which run thus in the Review Ver. 3. Knowing this first that there shall come in the last days scoffers walking after their own lusts 4. And saying where is the promise of his coming for since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were from the beginning of the Creation 5. For this they are willingly ignorant of that by the Word of GOD the heavens were of old and the earth consisting of water and by water 6. Whereby the World that then was being overflowed with water perished 7. But the heavens and the earth that are now by the same word are kept in store reserved unto fire against the day of Judgment and perdition of ungodly men 10. The day of the LORD will come as a thief in the night in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise and the elements shall melt with fervent heat the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burnt up 13. Nevertheless we according to his promise look for new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness But that such a triplicity of heavens and earth as the Review contends for is signifi'd or set out by S. Peter's words is very unlikely and the following Exceptions lie against it First those words are so opposite to the first state of the heavens and earth that they cannot admit of it unless one passage in them be false which is this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which the Review renders consisting of water and by water This must be appli'd both to the Heavens and to the Earth as being spoken of both And if it be to be understood not of the Posture of them according to our Translation but as the Review interprets it it must be void of truth For first apply it to the heavens and they must consist by water as well as of water that is by the help of water tanquam per causam sustmentem as by a sustaining cause says the Review p. 20. But how did water sustain the first heavens or Neptune in that State perform the task of Atlas Secondly apply it to the earth and that must consist of water as well as by water But how did the first Earth in order consist of water more than the second Instead of that this second Earth is of a far more watry constitution than the first half the surface of the present Globe being nothing but Sea And if it be urged that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of water relates to the Heavens and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by water relates to the Earth the very form of the words will not allow it For as the H. GHOST has set them both the Expressions relate as much to the Heavens as they do to the Earth and as much to the Earth as they do to the Heavens and to both alike And the Review gives us leave to refer both to both because it will make no great difference in its interpretation p. 21. Secondly S. Peter's words are so opposite to the second state of the Heavens and Earth that they cannot admit of it unless one Passage in them be inverted For the SPIRIT says that the world that then was being overflowed with water perished And so plainly makes the watry inundation the cause of the Worlds destruction But grant there were Heavens and Earth of a second Order according to the Review and the Earth's Destruction or Dissolution must be the cause of that inundation And is it likely that St. Peter would so teach Philosophy that it should not be understood without transposing the terms in which it is delivered or drawing them to a kind of contrary sense Who can believe that he allowed this second state of heavens and earth much less asserted it in disputing with Philosophers when if he did so in his expression as properly and most naturally taken he mistook the Cause for the Effect and made the Earth to perish by its being drowned when indeed it was drowned by its perishing or being dissolved Thirdly the Apostle's words are so opposite to the Third state of Heavens and Earth that they cannot admit of it unless one Passage in them be contradicted For this Third state which is the same with the new Heavens and new Earth is by the Review post-pon'd to the Conflagration For it tells us that the Earth by that fire being reduc'd to a second Chaos from that as from the first arises a new Creation or new Heavens and a new Earth p. 6. And therefore the Theorist's asserting that these shall rise before the day of Judgment must needs be plain Contradiction to what the Apostle lays down in the 7th verse For there he says that the Heavens and the Earth that are now are kept in store reserved unto fire against the day of Iudgment and perdition of ungodly men And when he has said that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the present Heavens and the Earth shall be kept and reserved till the day of Iudgment the Doctrine of New Heavens and a new Earth to be introduc'd before then must be downright Contradiction to this And truly the same it must be to affirm that these New Heavens and Earth shall be consequent to the general Conflagration Nor is there any way to avoid these barefac'd Contradictions unless in complaisance to this pretty Hypothesis there must be two Conflagrations and two Days of Judgment and two ends of the World which is one of each sort more than GOD has revealed By S. Peter's New heavens therefore and his new Earth we are to understand a new and excellent state of things upon which the blessed Saints are all to enter at the consummation of this present World And as to what the Review says p. 10. they must be material and natural in the same sense and signification with the former Heavens and Earth this does not appear from the Apostle's words The other sense now mention'd may rather be inferred from them considering the way or usage of the holy Writers For with them it is common in passing from one thing to another to carry a word or Notion used just before along with them farther or to rise from a Literal to an Allegorical or Anagogical meaning Such Transitions as these to confine our Observation to one sacred Author occur very frequently in the Gospel of S. John Thus in the 4th Chapter our SAVIOUR discoursing with the Samaritan Woman about drawing water out of a Deep Well carries on the matter to Water that he could give To such Water as he that drinketh of it shall never thirst but it shall be in him a VVell springing up into everlasting life But tho the Well and the Water first mention'd were Material it does not follow from thence that the latter were the same or that they could be such So Chap. 6. from speaking of Loaves and of eating bread he raises his Discourse to that meat which endureth unto everlasting life But yet it is never the more
suggested that such a posture as lying cross the Stream would be more likely to effect the Earth's turning upon its own axis as it does And the Stream would take more hold of an oblong Body than of a round Answ p. 40. And because it would take more hold of it for that very reason it would the sooner turn it out of its Position For what makes the force of a stream turn a long Body that lies cross it sooner than another as long which already lies length-ways in it but only its taking more hold of it And then as to the Earth's turning upon its own axis it would rather have promoted than prevented the change of its situation considering its wallowings in its Annual Circuit For where a Body has two Motions upon the same Center if one of them chances to be irregular the other commonly disorders it farther rather than helps to correct its Exorbitance Somewhat like a Bowl which being not set out of hand right the oftner it turns round in its progressive motion the farther it runs on in a wrong Course The second Argument against the Oval Figure of the first Earth Disc p. 196. is the Sphaericalness of the present Earth And that the present Earth is Sphaerical is not only the Opinion of Modern but also of Ancient Philosophers said the Excepter and he named some But the Theorist Answ p. 40. says the Answerer alledg'd many more Authorities in favour of the Oval Figure of the Earth For besides Empedocles in particular he affirms that the Philosophy of Orpheus the Phoenician Aegyptian and Persian Philosophers did all compare the Earth to an Egg with respect to its Oval External Form Here we must reply Another untruth 1st That this is another very false Assertion For those Philosophers made the comparison betwixt the World and the Egg not betwixt the Earth and the Egg tho our Author would put that sense upon them Only two of the Authorities cited by him Lat. Theor. Edit 2. p. 267. resemble the Earth to the Yolk of the Egg very unluckily for that we know is of a round Figure 2ly Where the Ancients compare the World to an Egg they do it usually with respect to its Production as well as to its Form A Notion which the Answerer or any Theist would be loth to admit of that Heaven and Earth and all things therein should spring out of a material Egg. A pregnant Instance of this occurs in Athenagoras which upon occasion we noted formerly who tells us that Orpheus the Author we may suppose Legat. pro Christ pa. mihi 72. Disc p. 105. Sympos l. 2. Qu. 3. of the Doctrine of the Mundane Egg for Plutarch calls it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Orphic Doctrine taught that a vast Egg brought forth by Hercules being broke by him fell into two parts Of the upper part Heaven was made and of the lower the Earth So that Heaven was contained in and sprung out of this Egg as well as the Earth And then 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Heaven being mingled with Earth brought forth Men Women and GODS And what is this less tho the Gentil Divinity was tinctur'd with it than a piece of rankest Atheistic Physiology For it makes Mankind and Gods to rise out of meer Matter without allowing such a Principle as Soul or Spirit to any one of them And this Egg out of which Aristophanes will have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 In Avib the Race of Gods to be hatched as well as mortal and inanimate Creatures was layed he says by Chaos and Night And so gives us a plain account of the old Atheistic Theology which made 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Production of the Gods and the Production of the World the same thing Yet the Theorist was pleased to show Vid. Lat. Theor. li. 2. c. 7. 10. Edit 2. that between this Doctrine and his there is an Harmony or Affinity Which if it will conciliate Reputation to his Hypothesis let it But so far as it agrees with the Aristophanic or Atheistic Cosmogony so far it will be the less reconcilable to the Mosaic Cosmology or inspired Doctrine of the Creation Disc p. 197. The Sphaericalness of this present Earth was argued First from the Conical Figure of its shadow cast upon the Moon Answ p. 41. But that says the Answerer cannot make a Difference sensible to us at this distance whether the Body that cast the shadow was exactly Sphaerical or Oval This is gratis dictum and spoken against a common and approved Argument and so of little weight Secondly It was inferred from the place of the Waters Which are deepest so far as we know near the Poles whereas were the Earth Oval the middle Regions thereof being lowest the Waters would have run thither and settled under the Aequator But this he tells us has been answer'd before The same Cause that drive the Waters thither would have kept them there And that Answer has been reply'd to already and the Replicant has shewed that there was no sufficient Cause to drive the Waters thither and so none to keep them there Thirdly It was urged That if this Earth was Oval Navigation towards the Poles would be extremely difficult if not impossible because of Sailing up an Ascent But says the Answerer If there be a continual draught of Waters from the Aequator towards the Poles this will Ballance the Difficulty But if there be no such draught the difficulty holds and that there is such a Draught remains to be proved That the Figure of this Earth is truly Sphaerical is fairly discovered and determin'd by this Observation That the Gibbosity of the Sea rises as fast behind a Ship Sailing in direct Latitude towards the Poles as behind one whose course lies in direct Longitude towards East or West CHAP. X. THE Excepter proved that Mountains were before the Flood from the words of Moses Psal 90. Read Disc c. 10. § 1. Before the Mountains were brought forth Thou art GOD from everlasting And from Pro. 8.22 25. where we read that the LORD possessed WISDOM before the Mountains were settled And the Answerer grants that the design and intention of the H. GHOST is plain in both these places in the one Answ p. 43◠to set out the Eternity of GOD and in the other of the Logos in particular Now where it was the design and intention of the H. GHOST to set out the Existence of GOD and the Divine Logos which were from everlasting by temporal things would he do it by any but such as were soonest brought into being Or would Moses himself without the H. GHOST have done it by any other things than such Surely it would have been a very faint and improper Illustration of GOD's Eternity unbecoming Moses much more the H. SPIRIT to say that he existed before the World was seventeen hundred years old Yet when
at removing it Ib. p. 81. The first is this Let us remember that this contradicting Scripture here pretended is only in natural things And is his contradicting Scripture then but pretended only I heartily wish for his sake that it were so But what is said in the Eighth Chapter of this Reply makes it too real and apparent To extenuate it therefore he here remembers us that his contradicting Scripture is only in natural things And now I must confess my self to be at a stand I have often been surpriz'd at occurrencies in his Writings but now I am almost amaz'd To see that so wild a word as this should come from the Pen of a Christian Doctor That he should alledge for himself as a kind of defence that he contradicted Scripture only in natural things As if when the H. SPIRIT spake of such things he did not mind what it was he said or men might interpret it even as they list and turn it to a contrary meaning if they please without offence As if it were lawful in some things to give GOD the lie so we but allow him to speak truth in others Believe it I take no pleasure at all in these expressions but yet I cannot forbear neither to think the Oracles of Heaven should be thus treated I formerly minded him of too bold an affront to Scripture and how he might approach towards another enormity and GOD knows I did it in meekness and kindness And however it was taken 't is now plain 81. it was necessary For in that very page where he reflects on those things he runs unhappily into this new exorbitance of excusing his contradicting Scripture by saying he did it only in natural things As he bids us remember this so I hope he will remember it seriously Else by the memento he here puts in he will but heat a Brand as it were to mark himself for extravagance And truly admit but this one Extravagance of contradicting Scripture in natural things and it will draw such a number of others after it and those so notorious that no tongue can be able either to reckon them up or represent them It would even match the Doctrine of Transubstantiation that Hydra of non-sensical errors and monstrous Jargon of absurdities As a specimen of this take what follows From the very beginning as Scripture assures us the Sun shone in the Heavens the Light filled the Air and Day and Night were alternately on the Earth But these were Natural things and may we venture therefore to contradict Scripture in them and say they were not so Then how could the World possibly subsist As Scripture informs us the Ground yielded trees and trees brought forth fruits and of one sort of fruit did our first Parents eat tho it was forbidden them But these were Natural things and may we therefore presume to contradict Scripture and deny that they were thus Then how came these Products into being which gave occasion to the sin and fall of man As Scripture instructs us Adam begat some Children and they begat others and they again others and so on But these Generations were Natural things and may we therefore take upon us to contradict Scripture and say there was no such way of propagation Then how could Mankind be increas'd and multipli'd As Scripture teaches us the Body of our LORD was flesh and blood But flesh and blood are Natural things and may we therefore be so bold as to contradict Scripture and say that his body was not carnal Then how can his blood cleanse us from our sins or how shall we ever be saved by his Cross And when to such a monstrous and mischievous pitch of absurdity contradicting Scripture in Natural things would rise this aloud proclaims it to be an evil practice and a method too licentious to be allowable And farther Natural things may be matter of divine Declarations and Promises in Scripture And when they are so to contradict Scripture by saying they are otherwise than that declares or promises they should be must be indirect impeachment of the Truth Fidelity and Righteousness of Heaven Thus for example it was of old declar'd or promis'd to Noah that while the Earth continueth seed-time and harvest and summer and winter shall not cease Gen. 8.22 But therefore should we say that these various Seasons shall not be constant and run parallel with this Earthly Worlds existence but shall either be suspended by discontinuance or interruption or else cease by praemature abolition or expiration by contradicting Scripture in these tempestival Natural Vicissitudes we should break in too rudely upon GOD's most glorious Attributes aforesaid We may very easily bring this home to the Dominion over the Fish of the Sea That was a Priviledge which GOD declared or promised should be Adam's He therefore that denies the being of a Sea till long after his death by contradicting Scripture in a Natural thing must reflect dishonourably upon that GOD Who keepeth truth for ever Psal 146.6 In spite of this his Character which I would not should fail for ten thousand Worlds he makes him at once to be false to his Word unfaithful to his Promise and unjust to his Creature But as He that is righteous in all his Ways must needs abhor to be thus so we must abhor to think it of him And farther yet should GOD evidently violate but one express Declaration or Promise he has made tho in Natural things what a Damp would it cast upon mens belief of him in Celestial Concerns What a jealousy might it raise and what a vehement suspicion might it justly create in them as to all his highest promissory engagements making them apt to question whether he would stand to any if not ready to conclude that he would keep none And thus again the evil of contradicting Scripture in Natural things will discover it self He was pleas'd to signify Gen. 3.15 that the seed of the Woman should bruise the Serpents head Of how high a Nature and of what infinite Consequence was this most gracious Declaration or Promise It was the authentic Patent of Heavens renewed kindness to Sinners and the grand Assurance the Praediluvians had of its Spiritual and Eternal favours But if Adam and his Children of the first world had found by experience that the GOD who made it could break faith with men why should they regard it And what convincing experience had they of this if when he promis'd the Dominion over Sea-fish to them he did so grievously tantalize and abuse them as to hide both the Sea and all its Fish from them to the end of that World Manifest it is that He assur'd the Inhabitants of the primitive World as much of Dominion over the Sea as he did of the benefit of an incarnate Saviour but then if he cheated them so egregiously at present how could they in prudence trust him for the future and take his word to be what the Psalmist styles it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
Material food because the first spoken of was of that nature And in the same Chapter the Jews telling of Manna or bread from Heaven which their Fathers eat JESVS said unto them I am the bread of life he that cometh unto me shall never hunger But this does not make our SAVIOUR real Manna nor was it possible he should be Material bread Yea being but in the Jewish Temple he took occasion from thence to call his body by that name Chap. 2. Destroy this Temple and I will build it again in three days But was his sacred Body ever the more a stony building And when this was the way of our Great REDEEMER what wonder that his chief Apostle should imitate him And that speaking of the old Heavens and Earth kept in store and reserved unto fire should in raising his Discourse to a future spiritual blessed state speak of it in the terms and under the notions of new Heavens and a new Earth But fourthly that the Apostles words should point at a triform state of Heavens and Earth is very improbable from that change which he makes in the Terms that he uses For in the 5th verse he uses the words Heavens and Earth and in the 7th verse again Heavens and Earth but in the verse betwixt both he says the World that then was Now if he meant the same thing in all three verses why did he not use the same Words and say the Heavens and the Earth that were then This fairly intimates that he intended not the natural but animate World and principally Mankind whom he called the old World in this Chapter and in the preceding Chapter the world of the ungodly Fifthly that this threefold state of Heavens and Earth should be denoted in these words is not to be thought because they certify us that the World that then was perished Now could that be true of the natural World Yet it must be true of some World because GOD says it and therefore it must relate to a World which could and did actually perish which must be the Animal World Indeed by this Perishing the Review understands a change only in the constitution and form of the Heavens and Earth But is or can that be a perishing Suppose ones temper or constitution be changed from Phlegmatic to Choleric is the man therefore perished Or suppose the Shell of an Egg should crack and sink inward a little is the Egg therefore perished No more could the Material Heavens and Earth perish by a meer change of their Constitution and form And had but such a change as that befallen them the Apostle would certainly have express'd it accordingly and not have said the World that then was perished But since he has thus express'd it the animate World must be here understood that so the Word spoken may come up to the thing and express it in a just and true sense But because he says that the Apostle speaks here of the Natural World particularly in the 6th verse and offers Reasons to prove that it perished Review p. 14. We shall lay down the Substance of these Reasons and briefly answer them First the ground these Scoffers went upon was taken from the permanency of the natural World in the same state from the beginning And therefore if the Apostle would take away their Argument he must show that the natural World hath been changed or hath perished Answ And does he not show them a sufficient change in nature at the Deluge when as he minds them the Earth stood so deep and the Heavens so high in Water that thereby the animate world perished Only this change was a change in the condition not of the Constitution of the natural World Secondly these Scoffers could not be ignorant that there was a Deluge which destroyed Mankind and therefore it was the Constitution of those old Heavens and Earth and the change and destruction of them at the Deluge that they were ignorant of Answ If they were not ignorant of the destructive Deluge they might have forgotten it See Disc p. 137. and therefore the Apostle minds them of it Or else they were ignorant or forgetful of the divine Cause of the Flood Ib. p. 134 c which he therefore expressly tells them was the Word of GOD. But as to the pretended change or destruction of the Heavens and Earth I doubt not but S. Peter was as ignorant of them as any of the Persons he reprehends Thirdly the Apostle's design is to prove the Conflagration which will be a destruction of the natural World and therefore he must use an Argument taken from a precedent destruction of that World Answ The Design of the Apostle is not to oppose reason to reason strictly in a just parity of Instances but fairly to infer one judicial and calamitous Providence or Dispensation from another And GOD having drowned the old Heavens in some measure as well as the Earth by the word of his power bringing in the flood upon the ungodly he would from hence convince them that by the same word the present Heavens and Earth are reserved unto fire which shall then be the instrument of perdition to the impious and the whole living World as water was before And so from one general destruction past he strenuously argues the certain futurity of another to come Fourthly unless we understand here the natural World we make the Apostle both redundant in his Discourse and also very obscure in an easy Argument Answ His Discourse for this will not be redundant but very close to his purpose For that is not only to mind these Scoffers that men and other Animals were destroyed in a Deluge caused by GOD's Power but to represent the greatness of that Deluge which swell'd so mightily upon the Earth that in some measure it invaded the Heavens And therefore to what he said of the flood 's destroying Mankind in the foregoing Chapter v. 5th he adding here a description of the vastness of that Flood in the drowned posture which the Heavens and Earth then stood in what he says is far from being superfluous or redundant Nor is his Argument thus made obscure On the contrary rather it receives light from hence For he here bringing in the Heavens and Earth into his account of the Deluge does thereby make the Greatness of it he was representing the more conspicuous Fifthly the opposition carries it upon the Natural World Answ The Heavens and Earth that were of old and the Heavens and Earth that are now we grant are opposed But then 't is as to their Fate not in their Natures And tho the Heavens and Earth that are now shall perish more throughly than they did of old Fire being more consuming than Water yet then for a time they perished too That is in S. Austin's sense with whose Authority the Review makes so loud a noise to little purpose For so far as I can find neither he nor any of the Fathers who affirm
