies or such Materials as are not so easily subjected to fire will be of long continuance and the work of some years And 't is fit it should be so that this Flaming World may be view'd and consider'd by the neighbouring Worlds about it as a dreadful spectacle and monument of God's wrath against disloyal and disobedient Creatures That by this example now before their eyes they may think of their own fate and what may befal them as well as another Planet of the same Elements and composition Thus much for the Rocks and Mountains which you see according to our Hypothesis will be level'd and the whole face of the Earth reduc'd to plainness and equality nay which is more melted and dissolv'd into a Sea of liquid Fire And because this may seem a Paradox being more than is usually supposed or taken notice of in the doctrine of the Conflagration it will not be improper in this place to give an account wherein our Idea of the Conflagration and its effects differs from the common opinion and the usual representation of it 'T is commonly suppos'd that the Conflagration of the World is like the burning of a City where the Walls and materials of the Houses are not melted down but scorch'd inflam'd demolish'd and made unhabitable So they think in the Burning of the World such Bodies or such parts of Nature as are sit Fewel for the Fire will be inflam'd and it may be consum'd or reduc'd to smoke and ashes But other Bodies that are not capable of Inflammation will only be scorch'd and defac'd the beauty and furniture of the Earth spoil'd and by that means say they it will be laid wast and become unhabitable This seems to me a very short and imperfect Idea of the Conflagration neither agreeable to Scripture nor to the deductions that may be made from Scripture We therefore suppose that this is but half the work this destroying of the outward garniture of the Earth is but the first onset and that the Conflagration will end in a dissolution and liquefaction of the Elements and all the exteriour region of the Earth so as to become a true Deluge of Fire or a Sea of Fire overspreading the whole Globe of the Earth This state of the Conflagration I think may be plainly prov'd partly by the expressions of Scripture concerning it and partly from the Renovation of the Earth that is to follow upon it S. Peter who is our chief Guide in the doctrine of the Conflagration says The Elements will be melted with fervent heat besides burning up the works of the Earth Then adds Seeing all these things shall be dissolv'd c. These terms of Liquefaction and Dissolution cannot without violence be restrained to simple devastation and superficial scorching Such
as high and relating to the Natural World The Windows from on high are open and the foundations of the Earth do shake The Earth is utterly broken down the Earth is clean dissolv'd the Earth is moved exceedingly The Earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard and shall be removed like a Cottage and the transgression thereof shall be heavy upon it and it shall fall and not rise again To restrain all these things to Iudaea as their adequate and final object is to force both the words and the sence Here are manifest allusions and foot-steps of the destruction of the World and the dissolution of the Earth partly as it was in the Deluge and partly as it will be in its last ruine torn broken aâ—d shatter'd But most Men have fallen into that errour To fancy both the destructions of the World by Water and by Fire quiet noiseless things executed without any ruines or ruptures in Nature That the Deluge was but a great Pool of still Waters made by the rains and inundation of the Sea and the Conflagration will be only a superficial scorching of the Earth with a running fire These are false Idea's and unsuitable to Scripture for as the Deluge is there represented a Disruption of the Abyss and consequently of the then habitable Earth so the future combustion of it according to the representations of Scripture is to be usher'd in and accompanied with all sorts of violent impressions upon Nature and the chief instrument of these violences will be Earth-quakes These will tear the Body of the Earth and shake its foundations rend the Rocks and pull down the tall Mountains sometimes overturn and sometimes swallow up Towns and Cities disturb and disorder the Elements and make a general confusion in Nature Next to Earth-quakes we may consider the roarings of a troubled Sea This is another sign of a dying World S. Luke hath set down a great many of them together Let us hear his words And there shall be signs in the Sun and in the Moon and in the Stars and upon the Earth distress of Nations with perplexity The Sea and the Waves roaring Mens hearts failing them for fear and for looking after those things which are coming on the Earth for the powers of Heaven shall be shaken And then shall they see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory c. As some would allegorize these Signs which we noted before so others would confine them to the destruction of Ierusalem But 't is plain by this coming of the Son of man in the clouds and the redemption of the faithful and at the same time the sound of the last trumpet which all relate to the end of the World that something further is intended than the destruction of Ierusalem And though there were Prodigies at the destruction of that City and State yet not of this force nor with these circumstances 'T is true those partial destructions and calamities as we observ'd before of Babylon Ierusalem and the Roman Empire being types of an universal and final destruction of all Godâ—s Enemies have in the pictures of them some of the same strokes to show they are all from the same hand decreed by the same wisdom foretold by the same Spirit and the same power and Providence that have already wrought the one will also work the other in due time the former being still pledges as well as prefigurations of the latter Let us then proceed in our explication of this sign The roaring of the Sea and the Waves applying it to the end of the World I do not look upon this ominous noise of the Sea as the effect of a tempest for then it would not strike such a terror into the Inhabitants of the Earth nor make them apprehensive of some great evil coming upon the World as this will do what proceeds from visible causes and such as may happen in a common course of Nature does not so much amaze us nor affright us Therefore 't is more likely these disturbances of the Sea proceed from below partly by sympathy and revulsions from the Land by Earth-quakes there and exhausting the subterraneous cavities of Waters which will draw again from the Seas what supplies they can And partly by Earth-quakes in the very Sea it self with exhalations and fiery Eruptions from the bottom of it Things indeed that happen at other times more or less but at this conjuncture all causes conspiring they will break out with more violence and put the whole Body of the Waters into a tumultuary motion I do not see any occasion at this time for high Winds neither can think a superficial agitation of the Waves would answer this Phaenomenon but 't is rather from Contorsions in the bowels of the Ocean which make it roar as it were for pain Some Causes impelling the Waters one way and some another make intestine struglings and contrary motions from whence proceed unusual noises and such a troubled state of the Waters as does not only make the Sea innavigable but also strikes terror into all the Maritime Inhabitants that live within the view or sound of it So much for the Earth and the Sea The face of the Heavens also will be chang'd in divers respects The Sun and the Moon darkned or of a bloudy or pale countenance The Celestial Powers shaken and the Stars unsetled in their Orbs. As to the Sun and Moon their obscuration or change of colour is no more than what happens commonly before the Eruption of a fiery Mountain Dion Cassius you see hath taken notice of it in that Eruption of Aetna which he describes and others upon the like occasions in Vesuvius And 't is a thing of easie explication for according as the Atmosphere is more or less clear or turbid the Luminaries are more or less conspicuous and according to the nature of those fumes or exhalations that swim in the Air the face of the Sun is discolour'd sometimes one way sometimes another You see in an ordinary Experiment when we look upon one another through the fumes of Sulphur we appear pale like so many Ghosts and in some foggy days the Sun hangs in the Firmament as a lump of Bloud And botlâ— the Sun and Moon at their rising when their light comes to us through the thick vapours of the Earth are red and fiery These are not changes wrought in the substance of the Luminaries but in the modifications of their light as it flows to us For colours are but Light in a sort of disguise as it passes through Mediums of diffâ—rent qualities it takes different forms but the matter is still the same and returns to its simplicity when it comes again into a pure air Now the air may be changed and corrupted to a great degree tho' there appear no visible change to our eye This is manifest from infectious airs and the changes of the air before storms and rains which we feel
