Selected quad for the lemma: world_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
world_n	circle_n	great_a	pole_n	2,915	5	11.6366	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A89672	A conference with a theist. Part II. Shewing the defects of natural religion; the necessity of divine inspiration; the rationale of the mosaical laws, and defence of his miracles : together with an account of the deluge, the origin of sacrifices, and the reasonableness of Christ's mediatorship. / By William Nicholls ...	Nicholls, William, 1664-1712.	1699 (1699)	Wing N1094A; ESTC R181001	142,863	328

the Sun staying so long in that one Point But if your account by Refraction were true the day must receive its Lengthening about Sun-setting when the Sun was near the Horizon and that not above a quarter of an hour at the most Neither could this easily come to pass in so thin an Atmosphere as that of Palestine Besides the Scripture says expresly that this was prayed for by Joshua in order to encourage the Jews and to dishearten their Enemies But why should he pray for such a natural Effect as you would have this to be Was it worth any ones while to wish for a minute or two more day light which it was impossible that either the Jews or their Enemies could observe But I am weary of answering such Arguments as these which fall of themselves and which I am confident can never convince those that urge them and 't is honester to deny the Authority of Scripture altogether than to explain the Force of it away by such jejune interpretations Phil. Why then Credentius if you would have me appear a Barefaced Infidel I must plainly tell you that I do not think that either Moses or the Prophets who succeeded him had any degree of that Inspiration which they pretended to For what ever is inspired must needs be true and agreeable both to Reason and Goodness but there are many things to be found in their Writings and Lives which are contrary to both I shall begin with Moses Indeed Credentius you have in some measure vindicated him from some Absurdities which are usually imputed to his History of the Creation * Conference with a Theist Part I. but I 'm afraid your Art will fail you in doing as much for some other Objections against his Books and Character Now I pray Sir what do you think of his History of the Deluge Don't you think this very odd that the whole World should be drown'd at the same time For my part I can as soon believe that a Man could be drown'd in his own Spittle as that the World should be deluged by the Water in it Now Moses says expresly that all the high Hills under the whole Heaven were covered Now to do this we must have water enough to reach up to the Top of the Pique of Tenariff which is at present three Miles perpendicular and at the Time of Noah much more a considerable part of it being washed down by the rains since Now where shall we find water to cover the Earth above three Miles high quite round If the whole Ocean were circumfused it would do little or nothing towards this effect much less a Rain of forty days For the Water of the Sea take one place with another is hardly a quarter of a Mile deep for though in some places in a deep Channel it may be half a Mile towards the shore it is but three or four fathoms so that all together it is not more than a quarter of a Mile deep But if this were all pumped out of the Channel of the Sea and kept against its Nature by a Miracle stagnating upon the higher Earth it could cover the whole Earth no deeper in Water than the Sea is now which is but a quarter of a Mile So that there will want two Miles and three quarters of the height which Moses assigns to it This is upon supposition that the Sea and the Dry Ground are nigh of the same Extent but I believe an exact survey of the Earth about the Northern and Southern Poles would shew that the Earth was much larger But granting them of the same bigness to raise the Channel of the Sea three Miles higher that is to the Tops of the highest Mountains round the World would take up twenty-four times as much Water as there is now in the Sea twelve Quarters of a Mile deep in Water i. e. twelve Oceans to be laid upon the Sea and twelve more upon the Land And then pray consider what becomes of the pretended Inspiration of Moses his History when 't is Demonstration that there is not the twentieth part of Water in the World as is sufficient to cause such a Deluge Cred. Difficulties of the Deluge accounted for Your Gentlemen are often wont to call that Demonstration which is oftentimes but lame Argument For nothing can be Demonstration against the Divine Power but absolute Incompatibility and Contradiction And every Supposition which shews the possibility of the thing is sufficient to overthrow your Demonstration as you call it And therefore several Learned and Ingenious Gentlemen have of late years set themselves to consider how to give a Philosophical Account of the Deluge and have published some Hypotheses upon this subject which are full of fine learning and curious Thought The main of all of them are good Argument against the Infidels because each Hypothesis shews the possibility of that Deluge which they deny As for the Ancient suppositions that this immense quantity of Water was owing to the coming down of the supercelestial Waters or the Condensation of Air they are I think a little too unphilosophical for this inquisitive Age and are therefore like to do very little good among the Unbelievers The most agreeable Remarks on the late Theories c. and surprizing Book which of late Years has offered it self to the World was Dr. Burnet's Theory upon this subject The Design whereof was so Great and Noble the Language so exact the Thought so delicate the whole work so uniform and of a piece with it self and adorned with such variety of pleasant learning wherein were such ingenious Accounts given of the Great Revolutions of Nature of the Formation of the World the Paradisiacal state of the Antediluvian Longevity the Deluge and Conflagration that tho' there might want some degrees of probability to make every Reader believe his Theory exactly True yet it pleased most of them so as to think it was pitty it was not Far be it from me to detract from the ingenious guesses of that Learned Man but yet there are some things in that Hypothesis which ly very difficult in my mind and do not seem so agreeable to the Mechanical Laws he goes by and other Phaenomena which are observable in Nature The Oval Figure which he ascribes to the Antediluvian Earth seems inconsistent with the present Figure which it is found to be of that is a Prolate Sphaeroide or an Oval turned about its lesser Axis i. e. of the fashion of a Loaf Which was a prudent design of Nature to make it of this figure because the additional Heaps of Ice and Snow which are continually lodged at the Poles by the vapours constantly flying North and South should never increase the Globe beyond a Circle His excluding the Annual Motion of the Earth and its Motion of Parallelism to the Poles of the World allowing it only a simple Motion round an Axis Parallel to the Poles of the Ecliptick and consequently taking away the vicissitude