the Aereal Heavens perisht do think that they perisht any otherwise than by the Water 's rising up into the lowest Regions of the Air. And that place of Bede which the Review cites seems to speak the common sense as well as his own which gives us to understand that the Heavens perished p. 25. cunctis aeris hujus turbulenti spatiis aquarum accrescentium altitudine consumptis All the spaces of this turbulent Air being taken up by the heighth of the swelling waters According to which the Heavens perished just as the Air does in a Vessel when it fills with Water But let out the Water and the Air immediately returns into it So the lowest Heavens that perished at the Flood by standing in the Water when that was dried up presently recovered their first Aereal Constitution again The Last reason is answered in the 4th of the foregoing Exceptions And from what has been here said Answers may with ease be made to those Considerations which the Review alledges in proof of a Diversity or Opposition made by S. Peter betwixt the Ancient Heavens and Earth and the Present But farther yet the Review observes that S. Paul also implys that triple Creation which S. Peter expresses p. 10 11. For Rom. 8.20 21 he tells us of a Creation that will be redeemed from vanity which are the new Heavens and new Earth to come A Creation in subjection to vanity which is the present State of uhe World And a Creation that was subjected to vanity in hopes of being restored which was the first Paradisiacal Creation But by Creation or Creature here to understand the Heavens and Earth must be improper For first it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the whole Creation or every Creature that is here spoken of v. 22d And where does that signify the material Heavens and Earth in Scripture Secondly the Creature mention'd is capable of waiting and of earnest expectation and of hope and of pain and of groaning as the verse cited and the context show Yea it seems to be capable of groaning as we our selves do v. 23. Which is above the power of Matter tho never so subtil or celestial Thirdly the Creature here is to be delivered from bondage into glorious liberty v. 21. And this again is a Character which falls not in with the Heavens and Earth He says indeed that the Creature that will be Redeemed from Vanity is the new Heavens and new Earth to come But how will they supposing them come into the Paradisiacal State be delivered from vanity For even then they can be in no better condition than the first Paradisiacal Heavens and Earth were as coming but into a state of Renovation or Restitution And they were so far from being freed from Vanity that they were subject to corruption and perished at the Deluge as the Theorist holds And truly so must the last Paradisiacal ones too unless it be prevented The new Earth if it stands long enough must be dissolved and lose its Form and the new Heavens must be changed at another Deluge and lose their Constitution Or if the day of Judgment should happen first and hinder this yet where would be their Redemption or Deliverance here phantsied For still they would be vain and corruptible in their Nature as Enoch and Elias were both Mortal tho neither died To which add that the Theory l. 4. p. 219 220. plants Gog and Magog in the New Earth and allows them to grow numerous there as the sand by the Sea And so it can no more be redeem'd or deliver'd from Moral Vanity and Corruption upon it than from Natural Vanity and Corruptibility in it Lastly This Creature of the Apostles is to be delivered into the glorious liberty of the Children of God v. 21. now the liberty of GOD's Children is Moral Spiritual and Divine which is not compleated but in the future exalted state of bliss Where being heirs of GOD and joint heirs with CHRIST we shall be glorified with him v. 17th But such a liberty as this is no way compatible to things meerly Physical and so the Heavens and Earth tho never so new and paradisiacal must not pretend to it cannot partake of it Thus we see that the Theorists Interpretation of this Place of Scripture is not right and therefore of necessity we must look out for some other Creature as here intended Nor need we search much to find one Preach the Gospel to every Creature said the H. JESUS to his Apostles S. Mar. 16.15 Here the word is the same with S. Paul's to the Romans But Heavens and Earth cannot possibly be meant by it because to them there must be no Preaching But by every Creature the Heathen World may fitly be understood And so this Precept or Commission given to the Apostles is parallel to that in the last chapter of S. Matthew go and teach all Nations And then by the Vanity to which the Creature was Subject and the Bondage of Corruption from which they were to be delivered we must understand See Dr. Hammonds Annotations on the place Idolatry to which the Gentiles were miserably inslaved And that indeed in Scripture is emphatically exprest by Vanity and Corruption So the Apostles Act. 15th having preached to Idolaters declare the end of their Doctrine was to turn them from their VANITIES And Moses in Deuteronomy does usually point at Idolatry by mens CORRUPTING themselves And if we frame the Exposition of S. Paul's words to this sense it will run very smoothly through the whole Paragraph without any considerable check or Difficulty Review p. 11. But after S. Paul he brings in S. John also to countenance his Phantsie of this triple State of Heavens and Earth For he speaks of the new Heavens and new Earth with that distinguishing Character that the Earth was without a Sea And as this distinguisheth it from the present Earth so being a Restitution or Restauration it must be the same with some former Earth c. To this we Answer The one and twentieth Chapter of the Apocalyps where we meet with S. Johns new Heavens and Earth consists of two very glorious Scenes The New Heavens and Earth make the first and the holy City or the New Jerusalem the latter But this City being Allegorical we have no reason to think that the new Heavens down from which and the new Earth down to which it came should be otherwise Also this Allegation does no more prove The Triple State of Heavens and Earth or that the primitive Earth was without a Sea than it proves there shall be a City built of pure Gold whose twelve Gates shall be twelve Pearls in a Literal sense according to the tenour of that chapter And now let us offer but Two short Exceptions which will not fail to subvert the chief Scripture-basis of the whole Theory of the Earth as the Review calls it p. 13th by showing that S. Peter's words as well as S. Paul's and S. John's are
misinterpreted and mis-apply'd The first is this In case this Triple state or successive Order of Heavens and Earth be rightly grounded upon the aforesaid Apostles words then those three most eminent Evangelical Writers must implicitly contradict the Doctrine of Moses And so either what he or what they have delivered in some points must be false and all of them being inspir'd from above the H. GHOST must contradict Himself By Moses's Doctrine 't is very plain that the first Earth had an open Sea For GOD he says gave man Dominion over the Fish of the Sea and his Dominion over the Fish appears to be as full and withal as soon conferr'd upon him as that he had over the Beasts or Fowls And therefore if these Apostles warrant this threefold State of Heavens and Earth in the first of which there could be no open Sea their Doctrine must necessarily clash with Moses's and implicitly contradict it So again by Moses's Doctrine 't is undeniably plain that there was Brass and Iron in the Praediluvian Earth For as he teaches Tubal-Cain was an Instructer of every Artificer in those Metals And therefore if these three famous Apostles maintain this triple State of Heavens and Earth they must implicitly interfere with Moses again because the first of these states could not possibly produce either of those Metals both which according to Moses were extant in it The second Exception is this In case such a Triple state as this be truly founded upon the Writings of these three famous men then as all of them must contradict Moses implicitly so one of them must contradict himself expresly I mean S. John For speaking of the state of the new Heavens and Earth he says there was no more Sea Apoc. 21.1 Yet describing the final Judgment which is to be at the end of the same state he says the Sea gave up the dead which were in it Apoc. 20.13 And so in short there is no more probability that there should be such a tripple state as the Theory has invented built upon these Foundations of the Apostles laying than there is possibility that inspired Writers should contradict themselves or one another And therefore if what our Author says be true that the principal parts of this Theory are such things as are recorded in Scripture and so must be taken for granted in one sense or other Review p. 1 yet it is so far evident that he has not hit upon the Right sense of them as it is evident the sense that he puts upon them is not consonant to Scripture And that is so evident that in his interpreting Scriptures and applying several of them to his notions Review p. 8. he seems to have verifi'd his own words where he says 't is a kind of fatality upon us to be deceived Ib. p. 11. Yea even to be deceiv'd in the passages of those principal Apostles of which he thus pronounces These three places I alledge as comprehending and confirming the Theory in its full extent And that he speeds no better in dealing with Prophane Writers about this Matter than he did in tampering with Divine ones one Instance will evince which we meet with in his Review p. 20. where to show the true importance of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 vel 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and how ill it is rendred in the English standing out of the water 2 S. Pet. 3.5 he says that he that should translate Plato 's 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the World stands out of fire would be thought no Graecian And adds that Thales's 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Cicero renders ex aqua constare omnia But this we except against as nothing to the purpose For the Authors named by their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 meant that the World was made out of a thing as out of its principle But did the Theorist's first Heavens 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in that sense was water the Principle out of which they were made So far from that that they were compleatly made and the Earth too without any water in their Composition Yea the Sun was fain to dart his fiery Beams through the Earth to rarify the water in the Abyss below and from thence to fetch it up by exhalation before so much as Vapour could spread through those Heavens So that they were no more made out of water than the Air is made out of Clouds because they fly in it or than a County is made out of a River because it runs through it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Plato's or in Thales's sense has nothing to do here For besides that in the primitive Heavens there was no formal or specific Water save only about the Poles of the Earth where it fell but only Vapour even that Vapour was but passant through those Heavens no Ingredient of them no Principle of their Being or Part of their Essence But this was that which the Philosopher meant by his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the Orator confirms it by his reddition of the Words We cannot conclude without making this plain but true Observation That the Theory of the Earth is a very vain and false Hypothesis The Vanity of it is notorious For notwithstanding that it pretends to be chiefly Philosophical yet all its Primary Phaenomenaes that we have considered and which make up the biggest and most Philosophical part of it are fain to call in the help of Miracle to support them Review p. 2. The first is the Original of the Earth from a Chaos But that the Formation of this Earth might in due time be effected it is supposed to be done by the hand of Extraordinary or miraculous Providence The second is the state of Paradise and the Antediluvian World And here Miracle must come in again for that World could never have been peopled had not Angels carry'd Mankind over the Torrid Zone The Third is the Vniversal Deluge But without Miracle no Rains could have been before the fountains of the great Deep were broken up nor could the falling Ark have been preserved after it Nor is the Falseness of the Hypothesis inferiour to its Vanity For there is never a one of the Phaenomenaes aforesaid but includes too manifest Contradiction in it to the sacred Oracles or else to it self First the Formation of the Earth out of the Theory's Chaos contradicts Scripture For that tells us the Earth was made the Third day but the Theory says it was increased daily And if to take off this Contradiction to Scripture it be alledged that the Answerer allows it might be made in six minutes this throws the Contradiction upon the Theory For how could the Earth be made in six minutes that was daily increased Secondly the Paradisiacal state and the Antediluvian World Contradict Scripture For the one gives Paradise a Situation Contrary to what Moses assigns it and the other against his most plain Assertions excludes both Metals and an open Sea with Adam's Dominion over its Fish Thirdly the Vniversal Deluge contradicts Scripture For according to the Theorist See Disc c. 8. §. 5. Answ p. 31. Reply p. 67. there were fourscore days Rain towards making the Flood but the H. GHOST mentions and allows but forty This is no more than a Recapitulation or short Rehearsal of some former Remarks Yet they fully exhibit the nature of the Theory And when its Primary and Essential Phaenomenaes are such what must its Secondarys and Collaterals be If the Constituent and substantial parts of an Hypothesis be so very faulty impossible it is that the Coincidents or Appendants of it should be justifiable Yet thus our Author vouches this Hypothesis in his Review p. 12. It is not only more agreeable to Reason and Philosophy than any other yet propos'd to the World but it is also more agreeable to Scripture Having found out words in Scripture that is somewhat like to his own he runs directly away with them and right or wrong applys them to his purpose Just as some persons who listning unto Bells think that they ring what runs in their minds so if Scripture phrases do but chime as it were or sound to his sense our Author concludes that they favour his Notions tho all be but Phantsy But let him make good that fair Character and I am ready to retract what I have said against him and to turn my Exceptions into applause In the mean time I have pursued the Theory as far as I need For as for going through the two last Books which he says will not be unacceptable to the Theorist Answ p. 66. I deem it wholly superfluous Where the Foundations of an house are taken away the Superstructures can never stand The upper Stories must needs follow the fate of the lower ones and both will certainly fall together 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 FINIS ERRATA PAg. 14. l. 24. after Shores a full stop l. 25. after if r. it p. 19. l. 11. r. aereal p. 22. in marg leg Luna p 32. l. 6. blot out in p. 58. l. 14. blot out only p. 65 l. 35. after Expedient r. and. p. 72. l. 11. r. incrusted l. 16. r. account p. 87. l. 26. blot out English p 112. l. 31. r. off p. 119. l. 18. r. aereal p. 134. in marg leg delentur p. 151 l. ult r. his own p. 195. l. 28. r. Tehom p. 196. l. 24. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 205. l. 6. after head a full stop Books lately Printed and are to be Sold by J. Southby at the Harrow in Cornhill 1691. TWO Treatises The First concerning Reproaching and Censure The Second an Answer to Mr. Serjeants Sure-footing To which are annexed Three Sermons Preached upon several Occasions and very useful for these Times By William Falkner D. D. in 4to A Letter to Father Petre concerning his Part in the Late Kings Government Wherein all his Actions are Justified and wherein also the Forgery of a Prince of Wales is freely Confessed and Justified in 4to The Benefit of Early Piety Recommended to all Young Persons and particularly to those of the City of London in Twelves A short View of the Duty of Receiving the Sacrament Fit to be Read in the Time of Preparation With Additions of several Prayers necessary to be used before and after Communion in 24. FINIS
goes in be very winding cross and intricate it will guide him quickly and easily out them The Second Expedient whereby he shortens his work and makes it easy is this Where Objections are made that ought to be answered he frequently passes them by with Silence and sometimes justifies his so doing by saying the Theory is not concerned in them As if slighting Arguments or neglecting of them were a sufficient confuting them A Practice agreeable to the Country mans purpose Who being resolved to argue with a disputacious Quaker to his Friends disswading him said hold your Tongues for I will have a bout with him and if he speaks any thing that I cannot answer I 'll either say nothing at all to it or else face him down that 't is nothing to me Besides these two Shifts that he makes he tells such Vntruths and falls into such Mistakes and is guilty of such flat Contradictions to himself as will yield no Honour to a Son of Philosophy Lest this charge which may seem heavy should be suspected to be false in proof of its truth the particulars are noted in the Margent of the Reply As to his complaint of the Excepters Vnfairness Answer p. 26. in citing the first Edition of the Theory for such things as are left out of the Second it is of no weight For first the Excepter never heard nor knew the least of a Second Edition of any part of the Latin Theory out of which any things were left that were in the First till the answer to his Exceptions told him of it Ib. and whereas he adds in way of aggravation that this Edition was printed above a Twelvemonth before my Exceptions My Exceptions through the Printer's sickness were in the Press longer than so Secondly for a Writer to leave some very false things out of a Second Edition of his Book which he taught in the First is not sufficient To leave them all out is the least he can do even to make the very lowest amends possible for the wrong done to Truth But especially if he injured Divine Truths by confronting the Doctrine of the sacred Bible or by clashing with its History And this is that which makes what the Theorist has done in this Case to be short and imperfect All the things of this Nature and Tendency are not left out of his Second Edition And they who print things that derogate from Scripture or are repugnant to it will hardly make good men believe that they do GOD right by leaving some of those Derogations or evil Repugnancies out of a Second Impression while they keep in others that are as bad The Subject that libels his Princes Declaration highly to day makes no satisfaction by sending out a lower Libel of it to morrow No his second Act is an aggravation of his first and as he is chargeable with and answerable for either so in point of Duty he is bound to most serious acknowledgments of both And so is the Answerer to disown all these notions instead of defending them which reflect upon Scripture And truly should the Replicant go on to tax him with those notions as the Exceptor did he would have no great cause to blame him for the procedure For notwithstanding that he has left them out of his Book his Rejection of them is not so express but they seem yet to stand as true in his Judgment For thus he openly declares Answ p. 66. I have not from these Exceptions found reason to change any part of the Theory or to alter my opinion as to any particular in it And if his opinion of those particulars which we excepted against and he has left out be still the same the same Exceptions might without Vnfairness be urged against him Yea his telling the Excepter that his opinion as to the Theory is not alter'd Ib. p. 79. but more confirmed by his Exceptions makes his answering Exceptions against it by saying they are left out to be a meer Shift Yet the Replicant takes but little farther notice of these things as mentioning them but seldom and on special Occasion That this Reply came out no sooner is owing partly to the Fulness of it I was willing to say what I had to say to this Answer and so to the Theory once for all that then I might finally have done with it And partly to those many interruptions and frequent avocations that attend my Circumstances But chiefly to those indispositions of health which happened to me and hindred me as to writing for near a quarter of a Year together And now if in some things or places it be less pleasing or profitable than the Reader would have it he must consider this one thing That we do not here chuse the Paths we go in but are fain to trace another's Phansy and to follow his humour who leads the way CHAP. I. IN this Chapter there is nothing remarkable but the Squib which he throws at the End of it Where he tells the Excepter that his looking upon his Discourse as a Collection of Notes c. is a severe Censure Answ p. 2. And then adds but every man best understands his own Works Which without doubt must be true of himself else he could never understand a late Work of his own Eng. Theor. p. 96. to be a true piece of Natural History and the greatest and most remarkable that hath yet been since the beginning of the World 1 Kings 4.33 Tractavit Historiam Plantarum c. Grot. in loc As for Solomon's it was nothing to it Joy to him of the honour he here does himself in taking place of all of his own Order 'T is an high Complement that he makes to his Pen may it prove as happy a one to his Person But having cast the Die he must take his chance And by this one Throw he is either the best Natural Historian in the World or a man that understands not his own Works He is wiser that is than Solomon in his way or else not right in his Understanding But the latter we may guess is the likeliest of the two For tho the King of Israel's ran upon things of another kind yet surely it was as true and withal as great and remarkable a piece of Natural History as the Theory of the Earth CHAP. II. IN the Second Chapter to the First Exception against the Formation of the Earth That it would have taken too much time the World being made in six Days The general answer is this 〈◊〉 Either you take the Hypothesis of an ordinary Providence or of an extraordinary as to the time allowed for the Formation of the Earth If you proceed according to an ordinary Providence the Formation of the Earth would require much more time than six days But if according to an extraordinary you may suppose it made in six Minutes if you please But the Excepter had noted p. 59. lin 24. 33. c.