little people and the multitude cry'd Hosanna to the Son of David Nay This is the same Person that at his first comeing into this World was laid in a Manger instead of a Cradle A naked Babe dropt in a Crib at Bethlehem His poor Mother not having wherewithal to get her a better Lodging when she was to be deliver'd of this Sacred Burthen This helpless Infant that often wanted a little Milk to refresh it and support its weakness That hath often cry'd for the Breast with hunger and tears now appears to be the Lord of Heaven and Earth If this Divine Person had faln from the Clouds in a mortal Body cloath'd with Flesh and Bloud and spent his life here amongst sinners That alone had been an infinite condescension But as if it had not been enough to take upon him Humane Nature he was content for many months to live the life of an Animal or of a Plant in the dark Cell of a Womans Womb. This is the Lord 's doing it is marvellous in our eyes Neither is this all that is wonderful in the story of our Saviour If the manner of his death be compar'd with his present glory we shall think either the one or the other incredible Look up first into the Heavens see how they bow under him and receive a new light from the Glory of his Presence Then look down upon the Earth and see a naked Body hanging upon a cursed Tree in Golgotha â— Crucified betwixt Two Thieves wounded spit upon mock'd abus'd Is it possible to believe that one and the same person can act or suffer such different parts That he that is now Lord and Master of all Nature not only of Death and Hell and the powers of darkness but of all Principalities in heavenly places is the same Infant Jesus the same crucified Jesus of whose life and death the Christian records give us an account The History of this Person is the Wonder of this World and not of this World only but of the Angels above that desire to look into it Let us now return to our Subject We left the Earth in a languishing condition ready to be made a Burnt-offering to appease the wrath of its offended Lord. When Sodom was to be destroy'd Abraham interceded with God that he would spare it for the Righteous sake And David interceded to save his guiltless People from God's Judgments and the Destroying Angel But here is no Intercessor for Mankind in this last extremity None to interpose where the Mediator of our Peace is the party offended Shall then the righteous perish with the wicked Shall not the Iudge of all the Earth do right Or if the Righteous be translated and delivered from This Fire what shall become of innocent Children and Infants Must these all be given up to the merciless flames as a Sacrifice to Moloch and their tender flesh like burnt incense send up fumes to feed the nostrils of evil Spirits Can the God of Israel smell a sweet favour from such Sacrifices The greater half of Mankind is made up of Infants and Children and if the wicked be destroyed yet these Lambs what have they done Are there no bowels of compassion for such an harmless multitude But we leave them to their Guardian Angels and to that Providence which watches over all things It only remains therefore to let fall that Fire from Heaven which is to consume this Holocaust Imagine all Nature now standing in a silent expectation to receive its last doom The Tutelary and Destroying Angels to have their instructions Every thing to be ready for the fatal hour And then after a little silence all the Host of Heaven to raise their voice and sing aloud LET GOD ARISE Let his enemies be scatter'd As smoak is driven away so drive them away As wax melteth before the fire so LET the wicked perish at the presence of God And upon this as upon a signal given all the sublunary World breaks into Flames and all the Treasuries of Fire are open'd in Heaven and in Earth Thus the Conflagration begins If one should now go about to represent the World on Fire with all the confusions that necessarily must be in Nature and in Mankind upon that occasion it would seem to most Men a Romantick Scene yet we are sure there must be such a Scene The heavens will pass away with a noise and the Elements will melt with fervent heat and all the works of the Earth will be burm up And these things cannot come to pass without the greatest disorders imaginable both in the minds of Men and in external Nature and the â—addest spectacles that eye can behold We think it a great matter to see a single person burnt alive here are Millions shrieking in the flames at once 'T is frightful to us to look upon a great City in flames and to see the distractions and misery of the people here is an Universal Fire through all the Cities of the Earth and an Universal Massacre of their Inhabitants Whatsoever the Prophets foretold of the desolations of Iudea Ierusalem or Babylon in the highest strains is more than literally accomplinsn'd in this last and general Calamity And those only that are Spectators of it can make iâ—s History The disorders in Nature and the inanimate World will be no less nor less strange and unaccountable than those in Mankind Every Element and every Region so far as the bounds of this Fire extend will be in a tumult and a fury and the whole habitable World running into confusion A World is sooner destroyed than made and Nature relapses hastily into that Chaos-state ouâ— of which she came by slow and leisurely motions As an Army advances into the field by just and regular marches but when it is broken and routed it flies with precipitation and one cannot describe its posture Fire is a barbarous Enemy it gives no mercy there is nothing but fury and rage and ruine and destruction wheresoever it prevails A storm or Hurricano tho' it be but the force of Air makes a strange havock where it comes but devouring â—lames or exhalations set on Fire have still a far greater violence and carry more terror along with them â— Thunder and Earthquakes are the Sons of Fire and we know nothing in all Nature more impetuous or more irresistibly destructive than these two And accordingly in this last war of the Elements we may be sure they will bear theâ—â— parts and do great execution in the several regions of the World Earthquakes and Subterraneous Eruptions will tear the body and bowels of the Earth and Thunders and convulsive motions of the Air rend the Skies The waters of the Sea will boyl and struggle with streams of Sulphur that â—un into them which will make them fume and smoak and roar beyond all storms and tempests And these noises of the Sea will be answered again from the Land by falling Rocks and Mountains
requires much Learning Art or Science to be Master of it But a love and thirst after Truth freedom of Iudgment and a resignation of our Understanding to clear Evidence let it carry us which way it will An honest English Reader that looks only at the Sence as it lies before him and neither considers nor cares whether it be New or Old so it be true may be a more competent Iudge than a great Scholar fall of his own Notions and puff'd up with the opinion of his mighty knowledge For such men think they cannot in honour own any thing to be true which they did not know before To be taught any new knowledge is to confess their former ignorance and that lessens them in their own opinion and as they think in the opinion of the World which are both uneasie reflections to them Neither must we depend upon age only for soundness of Iudgment Men in discovering and owning truth seldom change their Opinions after threescore especially if they be leading Opinions It is then too late we think to begin the World again and as we grow old the Heart contracts and cannot open wide enough to take in a great thought The Spheres of mens Understandings are as different as Prospects upon the Earth Some stand upon a Rock or a Mountain and see far round about Others are in an hollow or in a Cave and have no prospect at all Some men consider nothing but what is present to their Senses Others extend their thoughts both to what is past and what is future And yet the fairest prospect in this Life is not to be compar'd to the least we shall have in another 〈◊〉 clearest day here is â—â—irty and hazy We see not far and what we do see is in a had light But when we have got better Bodies in the first Resurrection whereof we are going to Treat better Senses and a better Understanding a clearer light and an higher station our Horizon will be enlarg'd every way both as to the Natural World and as to the Intellecual Two of the greatest Speculations that we are capable of in this Life are in my Opinion The REVOLUTION OF WORLDS and the REVOLUTION OF SOULS one for the Material World and the other for the Intellectual Toward the former of these Our Theory is an Essay and in this our Planet which I hope to conduct into a Fix'd Star before I have done with it we give an instance of what may be in other Planets 'T is true we took our rise no higher than the Chaos because that was a known principle and we were not willing to amuse the Reader with too many strange Stories as that I am sure would have been thought one TO HAVE brought this Earth from a Fix'd Star and then carried it up again into the same Sphere Which yet I believe is the true circle of Natural Providence As to the Revolution of Souls the footsteps of that Speculation are more obscure than of the former For tho' we are assur'd by Scripture that all good Souls will at length have Celestial Bodies yet that this is a returning to a Primitive State or to what they had at their first Creation that Scripture has not acquainted us with It tells us indeed that Angels fell from their Primitive Celestial Glory and consequently we might be capable of a lapse as well as they if we had been in that high condition with them But that we ever were there is not declared to us by any revelation Reason and Morality would indeed suggest to us that an innocent Soul fresh and pure from the hands of its Maker could not be immediately cast into Prison before it had by any act of its own Will or any use of its own Understanding committed either error or sin I call this Body a Prison both because it is a confinement and restraint upon our best Faculties and Capacities and is also the seat of diseases and loathsomness and as prisons use to do commonly tends more to debauch mens Natures than to improve them But tho' we cannot certainly tell under what circumstances humane Souls were plac'd at first yet all Antiquity agrees Oriental and Occidental concerning their pre existence in general in respect of these mortal Bodies And our Saviour never reproaches or corrects the Jews when they speak upon that supposition Luk. 9. 18 19. Joh. 9. 