of Seasons which is one of the greatest Beauties of the World and leaving the greater part of it uninhabitable is a matter which one cannot so easily comply with especially when the first Chap. of Genesis says that the Stars shall be for times and for seasons and for Days and for years And so is his exclusion from thence of the Seas Hills and Great Rivers allowing only some trilling streams from the Poles For the World without the Sea would be but a Prison where Men would be lock'd up from one another without intercourse would have no communication in Commerce Arts Invention but People must be content to live uncomfortably at home upon their own Stocks and their own Improvements Without Hills Men would be bereaved of the Ornament and Convenience of Metals of the usefulness of Minerals and Stones and Men would have wanted Money Domestick Utensils Physick and Buildings Nay without Hills to drain off the Mist and Rains and Seas to evaporate the Mist and Rains from it is unaccountable to me how there should be such a thing as a River in the World and I fancy the easy descent upon the declivity of an Oval as big as the Earth is not agreeable to the Laws of Hydrostaticks and the usual current of Waters Nor is it less difficult to me to imagine how a Crust of so vast a Thickness as that of the Earth must be should be broken by any natural force especially being supported equally by the subterraneous Waters or as for any fissures or cracks by the Heat of the Sun they are demonstrated in the hottest Countries not to go many Yards into the Ground and as for any Earth-quakes raised by evaporation of the Abyss below every Ditcher can tell that the Heat of the Sun-beams does not go so many inches under Ground as this Hypothesis must suppose Leagues and besides Earth-quakes and subterraneous Eruptions are not caused by rarefied Vapours but by the accension of sulphureous Damps which like Gun-powder rend tear and carry all before them and are often wont to break out in visible Flame Nay further those vast Fissures and ugly Gaps would have been more inconvenient and unsightful in the Antediluvian Earth than the most barren Mountains and roughest Seas are with us Neither does the usual depth of the Channels of the Sea seem to answer to the Depth of the Abyss nor the regularity of the Mountains to the accidental Fragments of such a Crust There would then appear frequently prodigious Wells and Gaps where the fragments did not exactly meet and such horrid and naked Apices which could not by this time have been any thing smoothed by Rains or covered with Grass or Herbs Nay even in the very situation of the Mountains and greatest Hills there appears wise contrivance and not accidental Fracture for to go no further than our own Country all our great Ridges of Hills in England run East and West so do the Alps in Italy and in some measure the Pyrenees so do the Mountains of the Moon in Africk and so does Mount Tauras and Caucasus And further there appears a prudent foresight in not making the ridges of Hills continued but by breaking them off into Tumuli or Heads parts of each of which lies obliquely behind another and generally admits a skew passage between For unless there was such a Ridge of Hills frequent from East to West the Vapours would all run Northward and there would be no rains in the Mediterranean Countries but the Rivers dried up and the Sea it self in time evaporated and frozen into Polar Ice And unless the Hills were divided into these oblique Breaks so as to keep back the Vapours and let in the Northern Air the World would be far more liable to Pestilences and Putrefaction than now they are and all Places as unhealthy as Scanderoon These things with the Deduction of the Americans from another race than Noah and some other matters of less consequence are my reasons why I cannot subscribe to that learned Doctor 's Solution of the Noachical Deluge and therefore must beg his leave to cast about and see if I can find a better elsewhere that I can more easily acquiesce in Dr. Woodward to whom the World is forever indebted for his curious and diligent Observations of Shells and Minerals and other subterraneous Phaenomenas has promised in his Essay a more natural Hypothesis but one of the Grounds which he designs to build his Theory upon does seem to me so precarious and impossible that I must see a great deal of good proof before I can assent to it For it does not appear to me how it is possible that the waters continuance a few months upon the face of the Earth should dissolve the Compages of the most rigid Fossils and suspend the particles of them all in the circumfused water except only conchous substances and that when the waters were withdrawn they should be let down to fix and be compacted again For if it was possible that water in so short a space could dissolve Marbles and Adamants yet methinks the same should more easily dissolve Oister-shells and Cockles which are of a more tenuous composition and more easy of Dissolution Mr. Whiston in his Theory has avoided most of the Difficulties which were chargeable upon the First and has given the World a Tast of the extraordinary Mathematical and Philological Learning he stands possest of The chief fault I find in him is that he has stuck more to Mr. Newton's than Moses his Philosophy and seems too too fond and credulous of his Ingenious Hypothesis of the Comet Nay the imputing this great Catastrophe to the necessary Laws of a Comets Trajection which the Scriptures tell us was sent by God for the Sin of Mankind seems to give too great a scope for the scoffs of Libertines and the Atheistical Fatality His Turning Days into Years and denying the Diurnal Revolution of the Earth at first is methinks a little too bold when it does not seem at all to favour his Hypothesis but only to give God six Years time to work in when the Infidels already grudge him so much at six days His fancying two Courses of Rain from the Scripture which only seems to repeat the Relation of one is not to me so satisfactory nor his Exclusion of Clouds and Mists which is agreeable indeed to the Burnettian Theory but I think not to his Neither can I conceive that the bare passing through the Tail or Atmosphere of a Comet could afford the thousand part of the Water that Theory has occasion for and he himself is forced to fetch a great part of it from the Abyss Nor is it credible that the Earth a cold Planet should go off with 750,000 Miles of the Comets Tail which could not be supported by the Comet it self but only by reason of the burning heat of the Body of it And it is a mistake I suppose to think that the round Circle about the Body of