Discourse p. 49. how the Theory acknowledged that to make the primitive Earth out of Particles descending from above p. 51. must be a good whiles work and that it was to become dry by degrees after it had done growing and that the Body or new Concretion of it was increased DAILY being fed and supplied both from above and below And can an Habitable Earth which is a good while in making and the body of which must be DAILY increased be made in six Minutes even by Extraordinary Providence it self What made the Answerer start out of the way of ordinary Providence which he went in as to the Earth's Formation into this extraordinary one to stumble into such a Contradiction of himself But so it is A Contradiction to himself when men are pinched and put to pain they must do and say something tho it be little to the purpose yea much against it And this grave distinction being bestowed upon the first Exception without more ado it is fairly dropt And as for the Arguments contained in the residue of the Chapter against undue protraction of the time of the Earth's Formation which protraction is made necessary by the Theorist's Hypothesis Answ p. 4. even against the Doctrine or History of Moses They are left to the Author and his Readers the Theory being not concerned in them And so they are answered by his Last Expedient But before I go farther I must tell our Answerer that in allowing this extraordinary Providence he condemns his Hypothesis of extraordinary Impertinence For what Need or what Vse can there be of his New Hypothesis as to solving the Phaenomenaes of the Flood when by this Concession the old one will be inabled to the Solution of them all for which his was invented Thus for example was that World to be drowned and the Flood to surmount the highest Hills fifteen Cubits Why extraordinary Providence in six Minutes could create water enough to do it Was that work done by such a prodigious Flood and the Mass of Water to be dried up again Extraordinary Providence could as soon annihilate it Was the frame of the World to be inlarged upon the coming of so vast a quantity of new matter into it And to be contracted again upon its going out Extraordinary Providence could sufficiently provide both against the one and the other inconvenience Were men to live a thousand years before the Flood The same Providence could effect this without a continual Equinox or an Earth universally paradisiacal And thus the Theory instead of making any Figure here is by its own Author made to dwindle into a Cypher and meer superfluity We hope that henceforward the old method of explaining Noah's Flood shall be allowed to be rational and intelligible for that proceeded upon extraordinary Providence and our Answerer is fain to make use of that kind of Providence in reference to his own Hypothesis at last Yea the truth is he is now glad we see to take up with it at first and even to form his Earth by it And yet he tells us in the sixth Chapter of the first Book of his Latin Theory Edit 2. that this Earth was formed solo ductu by the sole conduct of the most known Laws of Gravity and Levity And so this Natural History the Theory is in good part a Natural History of what was done by Divine Power or an History of an effect wrought by Extraordinary Providence which was done by the sole conduct of Natures Laws and Principles And therefore how true this piece of Natural History is and also how great let the World judge but if it be not extremely remarkable I am much mistaken Another Contradiction And so I am if here be not contradiction again But tho our Answerer as he pretends in this Chapter be such a friend to extraordinary Providence yet it is evident that the Theorist otherwhiles was not For tho now his Earth as he grants might be made in six minutes yet heretofore it was to be increased daily and to be dried by degrees before it could be habitable that is it was to be formed in way of ordinary Providence And in the second Chap. of the first Book of his English Theory he tells the World plainly that if we come to reflect seriously upon it we shall find it extreamly difficult if not impossible p. 9. to give an account of the Waters that compos'd the Deluge whence they came and whether they went And adds Ib. to find Water sufficient for this Effect as it is generally explained and understood I think is impossible But had he been hearty for Extraordinary Providence here would have appeared no difficulty I am sure much less extreme difficulty and least of all impossibility For such a Providence could have created Waters to compose the Deluge and then have annihilated them again and as the quantity of them would thus have been sufficient so the account whence they came and whither they went would have been as easie That this was one way in which some went as to explaining the Deluge according to the general or common Notion of it the Theorist observed in his third Chapter They say in short says he Eng. The. p. 18. That God ALMIGHTY created waters on purpose to make the Deluge and then annihilated them again when the Deluge was to cease But how did he approve of this way That will appear from what follows Where he presently complains Ib. that this is to show us the naked arm of Omnipotency A sight which he could not well brook in this case And why Why Ib. because this is to cut the knot when we cannot loose it Yet see the change he is now fain to show the naked Arm of Omnipotency himself and to make use of the Knife of Extraordinary Providence tho with it he cuts his own Fingers as well as several knots of his Hypothesis as we shall see afterward And thus we have gained one extraordinary Point An Earth that before was to increase DAILY in the Body or Concretion of it and so might be six Days or six Weeks or as many Months or Years in forming might now by Extraordinary Providence be made in six Minutes That is our Author is brought to Cross his Hypothesis in this Matter For now he supposes that his Earth might be formed in six Minutes by extraordinary Providence whereas the Theory as is plain from the cited Expressions carries on its formation in way of ordinary Providence according to which the Formation of it would require much more time than six days as he confesses Answ p. 2. CHAP. III. THat the Moon was in the Heavens and in our neighbourhood P. 5. when the Earth was form'd he proves from the six days Creation says the Answerer of the Excepter here But his Argument he tells him will be of no force unless he can prove that the Fourth days Creation was before the Third No Who
shall be Judge Why one that the Answerer fairly appeals to and one it seems of the Excepter's own chusing namely Scripture I and let the same Judge says the Excepter decide the whole Controversie betwixt us And what says this Judge to the case before him Let all Philosophers who please to be of the Jury mind his sentence and also the Appellant's Argument from it The Moon was made the fourth day and the Earth was formed the third So says the Judge and very truly Therefore unless the fourth day was before the third the Moon could not hinder the Formation of the Earth So concludes the Appellant and very falsely in the case depending For the Earth formed the third day was Moses's Earth which the Excepter contends for and could not possibly think that the Moon should hinder the Formation of that But the Earth he disputes against is the Theorist's which could not be form'd the third day For according to him it was not only to grow out of a Chaos by the rising of Oyl out of an Abyss and the falling of Particles out of the Air but moreover was to be increast daily And therefore had the Moon been made the fifth or sixth day or after it might have been made time enough to hinder the Formation of this Earth But however he intimates here that his Earth was form'd the third day And that 's mighty well for now it 's to be hop'd that Moses and he will agree better Here 's one step towards an accommodation But then the mischief on 't is 't is a step backwards on our Author's part and I 'm afraid will do him but little Service For while he thus endeavours to shun Charybdis he falls unluckily into Scylla is reduc'd to such an exigence that let him choose which way he pleases of these two he is sure to go in contradiction to himself Another Contradiction For if he says his Earth was form'd the Third day according to Scripture he then contradicts himself in his Theory which teaches it was daily increased And if he says it was daily increased according to his Theory then he contradicts himself in his appeal to Scripture which as he now owns tells us it was formed the third day Ib. lin 21. And should it be alledged to evade this that here are two distinct Hypotheses that is to say of Ordinary and Extraordinary Providence whereon these two different Formations of the Earth are respectively founded this would be but the same thing over again As evidently showing that in his way of shifting he has set up two Hypotheses plainly contradictory to one another Even as contradictory as affirming a thing made in one day and affirming it made in many days are contradictory affirmations The Excepter had suggested Disc p. 74 75 76. that the Moon being present and causing Tides and Fluctuations in the waters of the Chaos that would have hindred the Formation of the Earth upon them This says the Answerer Answ p. 6. we have no reason to believe according to the Experiences we have now For Tides hinder not the Formation of Ice in cold Regions upon the Surface of the Sea therefore why should they have hindred the Formation of the Earth upon the surface of the Chaos Some Seas indeed do freeze in some measure but then their waters are pretty still And so the most that can be inferred from thence is but this that if the waters of the Chaos were any where so quiet some Earth might there have been formed upon them Tho this Inference withal is far short of being an evidence of the thing inasmuch as there is more reason for Ice to be formed upon the Sea than there was for Earth to be formed upon the Chaos For our Seas have Shoars where Ice does usually begin its Formation spreading wider or farther by a continued or progressive Concretion Which may be one chief reason why our Creeks or Harbours are oft frozen up when Seas that feed or flow into them are not even because they are bounded with no far distant Banks where Ice can more easily grow from the Sides till it meets in the Middle But the waters of the Chaos had no Shoars Ice also is lighter than water and so swims upon it and therefore if fit chances to be broken in its first Formation and while it is thin it may unite and grow together again by a new congelement But earth is heavier than water and apt to sink and therefore if broken when spread upon it in a thin Covering it immediatly dives and goes down to the bottom And upon this account the same degrees of Fluctuation that permit Ice to gather upon Seas would have prevented an Earth's being formed upon the Chaos But we must go on The Theorist thought that the presence of the Moon was less needful in the first World Eng. Theor. p. 241. And one reason he gave for it was this because there were no long Winter nights To which the Excepter opposed Disc p. 79. that as there were no long Winter nights so there were no short Summer ones neither So that set but the one against the other and the presence of the Moon may seem to have been as needful then in regard of the length of nights as it is now But this in the Answerer's opinion tho witty does not reach the point And pray p. 6. why why because a great Inconvenience attends long nights when they fall upon the hours of travel or the hours of work and business But then at the same time that business and journeys are hindred in some places by long Nights in other places they are helped forward as much by short ones And therefore set but the business and travellings of the Inhabitants of some parts of the Earth against the like Concerns of the Inhabitants of other parts of it and the Excepter's Observation will reach the point And truly where can the presence of a Moon be more needful than in that World where half the time was still to be Night and 12 of every 24 hours was continually dark all over it at once that is all over its habitable Regions For then the Earth standing in a Right Position to the Sun and having none of its motion of Inclination as Astronomy calls it and the Sun always rising and setting in the Aequinoctial and so in the same points of the Heavens without any Latitude as the days would constantly be twelve hours in length so the nights by this means must be as long but the Crepusculum or Twilight in the praediluvian World would be very short and so its Inhabitants immers'd in the deeper darkness and consequently could very ill spare the Moon In the next place the Answerer notes that Oily Particles in the Chaos pag. 7. were excepted against as Precarious And he endeavours to take off the Exception by giving Reasons for their being Original and Primaeval Ib. The first he
makes that evaporate together with it self be apt in some measure to twine and wind themselves Especially at that time when they both upon the Secretion of the Chaos met and encountred one another in single naked Particles before ever they were once united in Bodies or at all incorporated in their respective Masses And altho by reason of their mutual Lubricity the Watry Particles could not long keep fast the Oily ones about which they cling'd with tortuous flexures yet they might considerably check and protract their separation and ascent it requiring some time for the Oily Particles to extricate themselves and get loose from those little watry Wreaths wherewith they were involv'd and hampered Eng. Theor. p. 55 56 57. Thirdly the liquid Mass of the Chaos being a Collection of all Liquors that belong to the Earth every one of these would at first be foul and muddy and their respective Impurities must be discharged Particularly the Water being a vast Body would have sent down its grosser parts in great abundance of Sedimental Stuff Now this Plenty of Sediment was thrown off by the Water either before or after the Oily Matter was risen or in the very Rising of it Not after it was risen for this Sediment being more earthy and so more heavy than the Oil it must be allowed to separate as soon as that or rather somewhat before it And yet if it were discharged and sank before the Oily matter was risen or when it was rising how could it chuse but sweep away that and carry it down together with it self to the Bottom of the Abyss Or say these Dreggs should have been too weak or too light to have overpowred the Oil alone and to have sunk it with its self yet it would certainly have arrested its motion upwards By which means the Terrestrial Particles above taking the advantage thus given would have come poudring down a main fastest at first and also the heaviest of them into the bare Waters and so joining their inconceivable Luggage to the sedimental Clog already hang'd upon the Oily Matter would have quite over-set it and weighed it down to the Interior Earth And this piece of work will appear the more fecible and easy to be done if we consider that it might be half or better than half effected before For all the Bodies or Elements of the Chaos being of an Original or Primaeval Nature and not one compounded or made out of another we must suppose that before the very first resolution of it they did coexist in the Chaos in their several Principles or Particles tho they were not locally severed and made into distinct and specifick Masses till its Separation So that at the same time that there were Earthy Particles there were Oily ones too disperst throughout thē whole Capacity of the Chaos And consequently when the grosser earthy Particles gathered towards the Center of the Chaos They salling through the whole Mass even through every little point or line of it from its Superficies downward where these Oily Particles were diffused and lay in their way they must needs catch hold of the greatest part of them the rather for their being of a viscuous quality and bear them down with themselves Especially they descending in so vast a Quantity as to be able to constitute a central Earth Lastly in case the Terrestrial Principle of the Chaos would not thus have hindred the Oily Principle from doing its part towards the Formation of the Theory's Earth yet then the Liquid Part of the Chaos would have hindred the Terrestrial one in the same Work For how is it possible that an Ocean of Water and Oil should strain through the whole Circumference of the Chaos settling down towards the middle of it and leave earthy Particles behind floating in the Air and that in measures sufficient upon their Descent to compose so immense an Earth as ours Let the Air be filled never so full of dust yet a thin Mist presently lays it all And such a prodigious Sea of Water falling through the entire space of the Chaos could not miss of the like effect upon the Earthy Particles then in the Air especially that Water containing so much Oil in it For by the Virtue of its Unctiousness in conjunction with its Gravity it would have cleansed the Air of Earthy Particles tho very throughly incorporate with it as Izing-glass clarifies faeculent Liquors by carrying their Dregs to the bottoms of their Vessels And therefore whereas it is alledged in the pretended Answer that through degrees of Littleness and Lightness in the Earthy Particles many of them might float in the Air a good while Eng. Theor. p. 59. we may rather think there would have been very few of them if any at all left there And then where would have been matter for the first Earth suppos'd to be form'd upon the Surface of the Abyss So we pass to the Third Precariousness Which is concerning the Quantity and Proportion of these Particles P. 8. says the Answerer And from this Charge he seeks to free himself by demanding to this purpose Ib. In what Theory or Hypothesis are Liquors Gag'd and just Measures and Proportions of each accounted for But then it may be demanded again what Theory or Hypothesis has so much need of just Measures and Proportions of these as his and consequently so much reason to account for them Ib. Then he enquires particularly has the great Philosopher meaning D. Cartes in his Hypothesis of 3 Elements Or in his several Regions of the Vnform'd Earth defin'd the Quantity and Dimensions of each Or in the Mineral Particles and Juices does he determine the Quantity of them Nor is there the like reason why he should For that great Philosophers Hypothesis and this little ones are not of the like Nature they stand not upon the like Foundations D. Cartes publickly owns his Hypothesis to be a meer Hypothesis indeed And tho for the better * Quinimo etiam ad res naturales melius explicandas earum Causas altius hic repetam quam ipsas unquam extitisse existimem Non enim dubium est quin Mundas ab initio fuerit creatus cum omni sua perfectione ita ut in eo Sol Terra Lana Stellae extiterint Prin. Par. 3. Sect. 45. explaining of effects in Nature he searcht deeper for their Causes than they ever lay yet he declares that he did not doubt but the World was at first created with all its Perfection so that in it there was a Sun and Earth and Moon and Stars And therefore here was no need of having his 3 Elements apportion'd in their Quantity or accurately adjusted to one another because by his own Confession there was no World to be form'd out of them Eng. Theor p. 85. But is it thus with the Hypothesis of the Theory No no that 's a Reality as its Author tells us And it must needs be so according
but little above half an hour And then to counter-ballance or weigh down this single Difference in length of Nights the pretended Cause of prevailing or excessive degrees of Cold in this present state of Nature beyond what could be in the praediluvian World we hinted several other Causes of vehement Cold in that World Disc Chap. 5 which are not in this tho the Answerer takes no notice of them As First upon supposition that That Earth was Oval the Wet Regions in it must have been several hundreds of Miles farther removed from the Sun than our Climate is and so the Cold there must have been proportionably stronger Secondly in the primitive Earth there was no Clouds which contribute much towards warming the Air. That is as they reverberate or beat back the Beams of the Sun reflected from the Earth As they straiten and compress Vapours in their Motion and agitation And as at some times and in some measure they transmit the Coelestial Rays not altogether unlike to Burning-glasses Thirdly in the first Earth there was no open Seas which fill the Air with Mists and Foggs and great store of Vapours that do mightily thicken it and consequently mitigate the sharpness of it Fourthly There was no Hills nor Valleys Ruggednesses nor Inequalities upon the Surface of that Earth which cause Heat again by confus'd and irregular Reflections of the Sun-beams Now put but these Four Causes of Cold extant in the first World into the Scales against the Length of Nights in the Second which the Answerer insists upon and they will not fail to weigh it down sufficiently Especially if we add that in our Nights shorter by near Four hours than those before the Flood we have sometimes very brisk kind of Frosts In the Beginning that is to say or in the Middle of May when the Sun is far advanc'd on our side of the Equator in a World that has Clouds and Seas and Hills Answ p. 15. As to the other part of the Exception These Rivers could not have been made in due time He answers thus That 's wholly according to the Process you take if you take a meer natural Process the Rivers could not flow throughout the Earth all on a sudden but you may accelerate that process as much as you please by a Divine Hand And so this is answered by the first Expedient Extraordinary Providence which is here at a Pinch brought in again to serve this Extraordinary Hypothesis And thus indeed there might be Rivers for Fishes and a River in Paradise and the one as soon and the other as great as needed to be even as big as Euphrates it self Here therefore this Controversie must end for who can stand out against such an Answer Only we must say it is a very Philosophical one and 't is pitty he made not shorter Work in the Case For he might have told us that Men and Animals and all kind of Plants by the power of a Divine Hand lived without water before the Flood and then he had sav'd himself the whole trouble as well of raising as of propagating his Rivers And truly so difficult a Work is the latter of these Another Contradiction that it will cost him no less than a Contradiction to do it For he tells us in his English Theory p. 228. that the derivations of the waters at first would be very irregular and diffuse till the Channels were a little worn and hollowed And p. 229. that the Current would be easie and gentle all along and if it chanc'd in some places to rest or be stopt it would spread it self into a pleasant Lake till by fresh supplies it had raised its waters so high as to overflow and break loose again Now when at first there were no Rivers but diffused waters and afterwards they were to flow in Channels worn and hollowed by themselves When their Currents were to be easie and gentle all along and to rest and stop and spread at places till they waxed strong enough to run forward Were these waters accelerated by a divine hand No more than what is natural is at the same time miraculous No more than what is slow is at the same time swift Or than flat Contradictions can fall in with truth CHAP. VI. PART of the Theorist's Design in explaining the Deluge his way was to silence the Cavils of Atheists Eng. Theor. p. 17. That is by superseding the Miracle of Creating Waters in that Case and then of Annihilating the same which seemed to him a Method irrational and unintelligible and by making it the effect of natural Causes and so in his opinion more agreeable to reason and more easie to be understood Ib. p. 20. And accordingly he declares that the Design of his Treatise is to show a way of making the Deluge fairly intelligible and accountable without creating of new waters And in another place explaining the Deluge in a natural way Chap. 8. or by natural Causes he makes these Causes to be Vapours within the Earth and Rains without it and Cracks and Chasms made by the Sun in the Arch of it All which natural Causes together brought on the Disruption of that Earth and this Disruption occasion'd the Innundation But if his Hypothesis which takes off one Miracle brings on another or as the event of things might prove makes it necessary to suppose another Miracle interwoven with the Contexture of it it will then contribute just nothing towards silencing the Atheist who cannot possibly be reconciled to Miracle as professing principles most repugnant to it Now the great Flood being made by the Theory an Effect of Natural Causes it must needs have come on in a Course of Nature Yea tho it was to come as a Judgment upon obstinate Sinners yet it must have hapned inevitably tho Mankind had been Innocent or truly Penitent unless the power of a miraculous hand had forcibly stopt the Course of Nature and held her from running on into this otherwise certain and inavoidable issue And when it is as necessary to admit Miracle into this new Hypothesis as it was to allow it in the Old how is the Atheist silenced by it Yea when he sees this Hypothesis making Ruine the Lot either of a righteous or repenting World this must open his mouth instead of silencing his tongue and make him more fierce and clamorous than ever This is the Substance of the Excepter's Sixth Chapter which runs upon what the Cavilling Athiest would be apt to alledge against the Theory of the Flood It is answered thus Answ p. 19. What the Excepter suggests concerning Athiests and their presum'd Cavils at such an explication of the Deluge is a thing only said at random and without grounds And why so Surely it must be because of something the Answerer had said before Ib. p. 18. p. 19. Namely that GOD's Praescience is infallible and God is the Author and Governour of the Natural World as well as