2. Besides it seems to me beyond all controversie that the Soul of the Messiah did exist before the Incarnation and voluntarily descended from Heaven to take upon it a Mortal Body And tho' it does not appear that all humane Souls were at first plac'd in Glory yet from the example of our Saviour we see something greater in them Namely a capacity to be united to the Godhead And what is possible to one is possible to more But these thoughts are too high for us while we find our selves united to nothing but diseased bodies and houses of clay The greatest fault we can commit in such Speculations is to be over-positive and Dogmatical To be inquisitive into the ways of Providence and the works of God is so far from being a fault that it is our greatest perfection We cultivate the highest principles and best inclinations of our Nature while we are thus employ'd and 't is littleness or secularity of Spirit that is the greatest Enemy to Contemplation Those that would have a true contempt of this World must suffer the Soul to be sometimes upon the Wing and to raise her self above the sight of this little dark Point which we now inhabit Give her a large and free prospect of the immensity of God's works and of his inexhausted wisdom and goodness if you would make her Great and Good As the warm Philosopher says Give me a Soul so great so high Let her dimensions stretch the Skie That comprehends within a thought The whole extent 'twixt God and Nought And from the World's first birth and date Its Life and Death can calculate With all th' adventures that shall pass To ev'ry Atome of the Mass. But let her be as GOOD as GREAT Her highest Throne a Mercy-Seat Soft and dissolving like a Cloud Losing her self in doing good A Cloud that leaves its place above Rather than dry and useless move Falls in a showre upon the Earth And gives ten thousand Seeds a birth Hangs on the Flow'rs and infant Plants Sucks not their Sweets but feeds their Wants So let this mighty Mind diffuse All that 's her own to others use And free from private ends retain Nothing of SELF but a bare Name THE THEORY OF THE EARTH BOOK IV. Concerning the new Heavens and new Earth AND Concerning the Consummation of all things CHAP. I. THE INTRODVCTION That the World will not be annihilated in the last Fire That we are to expect according to Scripture and the Christian Doctrine New Heavens and a New Earth when these are dissolv'd or burnt up WE are now so far advanc'd
they be turn'd out of Being for our faults The whole material Universe will not be Annihilated at this bout for we are to have Bodies after the Resurrection and to live in Heaven How much of the Universe then will you leave standing or how shall it subsist with this great Vacuum in the heart of it This shell of a World is but the fiction of an empty Brain For God and Nature in their works never admit of such gaping vacuities and emptinesses If we consult Scripture again we shall find that that makes mention of a Restitution and Reviviscency of all things At the End of the World or at the Coming of our Saviour S. Peter whose doctrine we have hitherto followed in his Sermon to the Iews after our Saviour's Ascension tells them that He will come again and that there will be then a Restitution of all things such as was promised by the Prophets The Heavens says he must receive him until the time of Restitution of all things which God hath spoken by the mouth of his holy Prophets since the world began If we compare this passage of S. Peter's with that which we alledged before out of his second Epistle it can scarce be doubted but that he refers to the same Promises in both places and what he there calls a New Heaven and a New Earth he calls here a Restitution of all things For the Heavens and the Earth comprehend all and both these are but different phrases for the Renovation of the World This gives us also light how to understand what our Saviour calls the Regeneration or Reviviscency when he shall sit upon his Throne of Glory and will reward his followers an hundred fold for all their Losses in this World Besides Everlasting Life as the Crown of all I know in our English Translation we separate the Regeneration from sitting upon his Throne but without any warrant from the Original And seeing our Saviour speaks here of Bodily goods and seems to distinguish them from everlasting life which is to be the final reward of his Followers This Regeneration seems to belong to his Second Coming when the World shall be renew'd or regenerated and the Righteous shall possess the Earth Other places of Scripture that foretel the fate of this Material World represent it always as a Change not as an Annihilation S. Paul says The Figure of this World passes away 1 Cor. 7. 31. The form fashion and disposition of its parts But the substance still remains As a Body that is melted down and dissolv'd the Form perishes but the Matter is not destroy'd And the Psalmist says The Heavens and the Earth shall be chang'd which answers to this Transformation we speak of The same Apostle in the Eighth Chapter to the Romans shows also that this change shall be and shall be for the better and calls it a Deliverance of the Creation from vanity and corruption and a participation of the glorious liberty of the Children of God Being a sort of Redemption as they have a Redemption of their Bodies But seeing the Renovation of the World is a Doctrine generally receiv'd both by ancient and modern Authors as we shall have occasion to show hereafter We need add no more in this place for confirmation of it Some Men are willing to throw all things into a state of Nothing at the Conflagration and bury them there that they may not be oblig'd to give an account of that state of things that is to succeed it Those who think themselves bound in honour to know every thing in Theology that is knowable and find it uneasie to answer such questions and speculations as would arise upon their admitting a New World think it more adviseable to stifle it in the birth and so to bound all knowledge at the Conflagration But surely so far as Reason or Scripture lead us we may and ought to follow otherwise we should be ungrateful to Providence that sent us those Guides Provided we be always duly sensible of our own weakness and according to the difficulty of the subject and the measure of light that falls upon it proceed with that modesty and ingenuity that becomes such fallible enquirers after Truth as we are And this rule I desire to prescribe to my self as in all other Writings so especially in this where tho' I look upon the principal Conclusions as fully prov'd there are several particulars that are rather propos'd to examination than positively asserted CHAP. II. The Birth of the new Heavens and the new Earth from the second Chaos or the remains of the old World The form order and qualities of the new Earth according to Reason and Scripture HAving prov'd from Scripture that we are to expect New Heavens and a New Earth after the Conflagration it would be some pleasure and satisfaction to see how this new Frame will arise and what foundation there is in Nature for the accomplishment of these promises For tho' the Divine Power be not bound to all the Laws of Nature but may dispence with them when there is a necessity yet it is an ease to us in our belief when we see them both conspire in the same effect And in order to this we must consider in what posture we left the demolish'd World what hopes there is of a Restauration And we are not to be discourag'd because we see things at present wrapt up in a confus'd Mass for according to the methods of Nature and Providence in that dark Womb usually are the seeds and rudiments of an Embryo World Now as to the lower of these two regions the region of melted matter A. A. we shall have little occasion to take notice of it seeing it will contribute nothing to the formation of the new World But the upper region or all above that Orb of fire is the true draught of a Chaos or a mixture and confusion of all the Elements without order or distinction Here are particles of Earth and of Air and of Water all promiscuously jumbled together by the force and agitation of the fire But when that force ceases and every one is left to its own inclination they will according to their different degrees of gravity separate and sort themselves after this manner First the heaviest and grossest parts of the Earth will subside then the watery parts will follow then a lighter sort of Earth which will stop and rest upon the Surface of the Water and compose there a thin film or membrane this membrane or tender Orb is the first rudiment or foundation of a new habitable Earth For according as terrestrial parts fall upon it from all the regions and heighths of the Atmosphere or of the Chaos this Orb will grow more firm strong and immoveable able to support it self and Inhabitants too And having in it all the Principles of a fruitful Soil whether for the production of Plants or of Animals it will want no property or character of an
beloved City That Camp and that City therefore were upon the Earth And fire came down from Heaven and devoured them If it came down from Heaven it came upon the Earth Furthermore those Persons that are rais'd from the Dead are said to be Priests of God and of Christ and to reign with him a thousand years Now these must be the same Persons with the Priests and Kings mention'd in the Fifth Chapter which are there said expresly to reign upon Earth or that they should reign upon Earth It remains therefore only to determine What Earth this is where the Sons of the first Resurrection will live and reign It cannot be the present Earth in the same state and under the same circumstances it is now For what happiness or priviledge would that be to be call'd back into a mortal life under the necessities and inconveniences of sickly Bodies and an incommodious World such as the present state of mortality is and must continue to be till some change be made in Nature We may be sure therefore that a change will be made in Nature before that time and that the state they are rais'd into and the Earth they are to inhabit will be at least Paradisiacal And consequently can be no other than the New Heavens and New Earth which we are to expect after the Conflagration From these Considerations there is a great fairness to conclude both as to the Characters of the Perons and of the place or state that the Sons of the first Resurrection will be Inhabitants of the New Earth and reign there with Christ a thousand years But seeing this is one of the principal and peculiar Conclusions of this Discourse and bears a great part in this last Book of the Theory of the Earth it will deserve a more full explication and a more ample proof to make it out We must therefore take a greater compass in our discourse and give a full account of that State which is usually call'd the Millennium The Reign of the Saints a thousand years or the Kingdom of Christ upon Earth But before we enter upon this new Subject give me leave to close our present Argument about the Renovation of the World with some Testimonies of the Ancient Philosophers to that purpose 'T is plain to me that there were amongst the Ancients several Traditions or traditionary conclusions which they did not raise themselves by reason and observation but receiv'd them from an unknown Antiquity An instance of this is the Conflagration of the World A Doctrine as ancient for any thing I know as the World it self At least as ancient as we have any Records And yet none of those Ancients that tell us of it give any argument to prove it Neither is it any wonder for they did not invent it themselves but receiv'd it from others without proof by the sole authority of Tradition In like manner the Renovation of the World which we are now speaking of is an ancient Doctrine both amongst the Greeks and Eastern Philosophers But they shew us no method how the World may be renew'd nor make any proof of its future Renovation For it was not a discovery which they first made but receiv'd it with an implicite faith from their Masters and Ancestors And these Traditionary Doctrines were all fore-runners of that Light that was to shine more clearly at the opening of the Christian dispensation to give a more full account of the fate and revolutions of the Natural World as well as of the Moral The Iews 't is well known held the Renovation of the World and a Sabbath after six thousand years according to the Prophecy that was currant amongst them whereof we have given a larger account in the precedent Book ch 5. And that future state they call'd Olam Hava or the World to come which is the very same with St. Paul's Habitable Earth to come Heb. 2. 6. Neither can I easily believe that those constitutions of Moses that proceed so much upon a Septenary or the number Seven and have no ground or reason in the nature of the thing for that particular number I cannot easily believe I say that they are either accidental or humoursome without design or signification But that they are typical or representative of some Septenary state that does eminently deserve and bear that Character Moses in the History of the Creation makes six days work and then a Sabbath Then after six years he makes a Sabbath-year and after a Sabbath of years a year of Jubilee Levit. 25. All these lesser revolutions seem to me to point at the grand Revolution the great Sabbath or Iubilee after six Millenaries which as it answers the type in point of time so likewise in the nature and contents of it Being a state of Rest from all labour and trouble and servitude a state of joy and triumph and a state of Renovation when things are to return to their first condition and pristine order So much for the Iews The Heathen Philosophers both Greeks and Barbarians had the same doctrine of the Renovation of the World currant amongst them And that under several names and phrases as of the Great Year the Restauration the Mundane periods and such like They suppos'd stated and fix'd periods of time upon expiration whereof there would always follow some great revolution of the World and the face of Nature would be renew'd Particularly after the Conflagration the Stoicks always suppos'd a new World to succeed or another frame of Nature to be erected in the room of that which was destroy'd And they use the same words and phrases upon this occasion that Scripture useth Chrysippus calls it Apocatastalis as St. Peter does Act. 3. 21. Marcus Antoninus in his Meditations several times calls it Palingenesia as our Saviour does Mat. 19. 28. And Numenius hath two Scripture-words Resurrection and Restitution to express this renovation of the World Then as to the Platonicks that Revolution of all things hath commonly been call'd the Platonick year as if Plato had been the first author of that opinion But that 's a great mistake he receiv'd it from the Barbarick Philosophers and particularly from the Aegyptian Priests amongst whom he liv'd several years to be instructed in their learning But I do not take Plato neither to be the first that brought this doctrine into Greece for besides that the Sibylls whose antiquity we do not well know sung this Song of oâ—d as we see it copyed from them by Virgil in his fourth Eclogue Pythagoras taught it before Plato and Orpheus before them both And that 's as high as the Greek Philosophy reaches The Barbarick Philosophers were more ancient namely the Aegyptians Persians Chaldeans Indian Brackmans and other Eastern Nations Their Monuments indeed are in a great measure lost yet from the remains of them which the Greeks have transcrib'd and so preserv'd in their writings we see plainly they all had this doctrine of the
disagrace But as we have reason to blame the partiality of those that opposed this doctrine so on the other hand we cannot excuse the Patrons of it from all indiscretions I believe they might partly themselves make it obnoxious by mixing some things with it from pretended Traditions or the Books of the Sibylls or other private Authorities that had so sufficient warrant from Scripture and things sometimes that Nature would not easily bear Besides in later ages they seem to have dropt one half of the doctrine namely the Renovation of Nature which Irenaeus Iustin Martyr and the Ancients joyn inseparably with the Millennium And by this omission the doctrine hath been made less intelligible and one part of it inconsistent with another And when their pretensions were to reign upon this present Earth and in this present state of Nature it gave a jealousie to Temporal Princes and gave occasion likewise to many of Eanatical Spirits under the notion of Saints to aspire to dominion after a violent and tumultuary manner This I reckon as one great cause that brought the doctrine into discredit But I hope by reducing of it to the true state we shall cure this and other abuses for the future Lastly It never pleas'd the Church of Rome and so far as the influence and authority of that would go you may be sure it would be deprest and discountenanc'd I never yet met with a Popish Doctor that held the Millennium and Baron us would have it pass for an Heresie and Papias for the Inventor of it whereas if Irenaeus may be credited it was receiv'd from S. Iohn and by him from the mouth of our Saviour And neither S. Ierome nor his friend Pope Damasus durst ever condemnoit for an heresie It was always indeed uneasie and gave offence to the Church of Rome because it does not suit to that Scheme of Christianity which they have drawn They suppose Christ reigns already by his Vicar the Pope and treads upon the Necks of Emperors and Kings And if they could but suppress the Northern Heresie as they call it they do not know what a Millennium would signifie or how the Church could be in an happier condition than she is The Apocalypse of St. Iohn does suppose the true Church under hardship and persecution more or less for the greatest part of the Christian Ages namely for 1260 years while the Witnesses are in Sack cloth But the Church of Rome hath been in prosperity and greatness and the commanding Church in Christendom for so long or longer and hath rul'd the Nations with a Rod of Iron so as that mark of the true Church does not favour her at all And the Millennium being properly a reward and triumph for those that come out of Persecution such as have liv'd always in pomp and prosperity can pretend to no share in it or benefit by it This has made the Church of Rome have always an ill eye upon this Doctrine because it seem'd to have an ill eye upon her And as she grew in splendor and greatness she eclips'd and obscur'd it more and more so that it would have been lost out of the World as an obsolete errour if it had not been reviv'd by some of the Reformation CHAP. VII The true state of the Millennium according to Characters taken from Scripture some mistakes concerning it examin'd WE have made sufficient proof of a Millennial state from Scripture and Antiquity and upon that firm Basis have setled our second Proposition We should now determine the Time and Place of this future Kingdom of Christ Not whether it is to be in Heaven or upon Earth for that we suppose determin'd already but whether it is to be in the present Earth and under the present constitution of Nature or in the New Heavens and New Earth which are promis'd after the Conflagration This is to make our Third Proposition and I should have proceeded immediately to the examination of it but that I imagine it will give us some light in this affair if we enquire further into the true state of the Millennium before we determine its Time and Place We have already noted some moral Characters of the Millennial state And the great Natural Character of it is this in general That it will be Paradisiacal Free from all inconveniences either of external Nature or of our own Bodies For my part I do not understand how there can be any considerable degree of happiness without Indolency nor how there can be Indolency while we have such Bodies as we have now and such an external constitution of Nature And as there must be Indolency where there is happiness so there must not be Indigency or want of any due comforts of life For where there is Indigency there is sollicitude and distraction and uneasiness and fear Passions that do as naturally disquiet the Soul as pain does the Body Therefore Indolency and Plenty seem to be two essential Ingredients of every happy state and these two in conjunction make that state we call Paradisiacal Now the Scripture seems plainly to exempt the Sons of the New Ierusalem or of the Millennium from all pain or want in those words Apoc. 21. 4. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes And there shall be no more death neither sorrow nor crying neither shall there be any more pain for the former things are passed away And the Lord of that Kingdom He that sate upon the Throne said Behold I make all things new ver 5. This Renovation is a restauration to some former state and I hope not to that state of indigency and misery and diseasedness which we languish under at present But to that pristine Paradisiacal state which was the blessing of the first Heavens and the first Earth As Health and Plenty are the Blessings of Nature so in Civil affairs Peace is the greatest blessing And this is inseparably annext to the Millennium an indelible character of the Kingdom of Christ. And by Peace we understand not onely freedom from Persecution upon religious accounts but that Nation shall not rise up against Nation upon any account whatsoever That bloody Monster War that hath devour'd so many Millions of the Sons of Adam is now at length to be chain'd up and the Furies that run throughout the Earth with their Snakes and Torches shall be thrown into the Abyss to sting and prey upon one another All evil and mischievous passions shall be extinguish'd and that not in men onely but even in Brute creatures according to the Prophets The Lamb and the Lyon shall lie down together and the sucking Child shall play with the Basilisk Happy days when not onely the Temple of Ianus shall be shut up for a thousand years and the Nations shall beat their swords into plow-shares but all enmities and antipathies shall cease all acts of hostility throughout all nature And this Universal Peace is a demonstration also of the former character Universal Plenty for where