of the Moral and he sees thorough the Futuritions of both and hath so dispos'd the one as to serve him in his just Judgments upon the other But is this to satisfy or silence the Athiest Can the Answerer think that he who denies the being of a GOD should acknowledge his Attribute and consent to a Providence directed by Proescience This is as much as to say let an Atheist become no Atheist and then he will silence this Athiest's Cavils The Two Questions he puts in the Beginning of his Chapter touching GOD's Praescience are little to the purpose Inasmuch as the Athiest whom the Excepter justly brings in the silencing of his Cavils being the aim of the Theory does absolutely disown and disavow the Property together with the Essence of the GLORIOUS DEITY However let us reply to these Questions that nothing may seem to be pass'd over which but looks as if it required an Answer The first Question is this Suppose Adam had not sinn'd what would have become of the Messiah p. 17. and the Dispensation of the Gospel Why then the Messiah need not have been born nor need the Gospel have been dispensed And truly both the Incarnation of the one and the Dispensation of the other might have been prevented or put by without any stop or interruption in the Course of nature made by the intervention of a miraculous Power But the like cannot be affirmed of the Deluge For had that been put off the order of Nature must thereby have been broken and the hand of Omnipotence must have supported the Earth by the strength of Miracle Else in a certain period of time in that Juncture suppose when the Flood according to the Theory fell out it must have suffered Disruption and have sunk into the Abyss But it is farther urged that the Dispensation of the Gospel is said to be very early determin'd Ibid. in Scripture that is It must be allowed therefore that that Determination had respect to mans Sin But that the like may be allowed to the Theory of the Flood it must be prov'd as well that the Deluge was decreed or determin'd to come in according to its Method And where has Scripture determin'd that as it did things relating to the Blessed MESSIAH and his eternal Gospel But This believe it is a lofty Instance to be fetcht down into comparison with a phansiful Hypothesis The next therefore is of a lower strain upon which the Second Question runs which is This. Ibid. Suppose Adam had not eaten the forbidden Fruit how could he and all his Posterity have liv'd in Paradise A few Generations would have fill'd that place and should the rest have been turn'd out into the wide World without any sin or fault of theirs To it we Reply First that if Adam had not eaten the foibidden fruit yet it does not appear that he and all his Posterity were to have liv'd in Paradise For That in a few ages might not only have been sufficiently replenisht but overcharg'd with Inhabitants Secondly when that place had been filled and the rest as the Answerer expresses it must have been turn'd out into the wide World yet they being without sin should not have felt the Inconveniences which we do For as the Barrenness of the Earth so many Inconveniences perhaps secondary Causes of it might proceed from the Curse of GOD pull'd down upon the Ground by the sin of man And thus much Moses has left upon record that as the Earth by GOD's blessing brought forth useful Products while man stood Gen. 1.12 so Thorns and Thistles were the just effect or punishment of his Fall Gen. 3.18 But then as the Answerer has noted that a Supernatural curse might have its effect in any position of the Earth so it is as certain P. 29. that a supernatural Blessing might have its proper effects too And if GOD as he says Ibid. can make a Land barren if he think fit in spite of the Course of Nature then in spite of the Course of nature he can as well make it fruitful and pleasant And therefore so he might have made the Praediluvian earth had not Adam eat the forbidden fruit notwithstanding its oblique Position to the Sun Then as there should have been no Death amongst men so there should have been nothing like it or tending to it No such excessive heat and cold as now rage in several Climates No such noxious Vapours and Exhalations as now rise from or breath out of the Earth No such impurities and unwholsom corruptions as now breed in and distemper the Air No such blustring Storms and violent Tempests as now disquiet and toss and cause Breaches by the Sea No such mighty Floods and dreadful Earthquakes as now do unspeakable Mischiefs at Land But mens Souls being upright and clear from sin their Bodies should have been safe from dangers and free from sufferings and the security and pleasure of their outward Condition would have been answerable to their inward Peace and Purity When Israel pass'd through the Arabian Desert because they were a chosen and peculiar People and dear unto his MAJESTY the ALMIGHTY sav'd them from the great Inconveniences of that desolate Region by ministring to their Wants most sutable and seasonable Defensatives and Supplies Thus the Drieness of the place and the lack of Waters he supplied by the streams from Rocks Its Barrenness or lack of Food by Quails and Manna It s heat and lack of shades by a Cloudy Canopy It s Wildness and lack of Roads and Way-marks by the Pillar of a Cloud guiding them by day when their Camp moved and by a Pillar of fire leading them by night The lack of new Cloaths and the lack of new shooes by the lastingness of their old ones and by their not wearing out And when the Good GOD had such care and kindness for a sinful People yea for a stubborn perverse and provoking Generation as thus to sence and furnish them against the most grievous external Inconveniences that could readily beset them we may well conclude how tender he would have been of an Innocent World and how inconceivably gracious and indulgent to them in the like Nature The wide World therefore should not have been inconvenient to Adam and his Posterity as this World now is to us if he had not eaten the forbidden fruit The supernatural Blessing of Heaven would then have made their Circumstances happy upon Earth Nor should they ever have overstockt it tho they had multiply'd never so fast For still as they grew aged that they might not grow too numerous they might in due time have been translated hence as Enoch was to the higher State of bliss and felicity Nor is there any thing here overstrain'd in the least For tho we must not be too bold with Extraordinary Providence in the Philosophic Schools it was ever a standing Hypothesis in the Church And upon the principle of it the most glorious Phaenomenaes of
heavens kindness that have been or can appear are properly to be solved CHAP. VII HEre the Answerer applies himself to vindicate those Texts of Scripture which being alledged in confirmation of the Theory were excepted against The first is that in the Second Epistle of S. Peter C. 3. v. 5. For this they willingly are ignorant of c. But he quarrels with the Excepter for rendring it generally Wilfully ignorant Answ p. 19. Now who can say they were not thus ignorant And is it not most probable that they really were so Or who can clearly discern and justly dinstinguish betwixt Willing and Wilful Ignorance and rightly determine which of the two men are guilty of in all cases It is hard to set an exact boundary between Willing and Wilful Sin so as positively to say where the one ends and the other begins The Difference here is so nice and obscure as not easily to be discovered If we look to the sins of the Tongue they that Ly and Swear Willingly commonly do it Wilfully If we look to the sins of the Hand they that Rob and Kill willingly commonly do it wilfully And so it is commonly as to sins of the mind and particularly as to the sin of Ignorance They that are willingly ignorant are wilfully ignorant For they are usually ignorant because they forbear to consult men or because they neglect to peruse Books or because they refuse to observe or consider or examine things And these Omissions being deliberate chosen and affected must consequently be wilful and make their ignorance of the same stamp Especially if men persist in their ignorance till it becomes high and hainous by being customary and habitual which seems to be the Case of them here reprehended Ib. And whereas the Answerer says that the Excepter lays a great stress upon the word Wilfully That he did not do nor was there any need of it For whether they were willingly or wilfully ignorant it matters not because they could in neither sense be blameably ignorant of such things as the Theorist presumes they were inasmuch as they were in no capacity of acquiring the Knowledge of them supposing they had been Real This the Excepter fairly made out To have proved them culpably ignorant therefore in either of these senses Disc p. 128. 129. c. the Answerer should have taken off what the Excepter objected against the likelihood of their attaining to the knowledge of those Matters and should have shown that the Pseudo-Christians reproved by St. Peter might by the use of such means as they had have come to a competent understanding of those Phaenomenaes which he believes the Apostle chid them for being unacquainted with But the doing of this he either willingly or wilfully omitted it being much easier to run out into an empty debate about a word than as he should have done to pursue the proper and material things He says indeed p. 20. The mutability and changes of the World which these Pseudo-Christians would not allow of was a knowable thing taking all the means which they might and ought to have attended to Great news this that the Changes of the World which they were checked for being ignorant of were knowable by the means which they injoyed Did GOD ever blame ignorance but in such Circumstances But let him prove that the first Constitution of the Heavens and the Earth and the changes and dissolution which happened to them at the Deluge were knowable things to them according to his Notions of them let him prove that they had means to bring them to the knowledge of these as he represents them and then he does something But he must first prove that there ever were such things And because he is for Instances out of Scripture where the Phrase used by S. Peter signifies wilful and obstinate ignorance let him take these that follow Answ p. 19. as proofs of as much The forgiven Servant obstinately refusing to shew mercy to his fellow-servant it is said of him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he would not S. Mat. 18.30 The Inhabitants of Jerusalem obstinately refusing to come under GOD's Protection it is said of them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ye would not S. Mat. 23.37 And so again S. Luke 13.34 Now if 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with a negative Particle before it signifies a Wilful and obstinate Refusal of a thing then 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 without a Negative may signify a wilful and obstinate Consent to a thing or Compliance with it And so the Phrase here 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 might signify a wilful and obstinate ignorance And because he is for Proofs out of Greek Authors Ib. one Proof shall be given him out of an Author that he knows understood Greek well enough I mean the very learned and judicious Dr. Hammond Who in his Annotations writes thus upon this Text. The word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 seems here to be taken in a sense not ordinary in other places for being of opinion or affirming perhaps with this addition of asserting it magisterially without any reason rendred for it but a sic volo c. So I will I command my Will is my reason And according to this excellent Annotator the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 imports extraordinary Wilfulness here Nor let him think that he gains any thing by noting p. 20. that it was not their ignorance that S. Peter chiefly reproves but their deriding and scoffing at the Doctrine of the coming of our Saviour For if he reproved them as Scoffers yet in the words considered he reproves them chiefly for their Ignorance and in all likelihood for their Wilful Ignorance p. 12◠Next he checks the Excepter for Dispatching Scriptures quickly by the help of a Particle and a Figure But if arguments be so weak that they will fall with a Fillip why should greater force be used to beat them down The fault is in him that should have brought stronger To draw a Rapier to stab a Fly or to charge a Pistol to kill a Spider I think would be preposterous He goes on next to Psal 33.7 He gathereth the waters of the Sea Eng. The. p. 86. as in a Bagg He layeth up the Abysses in Store-houses Which according to the Theory hints that the Sea or Abyss before the Deluge was inclosed within the Vault of the Earth In confutation of this Phantsy So the Vulgate and Septuagint both render it which the Theorist quoted for rendring the forecited place Psal 33.7 as in a bag the Excepter brought in that Passage Psal 78.13 He set the waters as in a Bag. Which proves according to the known Rule of Expounding one Scripture by another that by the waters being as in a bag Psal 33.7 could not be meant their being inclosed within the vault of the Earth Because this Text which says the same thing speaks of an open Sea viz. the Red Sea See Disc p. 139 140. and that when it
any thing even what he openly condemns to support as he thinks his tottering Hypothesis which when he has done all that he can will fall at last Ibid. Then he passes to the following verses in that 38th Chapter Who shut up the Sea with doors when it brake forth as if it had issued out of a womb c. Here the Excepter gave reasons why these words must refer to what was done in the Beginning of the World Disc p. 150. p. 150. 151. As also reasons why by the Womb here mentioned could not be meant the inclosure of the Abyss as the Theory would have it And none of them being answered but by the Expedient of passing them by they both stand good Now if the HOLY GHOST speaks here of the Sea when it first brake forth into being which all but the Theorist allow he does what Womb could it issue out of but the Womb of Nothing But instead of removing our Objections the Answerer brings in two of his own which the Replicant will not answer as he does the Excepter's The first is this If you understand the Womb of Non-entity Answ p. 25. the Sea broke out of that womb the first day and had no bars or doors set to it but flow'd over all the Earth without check or controul Therefore that could not be the time or state here spoken of And to refer that restraint or those bars and doors to another time which are spoken of here in the same verse would be very inexcusable in the Excepter seeing he will not allow the Theorist to suppose those things that are spoken of in different Verses to be understood of different times Now pray what is the difference betwixt the time of the Sea 's breaking forth of the womb and the time of its being restrain'd with doors that the Excepter should be so very inexcusable for allowing that difference It was but the space of one poor day And truly if he had not allowed of this difference when GOD Himself signifies that he made the breaking forth of the waters into being part of his first day's work and the gathering them together into one place the decreed place where they were shut up with bars and doors his Third days work he must have been very inexcusable indeed O but therefore the Excepter is very inexcusable because he will not allow the Theorist to suppose those things that are spoken of in different verses to be understood of different times Be it so But were the different times of the Theorist then no more distant than the different times of the Excepter The space between the Excepter's times was one single day that between the Theorist's times was more than sixteen hundred years And yet let him bring but as good authority for the Different times which he contends for as the Excepter does for his different times which GOD has clearly distinguisht by different works his creating Waters on one of the times and his collecting and confining them on the other and his different times will by all be allowed But because he can bring no such authority nor any at all besides his own not the Excepter but he himself must be the very inexcusable person in this Matter His second Objection runs thus Ib. This Metaphysical notion of the womb of nothing is altogether impertinent at least in this case for the Text is plainly speaking of things local and corporeal and this prison of the Sea must be understood as such Must it so What necessity is there for it None at all but to support the Theorist's sinking Hypothesis And for him to say it must be so understood in favour of that is to beg the Question And however that may be less metaphysical it will be more impertinent than our Notion is For that we can presently make very pertinent by a way which himself just now cut out Foundations and Corner-stones are as local and corporeal things as the rest which the Text speaks of Yet these he told us in the immediately fore-going Page P. 24. l. 15. 16. may be understood in way of Allusion And let but this Womb be understood the same way as it ever was and then the Notion will be pertinent enough But who is impertinent for suggesting it was not so The last place is Prov. 8.27 28. When he prepared the Heavens I was there when he set a compass upon the face of the deep c. That by the word Compass here could not be meant the first habitable Earth as a Sphaere Orb or Arch in the beginning set round the Abyss according to the Theory the Excepter shewed very plainly Disc p. 153 154 155. But what he alledged of that nature is answered only by the Second Expedient which is made great use of that is it is passed by with silence Yet that the Answerer might seem to say something he sets up a shadow or phantsy of his own Answ p. 25. and then encounters it The word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which we render compass he the Excepter says signifies no more than the rotundity or spherical figure of the Abyss Let the Answerer show where the Excepter says thus In this he charges him falsly A plain Untruth Disc p. 154. He only said that by the word compass might be meant either Earthly bounds about the open Waters or the Firmament of Heaven as a Sphaere Orb or Arch set upon the face of the Deep And are either of these the Rotundity or Sphaerical figure of the Abyss Yet if they are not as they cannot be has not the Answerer done manifest wrong to the Excepter by suggesting a vain Phantsy or Notion of his own and fathering it upon him as his This to speak freely is fencing with an unlawful Weapon which never commends either the Skill or Ingenuity of them that use it He might therefore as well have wav'd the false charge here by which he would turn the point of non-sense upon the Excepter For what can be more highly nonsensical than to say that the banks about the sides or the Air about the Surface of the Sea are but the shape or meer figure of it This Gentleman in this very Chapter complains of unfairness And is it possible He that does this wrong in the very next paragraph cries out of injury Answ p. 26. Of an injustice which the Excepter hath done the Theory by a false accusation For he says the Theory makes the Construction of the first Earth to have been meerly Mechanical And did it not make it so Proferte tabulas How read we in the beginning of the Sixth Chapter of the Latin Theory Edit 2. Secutus sum leges notissimas gravitatis levitatis earum solo ductu vidimus massam illam primigeniam pervenisse tandem in formam stabilem regionis terrae I have followed the most known laws of gravity and levity and by the sole leading of them we have
seen that primigenial Mass to have come at length into the steddy form of a Region of earth Now that Body which is led into its form by the laws of Gravity and Levity must certainly be made Mechanically And the Earth being brought into its form by the sole guidance of those Laws its formation must be meerly Mechanical And then upon whom rests the Injustice here and the guilt of raising a false accusation A plain Untruth But for all this the Answerer says That the Construction of the Earth was not meerly Mechanical in the opinion of the Theorist you may see Eng. Theor. p. 65. That is he says and unsays and is so like a Proteus in his Philosophy that 't is hard to discern his shape and colour Then he brings two other Complaints against the Excepter One for citing the first Edition of the Theory for things left out in the Second The other Answ p. 26. for defective Citations The first In the Introduction had its answer in the beginning of the Reply The Second must be better made out before it can deserve one And whereas to shew that the aforesaid Places of Scripture cited by the Theory were but figurative the Excepter confronted them with that one Text instead of many who shaketh the Earth out of her place Disc p. 155. and the Pillars thereof tremble which cannot be literally interpreted The Answerer will not allow Pillars there to be understood literally for this worthy reason Even because there are no such Pillars of the Earth upon any Hypothesis Answ p. 27. So that it seems Hypotheses are not to be regulated by Scripture-Expressions but the signification or sense of them is to be overul'd and determin'd by Hypotheses At which rate the Hands and Eyes of ALMIGHTY GOD in the holy Bible must be or at least may be understood literally as being agreeable to the Hypothesis of the Anthropomorphites CHAP. VIII THis Chapter treats of the perpetual Equinox of the Theory before the Flood And the Answerer would fain make the World believe that the Excepter thinks that the Earth when it changed its supposed Situation or Right Position to the Sun was translated from the Equator into the Ecliptick Ib. and that before the change in the Antediluvian state it mov'd directly under the Equator A pretty Mistake indeed had it been really thus But we shall see it proved just as some other false Charges have been However to show that his Will is good he endeavours to squeeze Evidence out of these the Excepter's words So that in her annual motion about the Sun she was carried directly under the Equinoctial without any manner of obliquity in her site or declination towards either of the Tropics in her course And therefore could never cut the Equinoctial by passing as now she is presum'd to do from one Tropic to the other Now pray was not the Ecliptic the Equinoctial in the Theorist's first World And was not the Earth carried directly under the Equinoctial And was not that World without Tropics And must it not be true then that the Earth never cut the Equinoctial by passing as she is now presum'd to do from one Tropic to the other But where does the Excepter speak a word here of her being translated from the Equator at the change of her position or of her moving directly under it in the Antediluvian state So far was he from that that what he says is of the quite contrary Importance As shewing that the Earth moved always under the Equinoctial of the Praediluvian World which was the Ecliptick and could not possibly have an Excursion to the Tropics as now she has For in that State there were no such things And besides that the words cited carry this sense most plainly in them the Excepter Disc p. 158. in the very Sentence immediatly preceding them declares that by the Earth's right situation to the Sun is meant that the axis of the Earth was always kept in a Parallelism to that of the Ecliptick And could it then in the Antediluvian state move directly under the Equator Or could the Answerer perceive as his word is that the Excepter thought it did so Then his Perception was more quick than true And now it is to be hop'd that he will better perceive that he might have spar'd those Leavers and Pullies Answ p. 27. he speaks of for removing the Earth And so he might have done the unlucky Screws of this unhappy Mistake A mistake whereby he would have forc'd the Excepters words into a crooked meaning but they only make his own Observation stand awry But that the Earth had a Direct Situation to the Sun causing a perpetual Equinox is very unlikely said the Excepter Disc p. 159. for this Reason Because then the same would have remained until now or else in the World there would have been found a more full account of the Change thereof To this the Answerer opposes that other things are lost out of memory Answ p. 28. And instances in two the Age of the World and the place of Paradise But Time and Place are but Circumstances of things and so might sooner and more easily slip out of mind Whereas the Loss of the Equinox by the variation of the Earth's Position would not only have been a real but a mighty thing For it must have been attended not only with a strange Alteration as to Seasons of the year as to the Temperature of the Air and as to the condition of the Earth but also with sensible Effects upon the Bodies of men as Heat Cold c. Which Effects would not only have caused Noah and his Family to Observe this Change so mighty in its Consequences as well as in it self but likewise would have so far imprinted and set home the Observation upon them as to have given occasion to a lasting traditional Remembrance of the same And what if the just Age of the World be lost the Hebrews Greeks and Latins differing about it and Chronology being a difficult thing subject to innumerable intricacies and entanglements Yet 't is clear enough that the World had a Beginning And what if we be at a loss for the true Place of Paradise which was known to none but Adam and Eve and which GOD perhaps design'd to bury out of the memory of men as he did Moses's Body out of Israel's knowledge to prevent Superstition Yet still that there was a Paradise is most certain But this is that which the pretended Equinox fails in in the truth or certainty of its Existence We have no Evidence no clear and convincing Evidence to prove that it ever was in Nature The Excepter farther objected Disc p. 166. that Scripture does not favour this Equinox but rather discountenance it And to make the Objection good he cited Gen. 8.22 While the Earth remaineth seed time and harvest and cold and heat and summer and winter and night