about empty and useless in the wild Air. If you will not make it the seat and habitation of the Just in the blessed Millennium what will you make it How will it turn to account What hath Providence design'd it for We must not suppose New Worlds made without counsel or design And as on the one hand you cannot tell what to do with this New Creation if it be not thus employ'd so on the other hand it is every way fitted and suited to be an happy and Paradisiacal habitation and answers all the natural Characters of the Millennial state which is a great presumption that it is design'd for it But to argue this more closely upon Scripture-grounds S. Peter says the Righteous shall inhabit the New Heavens and the New Earth 2. Pet. 3. 13. Nevertheless according to his promise we look for New Heavens and New Earth WHEREIN DWELLETH RIGHTEOUSNESS that is a Righteous People as we have shewn before But who are these Righteous People That 's the great question If you compare S. Peter's New Heavens and New Earth with S. Iohn's Apoc. 21. 1 2. it will go far towards the resolution of this question For S. Iohn seems plainly to make the Inhabitants of the New Ierusalem to be in this New Earth I saw says he New Heavens and a New Earth and the New Ierusalem descending from God out of Heaven therefore descending into this New Earth which he had mention'd immediately before And there the Tabernacle of God was with men ver 3. and there He that sat upon the Throne said Behold I make all things New Referring still to this New Heavens and New Earth as the Theatre where all these things are acted or all these Scenes exhibited from the first Verse to the eighth Now the New Jerusalem state being the same with the Millennial if the one be in the New Heavens and New Earth the other is there also And this interpretation of S. Iohn's word is confirm'd and fully assur'd to us by the Prophet Isaiah who also placeth the joy and rejoycing of the New Ierusalem in the New Heavens and New Earth Chap. 65. 17 18. For behold I create new Heavens and a new Earth and the former shall not be remembred but be you glad and rejoyce for ever in that which I create for behold I create Ierusalem a rejoycing and her people a joy Namely in that New Heavens and New Earth Which answers to S. Iohn's Vision of the New Ierusalem being let down upon the New Earth To these Reasons and deductions from Scripture we might add the testimony of several of the Fathers I mean of those that were Millenaries For we are speaking now to such as believe the Millennium but place it in the present Earth before the Renovation whereas the ancient Millenaries suppos'd the regeneration and renovation of the World before the Kingdom of Christ came As you may see in Irenaeus Iustin Martyr Tertullian Lactantius and the Author ad Orthodoxos And the neglect of this I look upon as one reason as we noted before that brought that doctrine into discredit and decay For when they plac'd the Kingdom of the Saints upon this Earth it becâ—me more capable of being abus'd by fanatical spirits to the disturbance of the World and the invasion of the rights of the Magistrate Civil or Ecclesiastical under that notion of Saints And made them also dream of sensual pleasures such as they see in this life Or at least gave an occasion and opportunity to those that had a mind to make the doctrine odious of charging it with these consequences All these abuses are cut off and these scandals prevented by placing the Millennium aright Namely not in this present Life or on this present Earth but in the New Creation where Peace and Righteousness will dwell And this is our first Argument why we place the Millennium in the New Heavens and New Earth and 't is taken partly you see from the reason of the thing it self the difficulty of assigning any other use of the New Earth and its fitness for this and partly from Scripture-evidence and partly from Antiquity The second argument for our opinion is this The present constitution of Nature will not bear that happiness that is promis'd in the Millennium or is not consistent with it The diseases of our Bodies the disorders of our Passions the incommodiousness of external Nature Indigency servility and the unpeaceableness of the World These are things inconsistent with the happiness that is promis'd in the Kingdom of Christ. But these are constant attendants upon this Life and inseparable from the present state of Nature Suppose the Millennium was to begin Nine or Ten Years hence as some pretend it will How shall this World all on a sudden be metamorphos'd into that happy state No more sorrow nor crying nor pain nor death says S. Iohn All former things are past away But how past away Shall we not have the same Bodies and the same external Nature and the same corruptions of the Air and the same excesses and intemperature of Seasons Will there not be the same baâ—â—enness of the ground the same number of People to be fed and must they not get their living by the sweat of their brows with servile labour and drudgery How then are all former evils past away And as to publick affairs while there are the same necessities of humane Life and a distinction of Nations those Nations sometimes will have contrary interests will clash and interfere one with another whence differences and contests and Wars will arise and the Thousand Years Truce I am afraid will be often broken We might add also that if our Bodies be not chang'd we shall be subject to the same appetites and the same passions and upon those vices will grow as bad fruit upon a bad Tree To conclude so long as our Bodies are the same external Nature the same The necessities of humane Life the same which things are the roots of evil you may call it a Millennium or what you please but there will be still diseases vices wars tears and cries pain and sorrow in this Millenuium and if so 't is a Millennium of your own making for that which the Prophets describe is quite another thing Furthermore if you suppose the Millennium will be upon this Earth and begin it may be ten or twenty years hence How will it be introduc'd how shall we know when we are in it or when we enter upon it If we continue the same and all Nature continue the same we shall not discern when we slip into the Millennium And as to the Moral state of it shall we all on a sudden become Kings and Priests to God wherein will that change consist and how will it be wrought St. Iohn makes the First Resurrection introduce the Millennium and that 's a conspicuous mark and boundary But as to the modern or vulgar Millennium I know
People and Nation When with their Palms in their hands they triumph over Sin and Death and Hell and all the Powers of Darkness can there be any thing on this side Heaven and a Quire of Angels more glorious or more joyful But why did I except Angels Why may not they be thought to be present at these Assemblies In a Society of Saints and purified Spirits Why should we think their converse impossible In the Golden Age the Gods were always represented as having freer intercourse with Men and before the Flood we may reasonably believe it so I cannot think Enoch was translated into Heaven without any converse with its Inhabitants before he went thither And seeing the Angels vouchsaf'd often in former Ages to visit the Patriarchs upon Earth we may with reason judge that they will much more converse with the same Patriarchs and holy Prophets now they are risen from the Dead and cleans'd from their sins and seated in the New Ierusalem I cannot but call to mind upon this occasion That representation which S. Paul makes to us of a glorious state and a glorious Assembly too high for this present Earth 'T is Hebr. 12. 