and day shall not cease Which place the Answerer owns Answ p. 29. may be understood of the restauration of a former order in the Seasons of the year and so by his own Confession it is good evidence on our side Ib. And whereas he tells of Reasons which the Theorist set down to make it probable that the words ought to be understood as a Declaration of such an Order for the Seasons of the Year as was brought in at that time which Reasons the Excepter hath not thought fit to take notice of or refute These Reasons seem to be the perpetual Equinox the Longaevity of the Antediluvians and the Appearance of the Rainbow first in the new World But before such Phaenomonaes can be offered as good Reasons to prove other things they must be better establisht themselves To go about to prove one part of an Hypothesis by another part of it when the whole is questioned and lies under debate is no allowable way of proceeding Yet these Reasons the Excepter did take sufficient notice of But the Answerer's finding fault with the Excepter here for not taking notice of Reasons puts him upon a more just and most seasonable Recrimination For five Instances heing alledg'd by the Excepter Disc p. 166 167 168. in proof of what he affirmed of the Scripture viz. that it rather discountenances the Equinox than favours it He answers three of them only by his last Expedient that is by passing them by To the Fourth being the Barrenness of the Earth from the divine Malediction denounc'd against it for Adam's sin which Barrenness is utterly inconsistent with the Doctrine of the Equinox his Answer is this Answ p. 29. That Curse was supernatural and might have its effect in any Position of the Earth But then this Effect overthrows his Hypothesis which maintains a perpetual Spring to all the World and a continual verdure of the Earth Eng. Theor. p. 196. Disc p. 169. Lastly the Intemperature of the Air in Paradise inferred from the Coats of Skins made by GOD to cloth the Protoplasts with and defend them from cold was brought in as an Instance to show that Scripture does not favour the Equinox but discountenance it And to this it is answered thus Answ p. 30. He the Excepter must tell us in what Climate he supposes Paradise to have stood and which way and how far Adam and Eve were banisht from it When those things are determin'd we shall know what to Judge of his Argument and of Coats of skins In the mean time he may please to consider these Four things Disc p. 169 170 First that it has been already shewed that in all likelihood these coats of skins were made to defend our first Parents from Cold. Secondly that for ought appears in the sacred Story they were clothed with these Coats before they were turned out of Paradise Thirdly that they could not be banisht far from it because when they were thrown out of it Cherubim were set to guard the Entrance lest they should return into it again And therefore if Paradise stood in a pleasant and temperate Region of the Earth as who can think otherwise they may be supposed for a great while to abide in the Neighbourhood of it Fourthly Suppose them banisht which way you will and as far from it as you please yet they could have needed no Coats to defend them from Cold in case the Theory's Hypothesis were true Eng. Theor. p. 251 For according to that in the primaeval Earth we have every where through the temperate Climates all the general Characters of Paradise so that the trouble will be rather in that competition what part or Region to pitch upon in particular than to find a seat that had all those beauties and conveniences And therefore had Adam and Eve been banisht never so far from Paradise into any temperate Climates and none were then intemperate but those that were also uninhabitable yet they must still have been in Paradisiacal Regions and circumstances and so could have needed no Coats of Skins But GOD being pleased to make them such Coats to defend them from the Cold this subverts the General Paradisiacalness of the primitive Earth and consequently its Equinox by implying there was a cold or intemperate air in the habitable parts of it The Answerer proceeds thus in the next Paragraph After Lastly I expected no more Answ p. 30. but he hath two or three Reasons after the Last Thus he cannot forbear playing upon the Excepter tho he does it with the worst luck that ever man had For even by this Reflection intended to disparage him he only exposes himself by betraying and proclaiming his own Inadvertency For the Lastly he notes plainly belongs as any one may see to the Last of the Instances shewing that Scripture does not favour the Equinox Disc p. 169. But still the Reasons against the Equinox alledged in that Chapter might follow in their due Course or Order So that tho it be about a little thing he here again falls into a great mistake Another Mistake The next Argument of the Excepter's against the Equinox is Ib. p. 171. That it would have kept one Hemispaere of the terrestrial Globe unpeopled For grant Adam to have been planted on either side of the Torrid Zone such was the fiery heat thereof that neither he nor his could have gone through it to the other side And here the Answerer is so put to it that he is forc'd to betake himself to his first Expedient to solve the Objection by Extraordinary Providence Answ p. 30. Telling us that the Theorist never excluded the Ministery of Angels and they could as easily carry them through the Torrid Zone as over the Ocean As for Angels carrying men over the Ocean let him blame those that assert it he knows the Excepter to be very clear from it See Disc ch 11. § 7. But if he will have them carried through the Torrid Zone by their miraculous Ministery he must remember that this is to show us the arm of Omnipotency Eng. Theor. p. 18. and to cut the knot when we cannot loose it Tho had Providence shown this signal favour to Mankind we need not question but it would have been entred in the Records of Heaven But the inspired Writings remember nothing of it Another Reason brought by the Excepter why there could be no Equinox Disc p. 174. is that it would have put by the Rains which help'd to raise the Flood And here the Philosopher is fain to run to his old Refuge again and to answer by the same Expedient That those rains that made the Flood were Extraordinary Answ p. 30. and out of the course of Nature But this is little less than giving up his Hypothesis at least it is condemning it as weak and insufficient And truly what Hypothesis tho never so mean and full of Defects would not support it self
under all its flaws and imperfections by such a lawless liberty as this A liberty of recourse to Extraordinary Providence and of bringing in Miracles and the Ministery of Angels to help to take off and solve those Difficulties which puzzle its Author and baffle its Principles To what purpose did he invent a Theory and write a Treatise with design to shut out one Extraordinary Providence Eng. Theor. p. 2◠l. 33 34. the creating of new Waters to make the Deluge when in this Treatise and to uphold that Theory he is constrain'd to let in thus many But here the Answerer is plainly for shifting to avoid a blow which for that falls but the heavier upon him The Theory said the Excepter Disc p. 175 will have the Rains to be antecedent to the Description of the Abyss Eng. Theor. p. 98. And he quoted these words in proof of it I do not suppose the Abyss broken open till after the forty days rain But then adds the Excepter this is most directly against Scripture for that plainly affirms that the Fountains of the great Deep and the windows of Heaven were both open'd on one day Gen. 7.11 Now to salve this repugnancy to Scripture the Answerer here declares that he does not suppose the Cataracts of Heaven to have been open'd before which made the Grand rains Answ p. 31. But then he must suppose that there were two forty-days-rains one before the Abyss was broke up and another beginning with it and continuing after it But is not this also as much against Scripture which owns but one forty-days rain that commenc'd with the Disruption And truly had the Vapours of the Atmosphaere been exhausted as they must have been by the first continued forty-days rain according to the Answerer's Supposition where could have been a supply for the second forty-days rain especially when the Rains that fell then were to be grand rains without a new Creation of Waters which the Theory designedly opposes And then the LORD said unto Noah Gen. 7.4 Yet seven days and I will cause it to rain upon the Earth forty days and forty nights And is it likely that GOD would have given that Preserver of the World notice that Rains to make the Flood should begin a Week after if it had already rained for three and thirty days before or for above a Month past Lastly against the Equinox it was suggested that Authors of all sorts have disputed Disc p. 176. in what Season of the year the Flood came in and the World had its beginning Which hints that there was not any one Season through all the Earth at once But the Answerer intimates that upon Supposition of an Equinox according to the Theory Answ p. 31. it might be so And why says he may not that have given occasion to the general belief that the World began in the Spring Did he insist upon that Belief he must prove it to be general and to be occasion'd by the Equinox and not take it for granted Ib. But because he says he does not depend upon it we need not reply to it any farther neither In the next place the Excepter considered the Authorities call'd in to establish the Doctrine of the Equinox That is by proving that the Earth had suffered a change as to its Position and thereby had lost its former Right Situation But these Authorities were not found clear enough to do the Theory's business as will best appear to them that shall peruse the Examination of the same Disc Ch. 8. § 7. And here the Answerer is much offended as if his Witnesses were not fairly heard Answ p. 32. but rather unjustly and illegally rejected because they were unskilful in giving the Causes or Reasons of a matter of fact We reply All Testimonies must be taken as they are And where evidence is not clear for the same reason it is not certain nor can it be valid And when Witnesses give it in if they trip and faulter in any part of it we have good reason to suspect the whole And as improbable Circumstances in their Allegations will invalidate them in matter of fact so impossible ones if mingled with them will quite overthrow them The true case of the Testimonies before us They contain such improbable and impossible things as do not only weaken but destroy them Should twenty Mariners confidently affirm that they sailed in a Ship from Dover to Calice by a brisk Gale out of a pair of Bellows tho this be a matter of fact must they not be reckoned notorious Lyars Or if forty Engineers should positively swear that the Powder-mill near London was lately blown up by a Mine then sprung at Great Waradin in Hungary must they not be grievously perjur'd Persons And the Philosophers attesting the Earth's Inclination having charged their Evidence with as great Impossibilities the Reports they make must be as little credible Or let us take the Instance which the Answerer gives the Peloponesian War Ibid. If the Historian that writes it had told that the Souldiers who fell in it fought only with Sun-beams and single Currants which grew thereabouts and that hundreds and thousands were stabb'd with the one and knockt on the head with the other who would believe that ever there were such Weapons in that war that ever there was such a fatal War in that Country Yet as possible it was for multitudes of men to be kill'd by these Instruments as for the Position of the Earth to be chang'd by those Causes which were assign'd by the Theory's Philosophic Witnesses For how could the Southern Pole of the Earth dip into the Air through excess of heat or excess of Fruits thereabouts when at both Poles the heat of the Sun was equal and so was the fatness and fertility of the Soil See Disc p. 180 181. Or if these were the Causes of that great Effect why then was it not wrought sooner than at the end of above sixteen hundred and fifty years And yet these very Causes being not only brought into their Evidence but made as true and express a part thereof as the Inclination of the Earth it self their Testimonies must extend to both alike and in case the one be of doubtful credit the other must be the same Yea the one according to their Allegations being Causes and the other but an effect of them if they be false witnesses as to the Causes upon which the Effect according to their evidence had its whole dependence their Testimonies as to the Effect must needs fail and be nothing worth For they plainly ascribing it to causes that were not Disc p. 179 189 c. and so could not produce it at the same time and by the same words that they attest there was such an Effect they witness withal that it could not be And so their Evidence is as far from being valid and authentic as contradiction is from truth But what ill has the
more rarifi'd towards one Pole than towards another And we never said or thought they were But in his English Theory we read p. 229. that the Current of the waters from the Poles might in some places rest and be stopt and then it would spread it self into Lakes and rise till it grew to such an heighth as to be able by its force or weight to overflow and break loose again before it could pass farther Now in case the Current might thue be stopt and the obstruction be so great as to cause the Waters to swell into Lakes how easily might there be more or greater Lakes near to one of the Poles than the other And so how easily would the overweight of water have sunk the Earth down at the praeponderating Pole tho the Waters were no more rarify'd there than at the other That therefore being wide of the Mark he should have hit he sends another Arrow after it taken out of the Quiver of Philosophy Ib. The empty space betwixt the exterior Region of the Earth and the Abyss below would be fill'd with such gross vapors that it would be little purer than water and would stick to the Earth much closer than its Atmosphaere that is carried about with it But this shaft also tho levell'd more directly at it misses the intended Scope For if those Vapours were but a little purer than water yet look how much they were so and so much the weaker they would be and less able to keep the pendulous Earth in its Aequilibrious or even posture And that grossest Vapours are very much purer or thinner than water is evident from hence that they cannot sustain or buoy up a piece of light Cork whereas upon waters ships of greatest Burthen float and swim And tho the Atmosphaere be carried about with the Earth yet if that were inclosed with an oblong or Oval Orb of Earth this Orb would not sit half so fast and steddy upon that Sphaere of Vapours as it would do upon a Sphaere of Waters the Consistency of Water being many times as thick again as any Mass of Vapours can be in their natural Constitution The Second Query is this Granting there was such an Equinox in the first World Disc p. 187. Would not the natural day towards the latter end of that World have been longer than in the former periods of the same Yet that the days just before the Flood were of no unusual length is evident in the very Story of the Flood the Duration of which we find computed by Months consisting of Thirty days apiece Whereas says the Excepter had Days been grown longer fewer of them would have made a Month. This says the Answerer is a meer Blunder And he proves it thus If thirty days were to go to a Month Answ p. 28. whether the days were longer or shorter there must be thirty of them and the Scripture does not determine the length if the days Tho Scripture does not limit or account for the length of days expresly yet it does it implicitly and withal very plainly and intelligibly For it gives us to understand that days before the flood were of the same length that they are of now by informing us that months and years which were of the same length then that they are of at present were made up of the same numbers of days For how could there be just twelve Months in the Year at the time of the Deluge and thirty days in each of those Months if days then had not consisted as they do now of four and twenty hours a piece And as Providence has so ordered Nature that days which depend upon its Diurnal motion should be measured by Circumgyrations of the Earth So it has order'd likewise that Months which depend upon its Annual Motion should be measured by its progress in the Heavens And as it has so suted these Motions that the Earth while it makes a Month by running from one Sign in the Zodiack to another should turn about thirty times upon its own Axis and thereby make so many Days So it has taken care that each of these Circumrotations should be perform'd in four and twenty hours and consequently that every day should be just so long that thirty of them in way of round reckoning might compleat a Month. But now had the Circumgyrations of the Earth grown more slow towards the Deluge by such causes as the Excepter suggested so that every day had consisted of thirty hours suppose it is manifest that fewer than thirty days they being longer than formerly must have made a Month. Because then before the Earth could have turned round thirty times she would have been translated by her progressive motion from one Celestial Constellation to another and so the Month would have been consummated But to talk as the Answerer does that the Month should be lengthened by the days being so is a fearful Blunder indeed Tho as luck will have it still it falls upon himself For let the days by slackning of the Earth's Diurnal motion have been never so long yet its Annual motion continuing the same the Month must needs have kept its usual Length only fewer days would have made it up the very thing objected The Answerer therefore need not have been so officious as to undertake to teach the Excepter to speak which he was pleased to do in these Words Answ p. 30. I suppose that which he would have said and which he had confusedly in his mind was this That the Month would have been longer at the Flood than it was before The Answerer it seems had such a confused thought in his mind but the Excepter 't is plain was clear from it And truly had he been guilty of it he should have counted it a Meer Blunder For how could the Month be longer for the Earth's Circumgyrations being slower when the Month was measured by such a motion of the Earth as would have continu'd as swift as ever tho its Circumgyrations had been never so slack The Moon never turns circularly upon her own Center to make days and nights and yet she makes regular Months and Years by her Periodical and Synodical Courses And had the Circumgyrations of the Earth been never so swift at the Deluge or had they been never so slow or had they been none at all still the Months would have been the same that they were and neither longer nor shorter Tho then indeed they could not have consisted of so many days and nights following each other in an orderly succession because through want of the Earth's Diurnal motion there would have been no such vicissitude of them And since the Answerer took upon him to tell the Excepter what he had in his mind as he supposed the Replicant in requital of his kindness as well as in imitation of his Patern may suggest to him what he should have had in his thoughts When he said if thirty days were to go to a Month whether
he said He was before the Mountains what did he say less if the Mountains were made in the time of the Flood the World having stood above sixteen hundred and fifty years before that came in And whereas the Answerer suggests Ib. that the Psalmist's words might have a gradation in them from a lower Epocha to an higher when he said before the Mountains were brought forth and the Earth and the World were made Let him show when and where any such gradation was ever made use of by an inspired Writer to set out the Eternity of the EVERLASTING GOD. And whereas he adds as for that place in Prov. 8. it would be very hard to reduce all those things that are mentioned there from ver 22. to the 30 to the same time of existence Let him show if he pleases why the things there mention'd called GOD's Works of old may not very easily be reduced as to their first existence within the time of the six days of Creation Disc p. 202. Moses the Excepter added mentions lasting hills and ancient Mountains Deut. 33.15 But he would hardly have call'd them so had they risen at the Flood because then they would have been but few ages older than himself that is about seven hundred years To this it is answered the River Kishon is call'd the ancient River Answ p. 43. but I do not therefore think it necessary that that brook should have been before the flood Nor does he think it necessary that several other things should have been before the Flood Yea his Hypothesis makes it necessary that they should not then be But does it follow ever the more from hence that they were not He goes on Things may very well deserve that Character of lasting Ib. or ancient tho they be of less antiquity than the Deluge as lasting Pyramids and ancient Babylon But were the Mountains supposing them made at the Flood as lasting and ancient in Moses's time as the Pyramids and Babylon are now Disc p. 205 The next Argument was drawn from the Mountains in the Moon They as we are told are better than four times as high as the Mountains of the Earth And therefore they seem to be her native Features rather than Effects of her Dissolution For had they been raised by her being dissolved they could not have been so strangely over-proportion'd to the Mountains of the Earth she being a much less Planet than that And in case the Moon had Mountains from the beginning why might not the Earth have so too Answ p. 44. T is easy to see the Answerer says that this is no good Argument For besides that the Orb there might be more thick all ruines do not fall alike And 't is as easy to see that this is no good Answer For the Moon being more than forty times less than the Earth the Chaos out of which She was formed at first must be more than forty times less than the Earth's Chaos was else she could never have been so little For a larger Chaos would have contained more matter and more matter would have made her Dimensions bigger But if the Chaos out of which the Moon was made was forty times less than that out of which the Earth arose then it s central Earth together with its Abyss and exterior Orb must be so much less than the same parts of the Earth respectively were as being made of Ingredients which were forty times less than theirs And so the Orb of the Moon could not possibly be thicker than the Orb of the Earth nor could its Mountains be higher than the Earths Mountains are much less above four times higher upon that account And then as to the falling of its Ruines if we allow it to have been done with all imaginable Advantages which way could they have pil'd themselves up so much higher than the ruines of the Earth Especially if we consider that their Materials were alike I speak of the primitive Bodies of the Earth and Moon their Figures alike and also the manner of their Dissolution Only if we suppose the Earth to have been twenty thousand miles in perimeter the Moon must be less than five hundred As to the Historical Arguments alledg'd in this case he demands over and over why they were mention'd But such Questions had an anticipative Answer made to them in our Discourse and that excuses all farther reply p. 207. In the next place he falls upon the Excepter's Conjecture about the Original of Mountain And in this New Hypothesis as he calls it Answ p. 45 46. he finds many palpable defects or oversights whereof he says this is one of the grossest that he supposes the Sun by his heat the third day to have raised the Mountains of the Earth whereas the Sun was not created till the fourth day But here he relapses into his wonted Infirmity of Mistaking egregiously Another Mistake For first the Excepter did not suppose that the Sun alone rais'd the Earth's Mountains This plainly appears from what he said in his entrance upon the Conjecture Disc p. 208. That Nature might have a considerable stroke in the Work And if Nature were to have but a considerable stroke in that work the whole of it could not be done by the Sun No the main part of it was still to be effected by the hand of GOD. And the concurrence of his Power with the influence of the Sun in producing Mountains the Excepter acknowledged in these words Disc p. 209. Tho GOD could and 't is like did produce them another way I will venture to guess HE might do it thus So that still it was HE that is GOD who thus produced the Mountains not the Sun alone And then follows an account how or wherein the Sun help'd forward this extraordinary Work tho he must not be understood to accomplish the same by his own sole and proper efficiency but as he was an Instrument in the hand of Omnipotence and so inabled to do that which of himself he could never have done Tho I must add withal that at that time he was capable of doing a great deal in this Work For 1st Perhaps he had then no Maculaes about him which now swimming upon his face in great abundance do check and damp and weaken his influence 2dly There being then a Flaâ—uous Moisture in the Earth put into it on purpose to make it Heave His piercing Beams soon gave it such an heat and agitation as made it dilate it self with furious Rarefaction 3ly The Earth it self being then most light and soft and unctuous was also of a more pliant yielding nature and so more apt and easie to ascend Lastly The Pores of this Earth being then close shut and the vehement Vapours rarefy'd within having no other possible way to get out but by elevating the Ground which lay upon them and so confin'd and kept them down no wonder if they threw it up with a mighty
because there were none assert that there were no Metals But that there were Metals before the Flood was shewed from the Building of Noah's Ark See Disc c. 10. § ult from the building of Cain's City and from Tubal Cain's being an Instructer of every Artificer in Brass and Iron Answ p. 49. To the First Instance it is answered That Scripture does not mention Iron Tools in Building the Ark but only Gopher Wood and Pitch and therefore 't is a Presumption rather that there were no other Materials us'd Had the Theorist kept close to holy Scripture and regulated his Principles and Hypothesis by that none of this Controversie or Dispute had happened But now we see where he has least reason for it there he is forwardest to adhere to it As if it were a Fate on him for deserting it so much in other Cases and going against it If he can presume that the Ark was made of Gopher Wood and Pitch only because Scripture mentions nothing else why could he not admit of a Sea as well which the Scripture mentions every whit as expresly Or if Scripture's Silence concerning Things be a ground of Presumption that they were not what then shall we think of an Oval and unmountainous Earth an inclosed Abyss a Paradisiacal World and the like which the Scripture makes no mention of Surely 't is a presumption rather that there were no such things But not to digress What kind of Fabrick the Ark was the H. GHOST informs us Gen. 6.15 6. Three hundred Cubits long fifty broad and thirty high Made with three Stories divided into Rooms and having a Window above and a Door on its Side Now it being so great a Vessel it could not be made but of very strong and substantial Timber Especially if we consider the use or service whereunto it was appointed For besides Mankind seven clean Beasts and as many Fowls and two unclean of every sort were to be preserved alive in it and that for above the space of a whole Year And so it was to hold their food likewise as well as themselves and to carry them all upon deep and spatious and boundless Waters And it being necessary upon these accounts that it should be fram'd of strong Timber in case it was done without Iron Tools what can be thought but that Noah and his Sons must pluck up well grown Trees by the Roots and then whole and round and rough as they were fasten them together with store of Pitch But how all the pains and art in the World could make this Ark of due form and strength in such a Method and of such Materials who can imagine besides our Answerer Doubtless Noah had a singular knack at Ark-making that he could raise such a Structure all out of whole Trees and when he had plac'd them in their order could six them in it meerly by Pitching them within and without Gen. 6.14 And so well did he fix them that neither the fall of the Earth nor the fury of the Flood could move them one jot Yet what was ever so raging and tumultuous as that mighty Flood Let the Theorist describe it Eng. Theor. p. 99. No Sea was ever so tumultuous as this nor is there any thing in present Nature to be compar'd with the disorder of these Waters All the Poetry and all Hyperboles that are us'd in the description of Storms and raging Seas were literally true in this if not beneath it The Ark was really carry'd to the tops of highest Mountains and into the places of the Clouds and thrown down again into the deepest Gulfs Brave Ark and as bravely built that could endure all this and yet never spring so much as one Tree What would our Merchants give I 'll warrant you for Ships of such Gopher Wood and Pitch But alas this strong way of building was calculated only for the Deluge The Mystery of doing it lest the World together with the Equinox and never since the Earth has stood awry could Men lay Trees so well in Pitch In answer to the Second Instance it is supposed that the City built by Cain Answ p. 50. was a number of Cottages made of branches of Trees of Osiers and Bulrushes and what needed they any other houses when the Air was so temperate But First This Supposition is bottom'd upon a false Foundation For they who conceive the City Enochia to be so mean commonly think it was so for want of Workmen not for lack of Tools to build it But that being not built till after the death of Abel and he being not slain before the hundred and twenty ninth year of Adam by that time there might be Myriads of men upon the Earth Poterant illo spatio non centurâ—ae sed Myriades hominum esse Mares in Refut Fab. Praead Qu. 3. and so great store of Architects And therefore Cain's City need not be supposed to consist of such Cottages because there was a scarcity of good Artificers Secondly To say the Air was so temperate then as that there needed no other than Osier Cottages is to take that for determin'd which is under debate And besides houses are rear'd for other uses as well as for Defensatives against intemperate Air. And in Cities commonly they are best and most sumptuous Thirdly Ad sui defensionem quia semper erat in timore tremore positus Lyr. in Gen. 4.17 It is thought that Cain built this City for his own safety Being full of guilt and so of fear he was for dwelling in a strong place But what fortifications were Mud-walls and Osiers capable of Such a Fortress could yield but a little satisfaction to his mind as being a poor defence or security to his Person Fourthly If Henochia did not outstand the Flood we are better assured that Joppa did And then we hope it must be built of such Materials as could not be fitted and made into Aedifices without the help of Iron Tools And whereas it is urged that the Excepter says that the Indians had no Instruments of Iron when the Spaniards came amongst them That 's very true Answ p. 50. But then they built no such Ark as Noah's was nor had they any Tubals Master-Black-smiths Braziers c. in their Country Nor were there such Cities found amongst them as we have reason to believe were erected in good plenty before the Deluge For here methinks the Rule of Hornius which he lays down in his Introduction to the Ancient Geography may take place Si quis mente concipere velit qualis ante diluvium terrarum sacies suerit is sibi totidem post diluvium secula proponat inde de praeteritis conjecturam faciat If any one would conceive in his mind what kind of face the Earth had before the Flood let him cast with himself how it was so many ages after the Flood and from thence guess concerning those that are past And so there must be as many Cities
in the World at the time of the Flood as there was since the flood about the time of Nebuchadnezzar it being as long from the Deluge to his time as it was from the Creation to the Deluge And tho he takes notice that no Cities are remembred by Writers but Henoch by Moses and Joppa by profane Authors yet he puts the Question Quis dubitet adeò jam aucto genere humano plurimas regiones imò totam penè Asiam Egyptum Urbibus oppidis pagis ante diluvium suisse exornatas Who can doubt that very many countries yea almost all Asia and Egypt were garnished with Cities Towns and Villages before the flood mankind being so increased To his Questions how the Children of Cain came to find out Iron Answ p. 50. and then to know the Nature and use of it and then the way of preparing and tempering it I think we may reply that in this matter they had instructions from Adam as he had his knowledge from GOD. Or if we should say they understood this by Inspiration it would be no rash or extravagant assertion For why might not some of Cain's Children be inspired to find out Brass c. as well as Aholiab was inspired to work in it Exod. 31.3 5. And yet they might find out Iron and other Metals in a lower way than that For the Flaming Sword at the East of Eden might be a burning of the Earth Discourse p. 270. And that it could not be the Torrid Zone as the Theory allows it to have been two Reasons were given Disc p. 272. Tho neither is answered but by the Last Expedient Now the Earth being once fired and burning continually at length it might reach to some Mine below and melting the Metal cause it to run and boil up upon the Ground And then observation and wise experience could not but lead men into a speedy acquaintance with its Nature and Use And also make the first Iron that they had instrumental in helping them to procure more Thus according to Herodotus lib. 7. and Natalis Comes lib. 9. the Idaei Dactyli the same with the Curetes or Corybantes both found out Iron and learnt the Art of using it by the burning of Ida. And why then might not the Progeny of Cain both get Iron and skill in it the same way But however they came by Iron or by skill to use it and make Tools of it 't is certain that they had it and that 's enough for us And truly if they had not made Tools of it also Jubal could no more have attain'd to his Art than his Brother Tubal could have taught his Trade Jubal was the Father of all such as handle the Harp and Organ Gen. 4.21 And how could such Musical Instruments be made without Iron Tools But now I think on 't there might be Gopher Wood and Pitch as well in Jubal's time as there was in Noah's and they might serve as well to make the Harp and Organ of the one as they did to make the Ark of the other without Tools of Iron Yet then the mischief on 't is Scripture does not mention either and therefore according to the Answerer's Rule above 't is a presumption rather that there were no such Materials us'd upon those occasions But then 't is a presumption withal that no such Harp or Organ were made And another as shrewd a presumption will follow that Jubal was a Father without Children Or if you will that he could not possibly be a Father of Musick himself because he wanted Instruments whereon to learn nor could he possibly beget any Sons of that Science because he had no Instruments whereby to teach He answers the last instance thus As to Tubal Cain let those that positively assert that there was no Iron in the first World tell us in what sense that place is to be understood I believe Iron or Brass is not once mention'd in all the Theory But why so indirect an Answer One would think that the Argument here which consists of Iron were red-hot to see how he handles it And the truth is let him touch it never so Gingerly it will all at once both burn his Fingers and Brand his Hypothesis Iron or Brass is not once mention'd in all the Theory Very good Yet for all that the Theorist flatly denies the being of them both before the Flood The Clause fore-cited witnesseth as much Metals and Minerals I believe they had none in the first Earth And if they had no Metals for certain they had no Iron nor Brass He adds the happier they no Gold nor Silver nor courser Metals If therefore Iron and Brass be Courser Metals than Gold and Silver he excludes them out of the first World as much as he does the finer ones named Nor does he more absolutely exclude them by his words than he effectually barrs them out of the first State of Nature by the tenour of his Hypothesis For that lodges the Abyss betwixt the Central and External Earth and so renders their Ascent from below into the superior Terrestial Region quite impossible And so what sorry and unmanly shifting is this And all to save the down-right acknowledgement of an Error which would have been more ingenuous and I think more easie 'T is unlucky for one to run his Head against a Post But when he has done if he will say he did not do it and stand in and defend what he says 't is a sign he is as senseless as he was unfortunate and is fitter to be pitied than confuted Good is the advice of the Son of Sirach In no wise speak against the Truth but be abashed of the error of thine Ignorance Eccus 4.25 CHAP. XI THat there was an Open Sea before the Flood the Excepter proved by Scripture and by Reason in his Eleventh Chapter But the Answerer inverts the Order of that Chapter and thinks fit to begin with the last first As if he designed by altering the Method to perplex the Matter and pervert the Arguments Or at least to raise such a Mist of Confusion as might dim the Eye of the Reader 's Observation and partly obscure the Weakness of his Answer But let us follow him in his own way and not fear in the least but 't will be every whit as easy for us For indeed let him go even which way he pleases we are bound in Justice to give him this Commendation that he never leads us into any difficulties The Reason offered in proof of an Open Sea was this Because otherwise the subterraneous Abyss must have been the Receptacle for Fishes Dsc p. 224. or the only place of their abode And that Abyss could by no means have been a fit Dwelling for them upon Three Accounts As being too Dark too Close and too Cold. But the Answerer would perswade us to believe otherwise As for Coldness methinks says he he might have left that out Answ p. 51. unless he supposes that there
are no Fish in the frozen Seas towards the North and South which is against all sense and experience for Cold Countrys abound most in Fish But are there any where any frozen Seas on which the Sun never shin'd for sixteen hundred years together He must show us such Seas if he would bring his Answer home to the Objection For in whatsoever Seas Fishes do breed those Seas must certainly at times feel a great deal of Warmth and Influence from the Sun else these Creatures so cold of themselves could never Multiply And therefore we see that even in our Seas they breed not in Winter for want of the Sun And if the Sun's Declination or withdrawment from us hinders their Production in our Seas and Rivers as sense and experience sufficiently testifie his total Absence and constant Exclusion would put a final stop to their Procreation Yet such was his Absence and such his Exclusion from the inclos'd Abyss It may be made a Question whether Fishes can live and breed in a Deep Well which is open by reason of its Coldness And if they cannot how much less in the Abyss which being close and much Deeper was answerably colder In case it be objected that in such a Well they would lack Nourishment the Objection turns much more forcibly upon the Abyss For whereas the smaller Sorts of Fish live on Flies and Worms where should they have found them so far under ground And yet necessary it was that the lesser Kinds of Fish should exist that so they might be food and sustenance for the Greater As for Darkness and Closeness he opposes to them the Saying of Maimonides Answ p. 51. That no man ever would believe that a Child could live so many months shut up in its Mothers Belly if he had never seen the experience of it For says the Answerer there 's Closeness and Darkness in the highest degree and in Animals that as soon as born cannot live without Respiration But surely the Difference betwixt Children in the Womb and Fishes in the Abyss is very great For 1st Children unborn are imperfect and so indeed they are when new born and long after they may be perfect in Shape but they are imperfect in strength But with Fishes in the Abyss it could not be so Secondly Children in the Womb have no local Motion which to Fishes in the Abyss must be allowed Thirdly Children in the womb are supply'd with sutable and sufficient Nourishment by easy and natural Derivation from their Mothers But Fishes in the Abyss were to seek out for theirs and to get it when and where they could find it Fourthly Fishes in the Abyss were to propagate there A sure Indication of their true Perfection in that State But Children unborn were far enough from doing that Lastly That great Body of water being close shut up and always quiescent and having no way to purge and clarify it self would have putrified and poysoned all the Fish especially if it inclin'd to any degree of warmth as the Answerer here surmises There would he more danger of too much warmth But from this Inconvenience Ib. in their vital Habitation supposing it to continue in its natural State Children in the Womb are free And whereas he urges that Fishes Prey on the night time That signifies nothing For first Ib. the Darkness of our nights above the Earth is not comparable to the Darkness a Mile under it And Secondly in very dark nights 't is like they prey only upon dead Baits or upon such living ones as are set for them and made so fast that they cannot get away And to his Objection of Fishes living in subterraneous Lakes the reply is as easy For no subterraneous Lakes in which Fishes live are so close and deep into the Earth as this pretended subterraneous Abyss But farther that there was an Open Sea in the primaeval World the Excepter prov'd against the Theory from Scripture And the first Argument Disc p. 219 220 was the Dominion which GOD gave unto Adam over the Fish of the Sea Gen. 1.26 28. But if there were not an open Sea impossible it was that he should have or exercise such a Dominion as GOD ALMIGHTY gave him Whereunto it is answered thus Adam had no more Dominion given him over the Fish of the Sea Answ p. 52. than over the Fowls of the Air. And did the Excepter affirm that he had Let it be granted that he had but as much and our Business is done and so is the Theorist's This the Gentleman knew very well and therefore we see how shie he is of a direct Answer and how aloof he stands in what he says As for Adam's Power over the Fowls it was sufficient such as shewed his Dominion to be real For he exercis'd it thou at least as much as we do now That is he could take them in Fields or Fens or Heaths or Rivers and have them in good plenty about Him But had he an equal power over the Fish when they kept only in a subterraneous Pond and that was wall'd round at such a rate that even through all his long life Ib. he could not command so much as a Pair of Sprats He adds concerning the Fowls that Adam could not come at them or seize them at his pleasure unless he could fly into the Air after them Very much to the purpose As if he could have had no Dominion over the Fowls without the use of Wings And because he had not a Power over the Fowls above his capacity and such a Command as neither his Nature and Circumstances nor theirs would allow therefore he had none at all over the Fish Notably argu'd and with mighty good Consequence Adam was not tall enough to stand upon the ground and take the Weather-cock of a Church-steeple and therefore good man he could not stand upon tip-toe neither Because he had not such a Dominion over the Sea as was impossible therefore he could not have one of which he was capable Certainly he must be akin to the Sages of Gotham who argues that Man is not Lord of the Creatures because they could not hedge in the poor Cuckow or drown the Eel as they might have done a Kitling When a King makes a Gentleman Lord-Lieutenant of a County by virtue of his Commission is he presently the strongest man that is in it Does it inable him to encounter whole Regiments of Souldiers in his single Person or to vanquish all the Militia under him at once Does it impower him to carry a Canon upon his Neck Or when the great Gun is fir'd off to catch the Bullet as it flies and put it up in his Pocket Can he not hold the place and execute the Office of a Lord-Lieutenant without such preternatural and monstrous abilities So when GOD gave Adam Dominion over the Fowls did he mean that he should dive like a Duck or soar like a Falcon That he should swim as naturally
as the Swan and hunt the Kite or Hobby as Boys do the Wren Did he mean that he should hang up Ostritches in a Cage as people do Linnets Or fetch down the Eagles to feed with his Pullen and make them perch with his Chickens in the Hen-roost Or else could he have no command over the Fowls And in like manner when he gave the same Adam Dominion over the Sea was he to be able to dwell at the bottom or to walk on the top of it To drain it as a Ditch or take all its Fry at once in a Drag-net Was he to Snare the Shark as we do young Pickarels Or to bridle the Sea-Horse and ride him for his Pad Or to put a slip upon the Crocodiles Neck and play with him as with a Dog Or else must he have no Dominion over that Element and the Creatures in it Certainly betwixt having Dominion over the Fowls and flying after them in the Air there is great difference And so there is betwixt the real Dominion which Adam had over the Sea and its Fish and all excess or extravagance of Rule When GOD set Adam over the Fish of the Sea he plac'd him under his Glorious SELF For had his Dominion been supreme and absolute he must have partook of GOD's Nature as well as he did of his Image and Empire But as we very well know all Subordinate Power must be limited and so was Adam's And therefore he could not go beyond his prescribed Bounds but was to command the Fish as he did other Creatures That is according to the Order of the World and the Laws of Providence according to the Capacity of his own Nature and the Quality of theirs And if so be he did but act in his Station in pursuance of his Commission governing his Subjects as in Duty he was obliged and as in Power he was inabled that is according to the Will of GOD and the measures of a Man this will be sufficient for him who had the Dominion and so it will be for us who defend it The Answerer proceeds Adam was made Lord of all Animals upon the Earth P. 52◠and had a right to use them for his conveniency when they came into his power Here he speaks as out of a Cloud and we may justly suspect that what he says had need be clear'd from doubtful meaning For Fishes if his Hypothesis may be believed were never upon this Earth but always under it during Adam's time and so they never came into his power neither And therefore it may be question'd whether he means that Adam was Lord of them or not But if in all Animals he includes the Fishes then we reply as follows That in case the Doctrine of the Theory be true Adam could be but a poor and sorry Lord over the Fishes which are a considerable part of the living Creatures Lib. 32. C. 11. Pliny attempts in his Natural History to reduce all of them that belong to the Sea to an hundred seventy and six kinds and to particularize the several Names of them respectively But so mean a Lord was Adam over them that indeed to call him by this Title in reference to those Animals would be but to put an affront upon him he enjoying no more if the Theorist errs not than a meer colour or shadow of that honour Should an Emperor grant one of his Courtiers a Commission to be his Vice-Roy or Deputy in a certain Country which 't is utterly impossible he should ever come at as this Patent would reproach the Majesty that gives it so would it not be Mockage to the Favourite that receives it Yet just such is the Case here As impossible it was for Adam to come at the Abyss below as it was for him to dart downward for a Mile or two's Thickness through the compact and solid Earth So that his Lordship over the Fishes there must be a bare nominal and titular thing And he might as well have been Lord over the Fish in the Moon supposing she had any as over the Fish in the Infernal Sea For his descent to the one was as difficult as his ascent would have been to the other and his Power was exercis'd alike in both for he died above seven hundred years before the Ocean or so much as one Fish appeared in the World Now pray when or to whom in what Ages and to which of his Servants did the GOD of Heaven ever assign such mock Seigniories and pitiful airy Royalties as this No they are windy promises that convey empty Donatives and neither can proceed from that Glorious Being which is the fulness of Sincerity and all Munificence Where GOD is pleas'd to impart Dominion we may assure our selves it shall not be a name or empty notion But as there shall be a Scaene for Jurisdiction to act in so there shall be Subjects for it to be exercis'd upon and Matters also to imploy it about And so here is something more suggested in way of Reply as to the Favour which GOD bestowed upon Adam in relation to the Fishes namely that he imparted to him a Dominion over them And that I hope is quite different from a Titular Lordship And so Titular was his Lordship according to the Theory over the Fish that tho he held it near a thousand years it did not all that time bring one of them to his Sight A man may have a Title to things and Right to use them when he can get them tho he never had nor ever shall have Dominion over them I do by no means wish the Answerer to be unjustly barred from his Estate But if he were so he would find that a Title to it and a Right to use it when it should come into his Power must not be compar'd to a real Dominion or Command over it But now it was an actual Dominion which GOD gave Adam over the Fish And therefore he did not say have thou the Title of Lord over them and use them for thy conveniency when they come into thy power which yet would have been a plain Jeer such as Heaven never put upon an Innocent because into his power they were not to come but have DOMINION over the Fish of the Sea and over the Fowl of the Air and over every living thing which moveth upon the Earth Gen. 1.28 Where 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which the Targum renders 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and have the Dominion does signify an actual Rule and the very exercise of it And the Word is used in this Sense in too many Places of the H. Bible to be here recited So that Adam's Dominion over the Fish was not as the Answerer would most unreasonably make it a Titular Lordship or imaginary Right which was to hang in the Air and not be realiz'd even to his Posterity till above sixteen hundred Years should be past and till the World in which they lived should be quite destroyed and a new