22 c. in these words But you are come unto Mount Sion and unto the City of the living God the heavenly Ierusalem and to an innumerable company of Angels to the general Assembly and Church of the First-born which are written in Heaven and to God the Iudge of all and to the Spirits of just men made perfect This I know several apply to the Times and state of the Gospel in opposition to that of the Law and it is introduc'd in that manner But here are several expressions too high for any present state of things They must respect a future state either of Heaven or of the Millennial Kingdom of Christ. And to the later of these the expressions agree and have a peculiar fitness and applicability to it And what follows in the context ver 26 27 28. About shaking the Heavens and the Earth once more Removing the former Scenes and bringing on a New Kingdom that cannot be shaken All this I say answers to the Kingdom of Christ which is to be establish'd in the New Heavens and New Earth But to proceed in their Publick Devotions Suppose this August Assembly inflam'd with all Divine Passions met together to celebrate the Name of God with Angels intermixt to bear a part in this Holy Exercise And let this concourse be not in any Temple made with hands but under the great roof of Heaven the True Temple of the most High so as all the Air may be fill'd with the chearful harmony of their Hymns and Hallelujahs Then in the heighth of their Devotion as they sing Praises to the Lamb and to Him that sits upon the Throne suppose the Heavens to open and the Son of God to appear in his glory with Thousands and Ten Thousands of Angels round about him That their eyes may see him who for their sakes was crucified upon Earth now encircled with Light and Majesty This will raise them into as great transports as humane nature can bear They will wish to be dissolv'd they will strive to fly up to him in the clouds or to breath out their Souls in repeated doxologles of Blessing and honour and glory and power to him that sits upon the Throne and to the Lamb for ever and ever But we cannot live always in the flames of Devotion The weakness of our Nature will not suffer us to continue long under such strong Passions and such intenseness of Mind The question is therefore What will be the ordinary employment of that Life How will they entertain their thoughts or spend their time For we suppose they will not have that multiplicity of frivolous business that we have now About our Bodies about our Children in Trades and Mechanicks in Traffick and Navigation or Wars by Sea or Land These things being swept away wholly or in a great measure what will come in their place how will they find work or entertainment for a long life If we consider who they are that will have a part in this first Resurrection and be Inhabitants of that World that is to come we may easily believe that the most constant employment of their life will be CONTEMPLATION Not that I exclude any innocent diversions as I said before The entertainments of friendship or ingenuous conversation but the great business and design of that life is Contemplation as preparatory to Heaven and eternal Glory Ui paulatim assuescant capere Deum as Irenaeus says That they may by degrees enlarge their capacities fit and accustom themselves to receive God Or as he says in another place That they may become capable of the glory of the Father that is capable of bearing the glory and presence of God capable of the highest enjoyment of him which is usually call'd the Beatifical Vision and is the condition of the Blessed in Heaven It cannot be deny'd that in such a Millennial state where we shall be freed from all the incumbrances of this life and provided of better Bodies and greater light of Mind It cannot be doubted I say but that we shall then be in a disposition to make great proficiency in the knowledge of all things Divine and Intellectual and consequently of making happy preparations for our entring upon a further state of glory For there is nothing certainly does more prepare the mind of man for the highest perfections than Contemplation with that Devotion which naturally flows from it as heat follows light And this Contemplation hath always a greater or less effect upon the mind according to the perfection of its object So as the Contemplation of the Divine Nature is of all others the most perfective in it self and to us according to our capacities and degree of abstraction An Immense Being does strangely fill the Soul and Omnipotency Omnisciency and Infinite Goodness do enlarge and dilate the Spirit while it fixtly looks upon them They raise strong passions of Love and Admiration which melt our Nature and transform it into the mould and image of that which we contemplate What the Scripture says of our Transformation into the Divine likeness what S. Iohn and the Platonists say of our Union with God And whatever is not Cant in the Mystical Theology when they tell us of being Deified all this must spring from these sources of Devotion and Contemplation They will change and raise us from perfection to perfection as from glory to glory into a greater similitude and nearer station to the Divine Nature The Contemplation of God and his Works comprehends all things For the one makes the uncreated World and the other the Created And as the Divine Essence and Attributes are the greatest object that the mind of man can set before it self so next to that are the effects and emanations of the Divinity or the Works of the Divine Goodness Wisdom
they are to be reduc'd it does not certainly appear This mixture of these two Races whatsoever they were gave it seems so great offence to God that he destroy'd that World upon it in a Deluge of Water It hath been matter of great difficulty to determine who these Sons of God were that fell in love with and married the daughters of men There are two conjectures that prevail most One that they were Angels and another that they were of the Posterity of Seth and distinguish'd from the rest by their Piety and the worship of the true God so that it was a great crime for them to mingle with the rest of mankind who are suppos'd to have been Idolaters Neither of these opinions is to me satisfactory For as to Angels Good Angels neither marry nor are given in marriage Matt. 22. 30. and bad Angels are not call'd the Sons of God Besides if Angels were capable of those mean pleasures we ought in reason to suppose that there are female Angels as well as male for surely those capacities are not in vain through a whole Species of Beings And if there be female Angels we cannot imagine but that they must be of a far more charming beauty than the dowdy daughters of men Then as to the line of Seth It does not appear that there was any such distinction of Idolaters and true Worshippers before the Flood or that there was any such thing as Idolatry at that time nor for some Ages after Besides it is not said that the Sons of God fell in love with the Daughters of Cain or of any degenerate race but with the Daughters of Adam which may be the Daughters of Seth as well as of any other These conjectures therefore seem to be shallow and ill-grounded But what the distinction was of those two orders remains yet very uncertain St. Paul to the Galatians Chap. 4. 21 22 c. makes a distinction also of a double Progeny that of Sarah and that of Hagar One was born according to the flesh after a natural manner and the other by the divine power or in vertue of the divine promise This distinction of a natural and supernatural origine and of a double progeny the one born to servitude the other to liberty represents very well either the manner of our present birth and of our future at the Resurrection Or that double progeny and double manner of birth which we suppose in the Future Earth 'T is true St. Paul applies this to the Law and the Gospel but Typical things you know have different aspects and completions which are not exclusive of one another and so it may be here But however this double race of Mankind in the Future Earth to explain the Doctrine of Gog and Magog is but a conjecture and does not pretend to be otherwise consider'd The last thing that remains to be consider'd and accounted for is the upshot and conclusion of all namely what will become of the Earth after the thousand years expir'd Or after the Day of Judgment past and the Saints translated into Heaven what will be the face of things here below There being nothing expresly reveal'd concerning this we must not expect a positive resolution of it And the difficulty is not peculiar to our hypothesis for though the Millennium and the final Judgment were concluded in the present Earth the Quaere would still remain What would become of this Earth after the Last Day So that all parties are equally concern'd and equally free to give their opinion What will be the last state and Consummation of this Earth Scripture I told you hath not defin'd this point and the Philosophers say very little concerning it The Stoicks indeed speak of the final resolution of all things into Fire or into Aether which is the purest and subtlest sort of fire So that the whole Globe or Mass of the Earth and all particular bodies will according to them be at last dissolv'd into a liquid flame Neither was this Doctrine first invented by the Stoicks Heraclitus taught it long before them and I take it to be as ancient as Orpheus himself who was the first Philosopher amongst the Greeks And he deriving his notions from the Barbarick Philosophers or the Sages of the East that School of Wisdom may be look'd upon as the true seminary of this Doctrine as it was of most other natural knowledge But this dissolution of the Earth into Fire may be understood two ways either that it will be dissolv'd into a loose name and so dissipated and lost as Lightning in the Air and vanish into nothing or that it will be dissolv'd into a fixt flame such as the Sun is or a fixt Star And I am of opinion that the Earth after the last Day of Judgment will be chang'd into the nature of a Sun or of a fixt Star and shine like them in the Firmament Being all melted down into a mass of Aethereal matter and enlightning a Sphere or Orb round about it I have no direct and demonstrative proof of this I confess But if Planets were once fixt Stars as I believe they were their revolution to the same state again in a great Circle of Time seems to be according to the methods of Providence which loves to recover what was lost or decay'd after certain periods and what was originally good and happy to make it so again All Nature at last being transform'd into a like glory with the Sons of God I will not tell you what foundation there is in Nature for this change or transformation from the interiour constitution of the Earth and the instances we have seen of new Stars appearing in the Heavens I should lead the English Reader too far out of his way to discourse of these things But if there be any passages or expressions in Scripture that countenance such a state of things after the day of Judgment it will not be improper to take notice of them That radiant and illustrious Ierusalem describ'd by St. Iohn Apoc. 21. ver 10 11 12 c. compos'd all of Gemms and bright materials clear and sparkling as a Star in the Firmament Who can give an account what that is Its foundations walls gates streets all the Body of it resplendent as light or fire What is there in Nature or in this Universe that bears any resemblance with such a Phaenomenon as this unless it be a Sun or a fixt Star Especially if we add and consider what follows That the City had no need of the Sun non of the Moon to shine in it And that there was no night there This can be no Terrestrial Body it must be a substance luminous in it self and a fountain of light as a fixt Star And upon such a change of the Earth or transformation as this would be brought to pass the saying that is written DEATH IS SWALLOWED UP IN VICTORY Which indeed S. Paul seems to apply to our Bodies in particular 1