one founded but it was a real Power actually conferred upon and exercis'd in his own Person and with him by his Children jointly and after him by them successively And truly when in the Grant of this power over the Fish the Advantage lay so much on Adam's side more than on his Offspring's it being made to him in his Person and also in his Innocence it may seem somewhat strange that he who shared most in the conveyance of the Priviledge should in the Judgment of a wise Civilian have nothing to do with the Possesion of it Especially when this Grant was made by the GOD of faithfulness and truth with Whom as there is no shadow of Change so there can be no semblance of Fraud Yet had the Case here been as the Theory makes it there must have been wrong on GOD's part as well as fallacy and his creatures he must have injured by imposing upon them which who can think As if that righteous Being whose Nature is the Rule of eternal Justice could violate that Law which Himself had made And when he had commanded not to steal could rob poor men of that common Right which his own free Goodness and his own kind Promise settled on them Not to be too toedious Either Adam had actual Dominion over the Fish or he had not If he had not why did GOD say to him Have Dominion over the Fish of the Sea If he had why does the Answerer so mince it as if he intended to make away with it Again Either Adam had as much Power over the Fish of the Sea as he had over the Fowls of the Air and the Living things upon the Earth or he had not If he had as much we have what we contend for If he had not the Answerer must show that the Divine Grant now recited vesting Adam with Dominion over the Creatures did confer more Power in the latter part of it than it did in the first But that he cannot do and therefore his Cause is lost For if Adam had as much power over the Fish as he had over the Fowls and over other Animals there must be an open Sea at first And if there was an open Sea there was Mountains too And if there was Mountains there was Clouds also And if there was Clouds there was Winds and Rains and Hails and Snows and Thunders c. And then where 's the Theorists Primitive Earth and his Paradisiacal World before the Flood In the Fourth Chapter of his Answer he reflected upon the Excepter for Dabbling in Philosophy And now I think he has dabbled in it fairly himself even till he has drowned his hopeful Hypothesis in an inclos'd Abyss And as for Extraordinary Providence it affords no help in this Case However it be made too much a Pack-horse to carry the Theory through several Difficulties which otherwise must have been impassable yet here it fails and is able to yield no manner of assistance For he who can imagine that Adam upon the Earth could have Dominion over the Fish in this inclosed Sea by Extraordinary Providence must be guilty of most amazing and unmerciful Extravagance Yet by another Expedient he may find relief When to leave things out he prints his Theory next he may leave this inclos'd Abyss out of that Edition And tho he can worse spare it yet whether he has not as much reason to leave it out as he had to leave any thing out which he did leave out Disc p. 226. let any unbias'd Person judge That there was Open Seas before the Flood we argu'd Secondly from the Waters under the Firmament Gen. 1.7 For had there been none but River-waters in the first World the Earth might have been said to be under the Firmament more properly than the Waters And the Firmament which in the 6th verse is said to be in the midst of the Waters and to divide the Waters from the Waters Ibid. might better have been said to be in the midst betwixt the Earth and the Waters and to divide the Waters from that For as for the River-waters they would have been too inconsiderable to have had the Partition made by the Firmament praedicated of them in exclusion of the Earth or in preference to it Well allow this says the Answerer Answ p. 52. that a Firmament was made to divide the Waters from the Waters Tell us then what that Firmament was For it is said there that GOD set the Sun Moon and Stars in the Firmament We own it is said so and that GOD did do so But if he cannot tell what this Firmament was a few words will inform him It is plain that Moses in his Cosmopaeia makes mention of Two Firmaments and we have told him of them once already Disc p. 22◠One we may call the Aeral the other the Aethereal Firmament The First is the Interaqueous Firmament as lying between Waters for it is bounded by the Waters here below and by those supernal Fountains of Water the Clouds above Gen. 1.8.20 And yet it is properly called Heaven as being not only limited to but also consisting of the Lowest or Subnubilar Heaven The Second is the Firmament of Lights Because in it the Moon and all the Planets the Sun and all the fixt Stars are placed And a most stately and glorious Expanse it is as being of immense and indefinite Amplitude or Extent Here the Excepter encountred that New Notion of the Firmament See Disc p. 226 227 228. which the Theorist vouchsaft to recommend to the World where he makes it expressly to be the Orb of his exterior habitable Earth But what was said against it he answered the best way viz. by declaring that the Things cited and opposed Answ p. 52. are not in the Second Edition of the Theory Ausim enim dicere quantum rerum natura innotescit adhuc Firmamentum Mosaicum prout vulgo intelligitur esse prorsus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Theor. Edit 1. p. 254. But the best on 't is when he had been so brisk as to give us all a Magisterial Reprimand by telling us plainly that Moses's Firmament as commonly understood is an Vnphilosophic thing on the other-side he was so bashful that he would not stand by his own opinion tho more Philosophic as he thought But having conceived it and brought it forth he very fairly gives it the slip and leaves the infant Notion defenceless as it is to shift for it self Concerning what we said in vindication of the Clouds from that contempt which the Thorist threw upon them Answ p. 53. he thus pronounceth With submission to better Judgments I take it to be a Country-Sermon about the usefulness of Rain But I do assure him tho that 's no strange nor new thing with him he is very much mistaken Yet if he will needs have it be a Sermon with submission to better Judgments I take it to be a Funeral-Sermon for one of his Notions
Namely that the Clouds were no such eminent and remarkable things Eng. Theor. p. 234. as to deserve a particular commemoration by Moses in his six days work As for what follows towards the end of our Chapter against the Theorist's Objection touching the difficult Propagation of Mankind into the Islands and Continents of the first world the Answerer declares that it does but confirm his Objection Answ p. 53◠But did the Excepter say any thing in confirmation of such a Difficulty in the business of this Propagation as brings on a Necessity of calling in the help of the Angelic Ministery to translate or convey men from place to place He shewed plainly See Disc c. 11. §. 7. that a few sorry Sciphs or rude kind of Boats might very well do what was here to be done without making Angels to be Carriers of men and to transport their Colonies through the Torrid Zone into new Plantations But this is a Difficulty which attends the Theory or else the Answerer wrongs his Hypothesis by flying to those Spirits for such their Assistance Answ p. 30. CHAP. XII THIS is a short Chapter and will soon be dispatch'd Ibid. p. 53. So the Answerer begins But his Dispatch was so quick that he made more haste than good speed For besides that he forgat to leave any thing behind him that needs a Reply such was his Expedition that he could not see his way before him neither but ran unhandsomely into the Assertion of a plain Vntruth Another Untruth Ib. p. 53 54. For thus he positively affirms of the Excepter He says GOD might as well as to significancy have appointed the Sun as the Rainbow for a sign that there should never have been another Flood And again This would have done as well he says as the Rainbow But this is utterly false for as any one may see the Excepter said not so His words are these Disc p. 253 254 If GOD had appointed the Sun to that use he would have signified the same thing that the Bow does But he did not say he would have signify'd it as well Nay in effect he said the quite contrary as appears by what follows Ib. p. 254. Tho as all must grant the Bow is the most fit Emblem of the two and therefore it was chosen And when the Excepter said the Bow is the most fit Emblem of the two and that GOD chose it for that Reason what did he say less than that it must do better than the Sun and consequently that the Sun could not do so well as that which is contrary to the Answerers Affirmation Another man I hope may write a piece of Natural History tho he does it not as well and remarkably as the Theorist has done for there are degrees of Comparison in doing things But will he never leave falsifying and speak the truth Ib. p. 259 260. As to our Argument proving the Existence of Clouds before the Flood and consequently the Appearance of the Rainbow then He answers it by his last Expedient only CHAP. XIII Answ p. 55. HE begins this Chapter which is about Paradise with a warm Charge upon the Excepter thus He fairly baulks all the the Difficulties in that Doctrine and contents himself with a few generals which every body knows Betwixt the Doctrine and Difficulties of an Article there may be great Difference And where there is so they must be warily noted and distinguished There we must duly consider and examine whether these Difficulties be inherent in the Doctrine and inseparable from it or whether they be Appendages or Additionals to it Whether the Doctrine delivered were interwoven or wrapt up in Difficulties by GOD or whether those Difficulties were the meer phantsiful inventions of men annexed to it or clapt upon it And in case they appear to be extrinsic Accessaries humane Conjectures or perhaps Extravagancies and Mistakes what have we more to do with them or how can we do better by them than part the Shadows from the true Substance and so throwing off the one keep close to the other Disc p. 265. And this was what we proposed to our selves when passing by the Fictions of Poets and the Phantsies of Fathers we betook our selves directly to the Oracles of Heaven resolving to take up our Rest there and to rely upon nothing that Writers say concerning Paradise a Scripture Doctrine but what is consonant to the Sacred Scriptures where alone that Doctrine is clearly taught so far as Divine Wisdom thought fit to reveal it and acquaint us with it T is true we may go farther if we please and so stretch this Doctrine as the Theorist does that it shall comprehend several other things But then if these things prove Difficulties at the same time they are but Superfluities Such as GOD never put into the Doctrine of Paradise and men had much better have kept out And that they are much fitter to be quite cut off than vigorously pursued and seriously insisted on may in part be gathered from hence That they who labour most in them get nothing by them Their profit will not countervail their trouble but Study here must be what some Philosophers thought Virtue was a Reward to it self The Theorist has made himself a pregnant Instance to prove this He has taken pains to find out what the Ancients determin'd concerning the Seat of the Terrestial Paradise but to how little purpose For notwithstanding that its Place was a Real Circumstance which his Properties of it were not he had no Requital for his Endeavours to discover it The Search he made after it was without Success and so without Satisfaction or Benefit The 7th Chapter of the second Book of his English Theory shows as much There he informs us p. 253. p. 257. p. 253. p. 254. that as for the Jews and Hebrew Doctors they place Paradise under the Aequinoctial Where others of the Learned plac'd the Ocean and where he himself places the Fiery Zone He might have added that their common Opinion was that GOD made Paradise before the World And when there was neither Heaven nor Earth in being Where was the Aequinoctial to place it under As for Ancient Heathens Poets and Philosophers they he tells us were rather for several Paradises in the Earth As for Christian Fathers he says they disputed whether Paradise was * That Paradise was Corporeal seems to be the constant Doctrine of all the Fathers except Origen whom some count a Corrupter of the Scriptures simplicity and St. Ambrose Corporeal or Intellectual only and Allegorical This was the grand point amongst them And so they were like to make good work of the place of Paradise And of those of them that thought it local Ib. and 255. most did not determine any thing concerning the Particular place of it But the rest that did exprest themselves in various ways yet upon a due interpretation they agree that Paradise was
and Q. Curtius the Babylonian Soil does still retain a strange and happy Fertility For they assure us that it yields Corn at the rate of two hundred fold and that it bears Palm Trees of its own accord which afford Bread Wine Honey c. And as Pliny informs us Nat. Hist l. 18. c. 17. their Corn grows so rank that men are fain to cut it twice and after that turn Sheep into it to eat it down And then Crops are so plentiful that one year they sow themselves against the next and sponte restibilis fit seges Corn grows of its own accord and yields an harvest without Tillage And if this Soil be so fertile now what was it before the Curse when it was newly created and in its prime Perfection So that upon the whole Matter let Rabbies and Fathers and Poets and Theorists say what they please yet so long as Moses wrote the second Chapter of Genesis and his hand was guided by the most HOLY and unerring SPIRIT we cannot but think that men in reason ought to conclude and that in duty they ought to believe that Paradise was seated in Mesopotamia or thereabouts And we hope it is as intelligible that it should be there seated as that it was situate in the Southern Hemisphere For who ever yet understood or who can understand That Eden and Havilah and Cush and Assyria were Countries and that Pison and Gihon and Hiddekel and Euphrates were Rivers in that Southern Hemisphere In case they were so how came they from thence hither I remember Sir Richard Baker tells it as a great Wonder amongst the Casualties that hapned in our Queen Elizabeth's Reign that a certain hill in Herefordshire beginning to remove out of its place on Saturday Evening continued walking till Munday noon But if such large Countries as these could take so long a Journey the ambulatory Mount may stand by for a diminutive Prodigy Tho we must observe withal that the Fathers never seated Paradise in the other Hemisphere neither They only seem to incline to that by the Theorists due interpretation of them as was noted above And as to the Seat of Paradise as he says they expressed themselves in various ways That is their Notions of it were incertain and in plain terms they knew not where to fix it But so far were they from believing it to be in the Southern Hemisphere that they did not believe that Hemisphere was ever inhabited for they did not believe that there were Antipodes And when some of them would have Paradise to be Mystical only and others would have it to be the whole Earth and others place it under the Aequinoctial and others under the Globe or Circle of the Moon and others in the exterior part of a flat or plain Earth round the inward part of which they supposed the Ocean to stand like a Ring Which of them set it in the Southern Hemisphere Tho if they had we need not have been much surpriz'd at it neither For being but men they might have done as men have erred that is in their Opinion And truly ever since Adam through desire of Knowledge first planted error in Paradise that poysonous Weed has been apt to Spring up and spread unhappily in other places and the best Gardens of Antiquity have been stained with it Witness the Millenium the Rebaptizing of Haeretics the Limbus Patrum the Communicating of Infants and the like And if we 'll take in Errors of a lower Strain we shall find the false Notions entertained by the Ancients of the Form of the Earth of the Figure and Situation of the Sea of the non-existence of Antipodes c. ready to confirm and corroborate the Testimony And what does the famous Aristotelian Hypothesis seem to be now in this present Age Aristotle believed the Milky Way to be a Meteor He also allowed but Eight Heavenly Sphaeres which Timocaris above three hundred years before the Incarnation improved to Nine and Alphonsus in the thirteeneth Century after it into Ten and afterward they were commonly reckoned Eleven And not only Egyptians Graecians and Arabians but even Hebrew and Christian Doctors took the Stars to be living Bodies actuated with Souls as Espencaeus informs us in his Treatise de Cal. animat but a Mass of Errors Where such a Systeme was contrived for the Heavens and such a situation assigned to the Earth as neither Reason can approve nor Nature allow Yet so prosperous and prevailing was this Hypothesis that it was generally received and successfully propagated for many Ages And when the Heavens were so misconceived and the Earth so misplaced and the Errors touching both were spread so far and continued so long why might not the same happen as to Paradise Why might not the Ancients and the choicest of the Ancients mistake concerning it particularly concerning the place of it Were an Account to be given of the Original or Occasion of this their Mistake it might seem methinks to have risen thus or proceeded from hence They thought and spake too Great things of Paradise and supposed such Properties and Excellencies in it as it never had nor was capable of And having rais'd their Phantsies to so high a Pitch they could not tell how to let them fall again and stoop so low as Mesopotamia And so they conceited that Paradise was in some remote unknown inaccessible Region or as it were in another World because they could find out no place in this which answered the gay Notions that they had and their fine but false Idea's of it Just as the Jews overlookt the Person of the true Messiah because it came not up to that vain and extravagant Character of Him unhappily imprinted on their Minds So these pious learned and incomparable men took no notice of the real Place of Paradise as being prepossest with misapprehensions of it The lofty Opinions which they had concerning it lifted up their Thoughts far above it and carry'd them away quite beyond it They imagin'd that it was they knew not well what and so they placed it they knew not well where believing they should wrong it if they fixt it any where in this ordinary World The Excepter having done with the Place of Paradise he objected next against the Longaevity of men before the flood as a Property of it But this p. 55. says the Answerer he handles so loosely that in the conclusion of his Discourse one cannot tell whether he affirms it or denies it The Excepter begins his discourse of this matter Disc p. 273. with these very words As for the Longaevity of the Antediluvians that could be no Property or Adjunct of Paradise And did he not deny then and positively deny the Longaevity of the Antediluvians as a Property of Paradise which is his notion of it And because the Answerer does affirm the thing by dividing the Doctrine of the local Paradise into two parts Answer p. 55. the Place and the Properties
of it and making this Antediluvian Longevity one of those Properties the Replicant continues the positive Negation and says expressly as before that the Longaevity of the Antediluvians could be no Property of Paradise He makes it good thus If it had been so it would have ceased or have been extinguisht in Mankind by their loss of that Place For where-ever Priviledges are the Properties of a Place he that enjoys them can hold them no longer than he continues in that place If once he forfeits the Place and be dispossess'd of that together with it he must actually lose all those Priviledges which are Properties of it and be deprived of them And this Longaevity being according to our Author a Property of the Place of Paradise Adam and his Children could not be priviledg'd with it as such when he himself was soon turn'd out of it and none of them were ever in it Besides how could this Longaevity be a Property of the Particular Topical Paradise when he makes it to be one of his three general Characters Eng. Theor. l. 2. c. 2 3. common to the whole Primitive Earth Yet a Property of the particular Paradise it must needs be because it is one of the Properties meant where he divides the Doctrine of that Paradise into the Place and the Properties of that Place But then is not here something like Contradiction again where a Property of one particular Place of the Earth is made common to the whole habitable Earth Indeed the Excepter did not positively deny the Longaevity of the Antediluvians to be General And therefore the Answerer taxes him with Sceptical humour Answ p. 55. But if the contrary humour will please him better the Replicant will so far put it on as positively to affirm that the Praediluvian Longaevity cannot be founded upon the Hypothesis of the Theory For in case it stands upon that foundation it must be supported by a constant Aequinox and an Oval Earth And that Earth must be without Metals and without a Sea And then as Adam could have no Dominion over the Fish so neither could Tubal-Cain trade in Brass or Iron And if these things were thus plain Scripture must be false and Moses must be out in the history of the Creation He was deceiv'd that is that we might be so and the SPIRIT of Truth which actuated him is become the Author of Lies to us which GOD forbid any one should think After this he observes ib. p. 56. that the Excepter did not take notice of the two last Reosons he gave in confirmation of the Antediluvian Longaevity One of them runs thus The generations recorded in Scripture after the Flood as they exceed the term of succeeding Ages so they decline by degrees from the Antediluvian Longaevity To this we answered sufficiently tho we did not expressly apply it to that particular Reason where we said Shem Arphaxad Salah and Eber living much longer just after the Flood than others did then See Disc p. 27â— or have done since did live so long for the same reasons that the ten men in a lineal descent Gen. 5. were such long-livers For so their lives are not to be lookt upon as declining from the Antediluvian Longaevity as the Answerer conceits but as extraordinarily lengthened by a special Blessing the elongation of them being a work of Providence not of Nature The other Reason was this Jacob complains of the shortness of his life Answ p. 56. and fewness of his days in comparison of his Forefathers when he had liv'd one hundred and thirty years which had been a groundless complaint if his Ancestors had not lived much longer The Answer to this is so obvious and easy that it was not worth troubling the Reader with it 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 to the days of the years of the life of my Fathers So Jacob complained Gen. 47.9 Now his days being spent or so far past they could not but seem few to the good Patriarch tho they were an hundred and thirty years And being no more he might truly say that they had not attain'd to the years of his Fathers without any manner of reference to or so much as thought of the Antediluvian long-livers For his Great-Grandfather Terah lived two hundred and five years Gen. 11.32 C. 25.7 His Grandfather Abraham an hundred and threescore and fifteen C. 35.28 And his Father Isaac an hundred and fourscore So that the shortest liver of these his Ancestors lived much longer than he had then done even by more than a Third part of his Time mentioned That those remembred by Moses as Long-livers before the Flood do not show all in general to be so the Excepter argued from these words of his Disc p. 277. Gen. 6.4 There were Giants on the Earth in those days Now as his telling the World there were some Giants then does not imply that the whole Race of Mankind were such but does rather import that the rest were otherwise so his mentioning some so very Long-livers may insinuate that the rest were not so To this it is answered there had been some pretence for this Answ p. 57. if Moses had made a distinction of two races of men in the first World Long-livers and Short-livers as he hath distinguisht the Giants from the Common race of Mankind And is not his Distinction equally plain in both cases Or if there be any difference does he not distinguish better betwixt long-livers and short-livers than he does betwixt men of Gigantic and of usual Proportions For whereas to distinguish Giants from ordinary men he only said there were Giants on the Earth in those days he did more than say there were Long-livers on the Earth in those days for he specifi'd their Names and he set down their Ages signifying clearly both who they were and to what years they reached But on the other side he neither expressed who the Giants were nor what their Stature and Dimensions So that of the two he distinguishes more plainly betwixt long-livers and short-livers than betwixt the Giants and men of common size For thus indeed he fairly intimated that the Generality of the praediluvians were short livers by his care to particularize those that liv'd long and both by their names and by the length of their days to discriminate them from the rest And tho the Answerer says in the close of his Paragraph that not to suppose long life general to Mankind at that time is a groundless restriction which is neither founded upon Scripture nor reason We reply that it may be founded upon both For Scripture says in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely dye Gen. 2.17 And tho this Sentence was denounc'd against man conditionally at first in case he sinned yet upon his actual disobedience it became