Cor. 15. 54. But in the Eighth Chapter to the Romans He extends it to all Nature The Creation it self also shall be deliver'd from the bondage of Corruption into the glorious liberty of the Sons of God And accordingly S. Iohn speaking of the same time with St. Paul in that place to the Corinthians namely of the general Resurrection and day of Judgment says Death and Hades which we render Hell were cast into the lake of fire This is their being swallowed up in victory which S. Paul speaks of when Death and Hades that is all the Region of mortality The Earth and all its dependances are absorpt into a mass of Fire and converted by a glorious Victory over the powers of darkness into a Luminous Body and a region of Light This great Issue and Period of the Earth and of all humane affairs tho' it seem to be founded in nature and supported by several expressions of Scripture yet we cannot for want of full instruction propose it otherwise than as a fair Conjecture The Heavens and the Earth shall flie away at the day of Judgment says the Text Apoc. 20. 11. And their place shall not be found This must be understood of our Heavens and our Earth And their flying away must be their removing to some other part of the Universe so as their place or residence shall not be found any more here below This is the easie and natural sence of the Words and this translation of the Earth will not be without some change preceding that makes it leave its place and with a lofty flight take its seat amongst the Stars There we leave it Having conducted it for the space of Seven Thousand Years through various changes from a dark Chaos to a bright Star FINIS A REVIEW OF THE THEORY OF THE EARTH And of its PROOFS ESPECIALLY IN REFERENCE TO SCRIPTURE LONDON Printed by R. N. for Walter Kettilby at the Bishop's-Head in S. Paul's Church-Yard 1697. A REVIEW OF THE THEORY OF THE EARTH TO take a review of this Theory of the Earth which we have now finish'd We must consider first the extent of it and then the principal parts whereof it consists It reaches as you see from one end of the World to the other From the first Chaos to the last day and the Consummation of all things This probably will run the length of Seven Thousand Years which is a good competent space of time to exercise our Thoughts upon and to observe the several Scenes which Nature and Providence bring into View within the compass of so many Ages The matter and principal parts of this Theory are such things as are recorded in Scripture We do not feign a Subject and then descant upon it for diversion but endeavour to give an intelligible and rational account of such matters of Fact past or future as are there specifi'd and declar'd What it hath seem'd good to the Holy Ghost to communicate to us by History or Prophecy concerning the several States and general Changes of this Earth makes the Argument of our Discourse Therefore the things themselves must be taken for granted in one sence or other seeing besides all other proofs they have the Authority of a Revelation and our business is only to give such an explication of them as shall approve it self to the faculties of Man and be conformable to Scripture We will therefore first set down the things themselves that make the subject matter of this Theory and remind you of our explication of them Then recollect the general proofs of that explication from Reason and Nature but more fully and particularly shew how it is grounded upon Scripture The primary Phaenomena whereof we are to give an account are these Five or Six I. The Original of the Earth from a Chaos II. The state of Paradise and the Ante-diluvian World III. The Universal Deluge IV. The Universal Conflagration V. The Renovation of the World or the New Heavens and New Earth VI. The Consummation of all things These are unquestionably in Scripture and these all relate as you see to the several forms sâ—â—tes and revolutions of this Earth We are therefore oblig'd to give a clear and coherent account of these Phaeâ—oâ—ena in that orâ—er and consecution wherein tâ—ey stand to 〈◊〉 another There are also in Scripture some other things relating to the same Subjects that may be call'd the Secondary Ingredients of this Theory and are to be referr'd to their respective primary heads Such are for instance I. The Longevity of the Ante-diluvians II. The Rupture of the Great Abyss at the Deluge III. The appearing of the Rainbow after the Deluge as a sign that there neveâ—â—hould be a second Flood â—hese â—hings Scripâ—ure hath alâ—â— left upon â—â—cord as directions and indications how to understand the Ante-diluvian state and the Deluge it self Whosoever therefore shall undertake to write the Theory of the Earth must think himself bound to give us a just explication of these secondary Phaenomena as well as of the primary and that in such a dependance and connexion as to make them give and receive light from one another The former part of the Task is concerning the World behind us Times and Things past that are already come to light The later is concerning the World before us Times and Things to come That lie yet in the bosom of Providence and in the â—eeds of Nature And these are chiefly the Conflagration of the World and the Renovation of it When these are over and expir'd then comes the end as S. Paul says Then the Heavens and the Earth fly away as S. Iohn says Then is the Consummation of all things and the last period of this sublunary World whatsoever it is Thus â—ar the Theorist must go and pursue the motions of Nature till all things are brought to rest and silence And in this latter part of the Theory there is also a collateral Phaenomenon the Millennium or Thousand Years Reign of Christ and his Saints upon Earth to be consider'd For this according as it is represented in Scripture does imply a change in the Natural World as well as in the Moral and therefore must be accounted for in the Theory of the Earth At least it must be there determin'd whether that state of the World which is singular and extraordinary will be before or after the Confâ—agration These are the Principals and Incidents of this Theory of the Earth as to the Matter and Subject of it which you see is both impâ—rtant and wholly taken out of Scripture As to our explication of these points that is sufficiently known being set down at large in four Books of this Theory Therefore it remains only having seen the Matter of the Theory to examine the Form of it and the proofs of it for from these two things it must receive its censure As to the form the characters of a Regular Theory seem to be these three Few and easie Postulatums Union
of the Scripture-Abyss The Mother-Abyss is no doubt that in the beginning of Genesis v. 2. which had nothing but darkness upon the face of it or a thick caliginous air The next news we hear of this Abyss is at the Deluge Gen. 7. 11. where 't is said to be broke open and the waters of it to have drowned the World It seems then this Abyss was clos'd up some time betwixt the Creation and the Deluge and had got another cover than that of darkness And if we will believe Wisdom Prov. 8. 27. who was there present at the formation of the Earth an Orb was set upon the face of the Abyss at the beginning of the World That these three places refer to the same Abyss I think cannot be questioned by any that will compare them and consider them That of the Deluge Moses calls there Tehom-Rabbah the Great Abyss and can there be any greater than the forementioned Mother-Abyss And WISDOME in that place in the Proverbs useth the same phrase and words with Moses Gen. 1. 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 upon the face of the Deep or of the Abyss changâ—ng darkness for that Orb of the exteriour Earth which was made afterwards to inclose it And in thâ—s vault it lay and under this cover when the Psalmist speaks of it in these words Psal. 33. 7. He gathereth the waters of the Sea as in a bag he layeth up the Abyss in store-houses Lastly we may observe that 't was this Mother-Abyss whose womb was burst at the Deluge when the Sea was born and broke forth as if it had issued out of a womb as God expresseth it to Iob ch 38. 8. in which place the Chaldee Paraphrase reads it when it broke forth coming out of the Abyss Which disruption at the Deluge seems also to be alluded to Iob 12. 14 15. and more plainly Prov. 3. 20. by his knowledge the Abysses are broken up Thus you have already a threefold state of the Abyss which makes a short History of it first Open at the beginning then covered till the Deluge Then broke open again as it is at present And we pursue the History of it no further but we are told Apoc. 20. 3. That it shall be shut up again and the great Dragon in it for a Thousand years In the mean time we may observe from this form and posture of the Ante diluvian Abyss how suitable it is and coherent with that form of the Ante-diluvian Earth which St. Peter and the Psalmist had describ'd sustain'd by the waters founded upon the waters stretcht above the waters for if it was the cover of this Abyss and it had some cover that was broke at the Deluge it was spread as a Crust or Ice upon the face of those waters and so made an Orbis Terrarum an habitable sphere of Earth about the Abyss SO much for the form of the Ante-diluvian Earth and Abyss which as they aptly correspond to one another so you see our Theory answers and is adjusted to both and I think so fitly that we have no reason hitherto to be displeas'd with the success we have had in the examination of it according to Scripture We have dispatch'd the two main points in question first to prove a diversity in general betwixt the two natural Worlds or betwixt the Heavens and the Earth before and after the Flood Secondly to prove wherein this diversity consisted or that the particular form of the Ante-diluvian Heavens and Earth was such according to Scripture as we have describ'd it in the Theory You 'l say then the work is done what needs more all the rest follows of course for if the Antediluvian Earth had such a â—orm as we have propos'd and prov'd it to have had there could be no Deluge in it but by a dissolution of its parts and exteriour frame And a Deluge so made would not be in the nature of a standing Pool but of a violent agitation and commotion of the Waters This is true These parts of the Theory are so cemented that you must grant all if you grant any However we will try if even these two particulars also may be prov'd out of Scripture That is if there be any marks or memorandums left there by the Spirit of God of such a fraction or dissolution of the Earth at the Deluge And also such characters of the Deluge it self as show it to have been by a fluctuation and impetuous commotion of the Waters To proceed then That there was a Fraction or Dissolution of the Earth at the Deluge the history of it by Moses gives us the first account seeing he tells us as the principol cause of the Flood That the Fountains of the Great Abyss were cloven or burst asunder and upon this disruption the waters gush'd out from the bowels of the Earth as from the widen'd mouths of so many Fountains I do not take Fountains there to signifie any more than Sources or Stores of Water noting also this manner of their eruption from below or out of the ground as Fountains do Accordingly in the Proverbs chap. 3. 20. 't is only said the Abysses were broken open I do not doubt but this refers to the Deluge as Bede and others understand it the very word being us'd here both in the Hebrew and Septuagint that express'd the disruption of the Abyss at the Deluge And this breaking up of the Earth at that time is elegantly exprest in Iob by the bursting of the Womb of Nature when the Sea was first brought to light when after many pangs and throes and dilacerations of her body Nature was delivered of a burthen which she had born in her Womb Sixteen Hundred Years These three places I take to be memorials and proofs of the disruption of the Earth or of the Abyss at the universal Deluge And to these we may add more out of the Prophets Iob and the Psalms by way of allusion commonly to the state of Nature at that time The Prophet Isaiah in describing the future destruction of the World chap. 24. 18 19. seems plainly to allude and have respect to the past destruction of it at the Deluge as appears by that leading expression the windows from an high are open 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 taken manifestly from Gen. 7. 11. Then see how the description goes on the windows from an high are open and the foundations of the Earth do shake The Earth is utterly broken down the Earth is quite dissolv'd the Earth is exceedingly moved Here are Concussions and Fractions and dissolutions as there were in the Mundane Earth-quake and Deluge which we had exprest before only by breaking open the Abyss By the Foundations of the Earth here and elsewhere I perceive many understand the Centre so by moving or shaking the foundations or putting them out of course must be understood a displacing of the Centre which was really done at the Deluge as we have shewn in its proper place
am bound to make good I said at first that our Hypothesis concerning the Deluge was more agreeable not only to Scripture in general but also to the particular History of the Flood left us by Moses I say more agreeable to it than any other Hypothesis that hath yet been propos'd This may be made good in a few words For in Moses's History of the Deluge there are two principal points The extent of the Deluge and the Causes of it and in both these we do fully agree with that sacred Author As to the extent of it He makes the Deluge universal All the high hills under the whole heaven were cover'd fifteen cubits upwards We also make it universal over the face of the whole Earth and in such a manner as must needs raise the waters above the top of the highest Hills every where As to the canses of it Moses makes them to be the disruption of the Abyss and the Rains and no more and in this also we exactly agree with him we know no other causes nor pretend to any other but those two Distinguishing therefore Moses his narration as to the substance and circumstances of it it must be allowed that these two points make the substance of it and that an Hypothesis that differs from it in either of these two differs from it more than Ours which at the worst can but differ in matter of circumstance Now seeing the great difficulty about the Deluge is the quantity of Water required for it there have been two explications proposed besides ours to remove or satisfie this difficulty One whereof makes the Deluge not to have been universal or to have reacht only Iudea and some neighbouring Countries and therefore less water would suffice The other owning the Deluge to be universal supplies it self with Water from the Divine Omnipotenty and says new Waters were created then for the nonce and again annihilated when the Deluge was to cease Both these explications you see and I know no more of note that are not obnoxious to the same exceptions differ from Moses in the substance or in one of the two substantial points and consequently more than ours doth The first changeth the Flood into a kind of national inundation and the second assigns other causes of it than Moses had assigned And as they both differ apparently from the Mosaical History so you may see them refuted upon other grounds also in the third Chapter of the First Book of the Theory This may be sufficient as to the History of the Flood by Moses But possibly it may be said the principal objection will arise from Moses his Six-days Creation in the first Chapter of Genesis where another sort of Earth than what we have form'd from the Chaos is represented to us namely a Terraqueous Globe such as our Earth is at present 'T is indeed very apparent that Moses hath accommodated his Six days Creation to the present form of the Earth or to that which was before the eyes of the people when he writ But it is a great question whether that was ever intended for a true Physical account of the origine of the Earth or whether Moses did either Philosophize or Astronomize in that description The ancient Fathers when they answer the Heathens and the adversaries of Christianity do generally deny it as I am ready to make good upon another occasion And the thing it self bears in it evident marks of an accommodation and condescention to the vulgar notions concerning the form of the World Those that think otherwise and would make it literally and physically true in all the parts of it I desire them without entring upon the strict merits of the cause to determine these Preliminaries First whether the whole universe rise from a Terrestrial Chaos Secondly what Systeme of the World this Six-days Creation proceeds upon whether it supposes the Earth or the Sun for the Center Thirdly Whether the Sun and Fixt Stars are of a later date and a later birth than this Globe of Earth And lastly Where is the Region of the Super-celestial Waters When they have determin'd these Fundamentals we will proceed to other observations upon the Six-days work which will further assure us that 't is a narration suited to the capacity of the people and not to the strict and physical nature of things Besides we are to remember that Moses must be so interpreted in the first Chapter of Genesis as not to interfere with himself in other parts of his History nor to interfere with S. Peter or the Prophet David or any other Sacred Authors when they treat of the same matter Nor lastly so as to be repugnant to clear and uncontested Science For in things that concern the natural World that must always be consulted With these precautions let them try if they can reduce that narrative of the Origine of the World to physical truth so as to be consistent both with Nature and with Divine Revelation every where It is easily reconcileable to both if we suppose it writ in a Vulgar style and to the conceptions of the People And we cannot deny that a Vulgar style is often made use of in the holy Writings How freely and unconcernedly does Scripture speak of God Almighty according to the opinions of the vulgar of his passions local motions parts and members of his body Which all are things that do not belong or are not compatible with the Divine Nature according to truth and Science And if this liberty be taken as to God himself much more may it be taken as to his works And accordingly we see what motion the Scripture gives to the Sun what figure to the Earth what figure to the Heavens All according to the appearance of sence and popular credulity without any remorse for having transgressed the rules of intellectual truth This vulgar style of Scripture in describing the natures of things hath been often mistaken for the real sence and so become a stumbling-block in the way of truth Thus the Anthropomorphites of old contended for the humane shape of God from the Letter of Scripture and brought many express Texts for their purpose but sound reason at length got the upper hand of Literal authority Then several of the Christian Fathers contended that there were no Antipodes and made that doctrine irreconcileable to Scripture But this also after a while went off and yielded to reason and experience Then the Motion of the Earth must by no means be allow'd as being contrary to Scripture for so it is indeed according to the Letter and Vulgar style But all intelligent Persons see thorough this Argument and depend upon it no more in this case than in the former Lastly The original of the Earth from a Chaos drawn according to the rules of Physiology will not be admitted because it does not agree with the Scheme of the Six-days Creation But why may not this be writ in a Vulgar style as well as the rest Certainly