it would not be uneasy in the truth and reality of the thing but uneasy in regard of the Theory's Hypothesis It would not be uneasy for Mankind to multiply in a decuple proportion but it would be uneasy for the Theory to allow they did so because then as the Excepter urges the Earth would have been overcharg'd with their numerous increase And when the Excepter cited so much of the Theory as carried the whole Truth of the Matter in it he had no reason to go farther in citing more of it which was added but to serve the Theory against the Truth nor is there reason why he should be counted or called partial because he did not do it That every Pair of breeders should at the end of every Century leave ten pair more is easy and allowable because in all likelihood true in it self and was the Excepter to take in a lower proportion because this higher one was not for the Theorist's purpose The first Supposition being easy and in all probability true why should a second be admitted to render that uneasy and false meerly because it favours not him who made it But let him show why Seth and his Wife and Enos and his Wife and other pairs downward may not be allowed to multiply in the same decuple proportion that the first pair are allowed to do and then the Excepter will own himself faulty for not enlarging the Citation and taking in the Quadruple proportion mentioned But because in all probability they multipli'd in equal measures he had no reason to be blam'd as partial for leaving it out Tho the truth is if but the Quadruple proportion be admitted it will set the Number of the Praediluvians very much too high if compar'd with the Number of the present Earth's Inhabitants as the Theorist computes them both For whereas he thinks that the present number of men upon the face of the Earth is commonly estimated to be betwixt three and four hundred Millions Eng. Theor. p. 23. the Quadruple proportion in sixteen hundred and fifty years which passed before the Flood came in would raise it to 21474836480. A most prodigious Excess as raising the number more than one and twenty thousand Millions above the common account Or if we quite lay aside this Quadruple proportion and go but according to that other Citation out of the Theory before this the Earth would still be overlaid with the multitude of its Inhabitants See Disc p. 279. The Citation runs thus 'T is likely they were more fruitful in the first Ages of the World than after the Flood and they lived six seven eight nine hundred years apiece getting Sons and Daughters And when men lived so many hundreds of years before the Flood and lived getting of Sons and Daughters and were more fruitful then than since how is it possible but that the first Earth in sixteen hundred years must be mightily over-peopled especially when Digamy and as the H. GHOST seems to intimate Poligamy too Gen 6.2 were in fashion in the first World So that go which way you please by your Decuple that is or by your Quadruple proportion or else by the last clause cited out of your Theory and according to any or according to all of them the primitive Earth would have been greatly overstockt in case the Longaevity of the Antediluvians had been universal The second Reason against that Longaevity was the inequality of it or the difference as to length of days Disc p. 280. amongst them that lived before the Flood To this it is answered Answ p. 59. their Stamina and Constitutions might then be of a different strength as well as now The length of Mens days depends naturally upon the strength of their Bodies and the strength of their Bodies upon the goodness of their Stamina and Constitutions And therefore if These were as different before the Flood as they are since many Millions might dye then as soon as they were born and as many in their Infancy and as many very young and so the Longaevity of the Praediluvians could not be General which was the Thing objected The last Reason against the Praediluvian Longaevity supposed to proceed from a constant Equinox Answ p. 59. Disc p. 281 282 283 The second Character is the Longaevity of men and as is probable of all other Animals in proportion Eng. Theor. p. 180. was the proportionable long life of other Animals For that would have been an Effect of the same Cause And they multiplying much faster than Mankind had they lived long they would have grown so numerous as to have been pernicious To which it is answered thus I can say nothing to that nor he neither upon good grounds unless we knew what species's of Animals were then made and in what degrees they Multiplied He formerly yielded that the Earth then brought forth the principles of life and all living Creatures Man excepted Eng. The. p. 179 But now it appears that he then said he knew not what for he owns that he knows not what species's of Animals were then made And then as to the Degrees which they multiply'd in they must needs be strangely high For besides that the Ground was then most fat and fruitful and the Air most warm and cherishing and all advantages imaginable concurr'd to constant and numerous propagations of them the Earth brought forth the principles of life we see and all living creatures and so by spontaneous Births they would have increased even sans number and such a consuming multitude of them would have been produced as would not only have greatly annoyed but utterly ruined Mankind For while Horses Asses Cows Sheep Goats Swine Dogs Lions Bears Wolves Crocodiles Serpents Scorpions Rats Mice Fowls Hornets c. grew out of the Earth in strange plenty and this Terrigenous Breed by the help and influence of a perpetual Equinox were naturally far more prolific than now these Creatures are and there were no hands to hinder their Procreations or to destroy either young or old how could Mankind who multiply'd in comparison so very slowly have defended either themselves or their Provisions naked and destitute of Weapons as they were from the Assaults and Invasions of such inconceiveable Herds or Swarms of Vermin as would have come upon them But here therefore the old Expedient Extraordinary Providence is call'd in again for Remedy or Prevention Ib. The Theorist always supposes a Divine Providence to superintend proportion and determine both the number and food of Animals upon the Earth suitably to the constitution and circumstances of every World That is when ordinary Providence had put Nature into such a condition as to bring forth the aforesaid animals and many other out of the Earth Extraordinary Providence was to stand by and either hinder them from rising into animation or else knock them on the head as fast as they quickned and send them packing out of life again As if divine Providence imitated
Penelope unravelling by night what it weav'd by day Thus he pulls down his own Censure upon himself Methinks they make very bold with the Deity Eng. The. p. 20. when they make Him do and undo go forward and backwards by such countermarches and retractions as we do not willingly impute to the Wisdom of GOD ALMIGHTY CHAP. XIV HEre another Vital Assertion of the Theory's is excepted against and Reasons are given why the Deluge cannot be rightly explicated by the Dissolution of the Earth or its Disruption and fall into the Abyss The first is Disc p. 285. because it would be inconsistent with Moses 's Description of Paradise which he has made according to proper Rules of Topography But says the Answerer this Objection I 'm afraid will fall heavier upon Moses Answ p. 60. or upon the Excepter himself than upon the Theorist And why so Why Ib. because that place of Paradise cannot be understood or determin'd by the Mosaical Topography one of these two things must be allowed either that the description was insufficient and ineffectual or that there has been some great change in the Earth whereby the Marks of it are destroy'd If he take the second of these Answers he joins with the Theorist If the first he reflects upon the honour of Moses or confutes himself Moses's Topography of Paradise as it was done by proper Rules so it was sufficient and effectual enough for marking it out as it once stood And that it is not so now is because as the second Answer intimates there has been a great change in the Earth in that part of the Earth where the Paradisiacal Region was And such a change may be allowed without joining with the Theorist as he Himself assures us For he tells us in the same page that good interpreters suppose that the Chanels of Rivers were very much changed by the Flood And a great change in the Chanels of Rivers must make a great change in a Country Especially where that Country is describ'd by those Rivers which is the case of Paradise And this change is the very thing which makes the place of Paradise so hard to be found Yet this I say is very far from joining with the Theorist For according to him the Chanels of Rivers were not only changed Eng. Theor. p. 252. but all broke up and so quite put by by that Fraction of the Earth which made the Flood And not only the Chanels of Rivers were destroyed but even the Sources of them too by his Hypothesis For whereas the general Sources of all Rivers in the primitive World were the Rainy Regions about the Poles Those Polar Regions fell in together with the rest and so Rivers which were before could not afterward continue Let him please to say therefore whether Tygris and Euphrates were before the Flood or not If they were not how could Moses describe Paradise by them If they were had the Flood come in by the Earth's Dissolution they must inevitably have been destroyed But instead of that they are still in being and this is an evidence that the Earth was not delug'd by being dissolv'd Nor is this the only difficulty upon the Theorist here For as to the place of Paradise he refers himself wholly as we have heard to the Ancients and they incline to seat it in the South or South-East Land in the other World And can it enter into the mind of man to think that Havilah and Aethiopia and Assyria and Hiddekel and Euphrates which Moses takes into the description of Paradise could ever be situate in the other Hemisphere when they are now found in this If the Earth fell in without question it gave a deadly jounce But could it make these Countries and Rivers rebound with such force as to leap quite beyond the torrid Zone and settle some degrees on this side of our Tropic There are a sort of Divinity Theorists * Annus ipse nonagesimus primus ejus seculi erat quod eodem anno ac pene mense natalis Deiparae Virginis domus deficiente cultu ex Asia in Europam coelestium ministerio transit Quae primo in Dalmatia inde quadrienno post in Piceno consedit Hor. Tursel Epit. Hist lib. 9. pag. mihi 302. who would fain perswade us that the Lady of Loretto's Chamber went thither a Pilgrimage out of Nazareth This is strangely marvellous but the wonder of it will be much abated if we can find the Regions and Rivers we speak of going on procession out of the South-East Land into this Northern Continent I confess we are taught strange things of Paradise but this its translation would surpass all And how good soever its Soil was at first certainly it grew very light at last to hop thus far Were this an effect of the Earth's fall believe it here is either a very fair tumbling Cast or else our Author is in a foul mistake And so indeed he must be and the Objection which he was afraid would fall on Moses or the Excepter lights heavy on the Theorist But out of this fear he quickly rises into another Passion if we may guess by his expressions in the next Paragraph Tho I cannot but say his Passion is as causeless as his fear was groundless For speaking truth in a controversy should never move choler And did the Excepter do more than so when he said that to affirm Moses's Description of Paradise to be false Disc p. 286. must be horrid Blasphemy it being Dictated by the H. GHOST Yet this is the word which he takes so ill And truly so far as he has said any thing that implies Mose's Topography of Paradise to be false So far he ought to resent what was spoken tho not with anger And pray how can he allowing own Hypothesis to be true defend Moses's description of Paradise from being false seeing he describes it by Rivers and those Rivers according to the Theory could not be before the Flood He attempts the Defence thus The Theorist supposes Rivers before the Flood Answer p. 60. in great plenty and why not like to these He himself has given Reasons why they could not be like them Eng. The. p. 252. 'T is true if you admit our Hypothesis concerning the fraction and disruption of the Earth at the Deluge then we cannot expect to find rivers as they were before their general source is changed and their Chanels are all broke up And if Rivers after the Flood are not as they were before it how can they be alike And when their source was changed at the Deluge and their Chanels all broke up how is it possible but that they must differ greatly from what they were in their situations Courses c Which must utterly spoil them for being topographical marks I mean the same true topographical marks to any Country to which they formerly were so And can they then be alike That Person who can think that the Earth was
dissolved and by that dissolution fell a Mile or two downward and by that fall was broken to pieces and by that fraction was thrown into wildest disorders so that whereas before it had one entire smooth level uniform Surface it was thus made into Mountains Hills Valleys Islands Rocks Seas Gulphs Lakes c. And yet can think again that those Rivers which were before this happened should in their situations and chanels the principal circumstances we are now concern'd in be just like these after it he must be one of a very strong Phantsy but withal of as weak a Judgment And farther Moses does not describe Paradise by Rivers like to Tygris and Euphrates and Pison and Gihon but by those very same Rivers as originally flowing there And every like we know is far from being the very same Men and Animals now upon Earth are like to them before the Deluge yet I hope they are not the same revived And then lastly the Theorist yields Paradise was in the Southern Hemisphere and so the Rivers of it before the Flood must be there too and so they must rise from the rainy Region at the Antarctic Pole and so they must be very remote from the Land of Havilah and Assyria Whereas since the Flood Moses describes Paradise by Tygris and Euphrates and these are Rivers in this Northern Hemisphere and they spring up from the Mountains of Armenia and they run by or through the aforesaid Countries And is it to be thought then that those Rivers before the Flood and these Rivers since the Flood could be alike Especially alike in showing the Situation and the bounds of Paradise from Moses's Description or Topography of which was the first Reason borrow'd against the Earth's Dissolution Concerning which he expostulates Answ p. 61. Is it not a strange thing that the Dissolution of the Earth should be made Blasphemy Yes very strange and let them that make it so be blamed for it But still to affirm that Moses's Description of Paradise is false would be horrid Blasphemy it being dictated by the H. GHOST And this was the thing which the Excepter made Blasphemy which the Answerer if he thinks fit may contradict And now the Replicant says farther that to assert such a Dissolution of the Earth as destroys Moses's Description of Paradise or implies it to be false will indirectly consequentially and reductively at least be of Blasphemous importance But the Answerer alledges that very Expression Ibid. the Earth is dissolved is a Scripture Expression Psalm 75.3 Isai 24.19 Amos 9.5 which methinks might have been enough to have protected it from the imputation of Blasphemy How well this Allegation will protect him or what he has said in any capacity or respect I know not I only ask what dissolution of the Earth do the Psalmist and Prophets mean in the Places cited Do they mean a figurative tropological Dissolution or a literal and such a real one as the Theorist has invented and which according to him did drown the World If the first their notion is nothing to the Answerer's purpose if the Second the Earth must have been delug'd as often as they say it has been dissolv'd I cannot think that our Answerer believes that Palestine was literally or really dissolv'd in the prophet Esay's time Yet 't is plain it was so according to Scripture-expression Thou whole Palestina are dissolved Isai 14.31 Which shows him clearly what Dissolution of the Earth Scripture means in the places cited and what kind of protection that Scripture expression will afford him and consequently how weak the Sanctuary is that he here flies to In this Paragraph he insinuates odious things of the Excepter As if he were guilty of a rude and injudicious defending of Scripture by railing and ill language such as tends to the diminution and disparagement of it As if he made his own Consequences to be of the same authority with the word of GOD and so whatsoever is against them must be charg'd with Blasphemy against the H. GHOST And as if there were nothing safe against his blind zeal and opinionative ignorance How easy were it here to retort and retaliate But we must not render 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Yet he having observed that weak reasons commonly produce strong passions we may without offence Answ p. 11. measure his Arguments by his own Rule and judge of their weakness by the sentence proceeding out of his own mouth and conclude that his Reasons are like to be invalid because his Passions are so violent By them one would think he had taken a turn in his Torrid Zone and was just now come piping hot out of it Secondly the Dissolution of the Earth could not be the cause of the general flood because it would have utterly destroyed Noah 's Ark and all that was in it Disc p. 288. said the Excepter But this was prevented by the Theorist's putting the Ark under the Conduct of its Guardian Angels and a miraculous Providence says the Answerer p. 61. And in proof that he did thus put the Ark under the Conduct of Angels he cites these words out of the English Theory Ib. I think it had been impossible for the Ark to have liv'd upon the raging Abyss or for Noah and his Family to have been preserved if there had not been a miraculous hand of Providence to take care of them And then again he must needs fall pell-mell on the Excepter tho he comes off as he uses to do Ib. p. 62. Now either the Excepter did not take notice of this passage in the Theory or he does not allow that a miraculous hand was sufficient to preserve the Ark or thirdly that he made an objection which he knew himself to be impertinent And I confess I am inclinable to think the last is true But by his leave none of these three things are true and the real truth is this Tho he put the Ark under the conduct of Angels in the extremity of the Flood and when it was upon the raging Abyss yet he lest it without a miraculous hand to take care of it in its fall Yea instead of that it is evident that he only put it into a River or Dock Ib. or Cistern that it might be afloat there before the Abyss was broken open as if that could have sav'd it from being dasht to pieces And because the Excepter did not take notice of this Contrivance of this River or Dock he tells him of it in both ears p. 31. In the eighth Chapter of his Answer and here in the fourteenth p. 62 But was there so great an injury done him and had he such mighty cause to complain that that Thing was omitted which himself now looks upon as unnecessary For he says after all there is no necessity that the Ark should be afloat Ib. before the Earth broke And for what reason Why ordinary providence being thus laid aside what
can be expected but Extraordinary providence should be brought in next And so it is with a witness Ib. in these words The Angels whose ministery we own openly upon these grand occasions could as easily have held the Ark afloat in the Air as on the Water But because Angels could do this may we argue from thence with good consequence that they did do it and from their power to act it conclude they effected it Without question they could have kept Judea dry when all the rest of the World was drown'd yet we know this was not done But the Ark however was held afloat in the Air by them For it follows the Ark being an Emblem of the Church GOD certainly did give his Angels charge over it that they should bear it up in their hands that it might not be dash'd against a stone Surely this Hypothesis must needs be very strong and lasting that has so much miracle and ministery of Angels to support it And then what matter for Philosophy tho the Theory is to be chiefly Philosophical Eng. Th. p. 6. when it may stand much better without it But the same pen writes thus in another place Eng. The. p. 98. Noah and his Family were sav'd by water so as the water which destroy'd the rest of the World was an instrument of their Conservation inasmuch as it bore up the Ark and kept it from that impetuous shock which it would have had if it had either stood upon dry land when the Earth fell or if the Earth had been dissolv'd without any water on it or under it Now if Noah and his Family were saved by water if the water which destroy'd the rest of the world was an instrument of their Conservation if it conserv'd them as it bore up the Ark and if it so bore it up as that it kept it from an impetuous shock which otherwise it would have had when the Earth fell how could the Answerer say there was no necessity that the Ark should be afloat before the Earth broke and now make the conservation of Noah and his Ark at the fall of the Earth to be wholly Angelical In short the Theorist affirms that mankind was saved by water that bore up the Ark and kept it from an impetuous shock when the Earth fell it having the Advantage of a River or of a Dock or Cistern wherein to float The Answerer that there was no necessity that the Ark should be afloat before the Earth broke because the Angels could hold it in the Air and they having charge over it did bear it up in their hands The Question therefore might be put which of the two speaks truest But e'en let them agree the difference as they please Another Contradiction and reconcile the plain Contradiction between them But for the Ark's being afloat in a River or Dock or Cistern before the Earth fell he has this pretence Those things were premis'd in the Theory Answ p. 62. only to soften the way to men that are hard of belief in such extraordinary matters Truly these matters are very Extraordinary and the way to believing them had need be well softned But when that is softned if so be men are not softned withal and made extraordinarily soft too they will hardly ever believe them at last And pray what are the Extraordinary matters to the belief of which the Arks being afloat in a River or Dock or Cistern was to soften the way They seem to be the saving of Noah and the saving of his Family and the saving of the Ark when the Earth fell But then in truth these things could not be those matters For we are here told at the same time that there was no necessity of the Arks being afloat in water in order to these things and that Noah and his Family and the Ark were saved by the Ministery of Angels And to the belief of the Angels saving them such a mollification would be vain and needless inasmuch as every one who believes their Existence believes also what the Answerer says of them that they could as easily have held the Ark afloat in the Air as in the Water And so what was premised in the Theory of this softning Nature and what the Excepter is blamed for not noting was of as little use as it is of truth And to shut up this particular by calling in this extraordinary help of the Angels he renders the Rains at the Deluge the principal Cause of it Gen. 7.4 wholly unnecessary For tho at first he would have them to save the Ark by setting it afloat yet now we see there was no necessity of that And then if the Earth fell into the Abyss and by its fall made the waters of it so raging and destructive to all things as he represents them there could be no more need of forty days rain in order to the Flood than of forty Candles to give light to the Sun And so GOD did a great work to no end or purpose Especially this 40 days rain following the Disruption Which happened the very first day that Noah entred the Ark. A Third Reason against the Floods coming in by the Dissolution of the Earth was this The Earth or dry Land of this Terraqueous Globe would in likelihood have been of another Figure than what it now bears Disc p. 289. But instead of answering it Answ p. 63. he speaks against a change in the Poles and Circles of the Earth a needless trouble and occasion'd by his own oversight For had he but lookt into the Errata's he might have seen there that those Parentheses upon which he grounded what he says should have been left out And in case he did peruse the Errata's and observe that these Parentheses were marked for such I may say of him as he said of the Excepter it must be a wilful dissimulation not to take notice of them Ib. p. 62. And if he had taken notice of them as Errata's he need not have troubled himself farther about them And so we pass to The Fourth Reason Had the Earth been dissolved to make the Flood Read Disc p. 290 291 292. its Dissolution would have brought it into lamentable barrenness For the dry and dead Soil would have been turned up by whole Countries at once and where the outward part of the Earth continu'd outward still the top of the Ground would have been rinsed off by the vehement workings and incessant beatings of the Flood upon it And then the furious commotions and aestuations of the Waters washing off an abundance of Earth from the innumerable Fragments which fell into the Abyss and this Earthy stuff being carried into all places and spread thick upon the Ground and mix'd and incorporated with much other Filth it would have hardned upon the going off of the Flood into a Crust or Cap on the surface of the Earth and so have been very destructive to its Fruitfulness It is answered first
I willingly allow Answ p. 64. that some of the interiour and barren parts of the Earth might be turn'd up as we now see in mountainous and wild Countries but this rather confirms the Theory than weakens it He must allow according to the tenour of his Hypothesis not only that some but that many of the interiour barren parts of the Earth were turned up everywhere And then the Waters being so strangely tumultuous and the fluctuations of them so extremely boisterous The Tumult of the Waters and the extremity of the Deluge lasted for some Months Eng. Theor. p. 76. Ib. p. 75. and their mighty rage of so long continuance While they were carried up to a great height in the Air and fell down again with prodigious weight and force they could not but harrass the Ground at such a rate as to wear away the upper part of it and make the top of the Earth as bare and barren as the bottom of a river by their monstrous and unspeakable Surgings Secondly he answers that the filth and soil would have made the Earth more barren p. 64. I cannot allow For good husbandmen overflow their grounds to make their Crops more Rich. And 't is generally supposed that the inundation of the Nile and the mud it leaves behind it makes Egypt more fruitful Besides this part of the objection lies against the common Explication of the Deluge as well as against that which is given by the Theory But when good Husbandmen overflow their grounds to improve their Crops they do it seasonably and they do it moderately and to be sure they do not at the same time turn them up for half a mile or a mile deep And tho several Rivers do inrich grounds by their Inundations by vertue of a great plenty of unctuous mud which they bring upon them that makes the Soil new as it were Nearchus de fluviorum effusione haec affert exempla quod dictum est Hermi Caystri Maeandri Caici campos similes esse propter limum qui e montibus delatus campos â—â—get imo facit Strabo Geogr. li. 15. so Hermus does and also Cayster Menander and Caicus as Strabo informs us from Nearchus yet that mud which the Deluge would have left would have been of a silty and sandy nature and so of a lean and hungry and starven quality as being mostly washt off from the Edges of those pieces into which the dissolved Earth was shattered and consequently would rather have prevented and hindred than helped or promoted the Earth's fruitfulness And therefore the Geographer notes that the mud of the aforesaid Rivers which makes the fields over which they flow is not coarse and dry like that which would have been eaten off of the verges of the terrestrial Fragments but of a softer and fatter sort Deferre autem flumina eum qui mollior sit pinguior ex quo campi fiunt Id. Ib. And then as to the Nile that the Mud it brings down upon the Land of Egypt is light and soft and fat and so fit to impregnate it with a strong Fertility we may properly infer from the sweetness of its Waters For as Diodorus reports they are the sweetest of all that are in the whole Earth Which made that famous General Piscenius Niger who contended with Septimus Severus for the Empire reprimand his Souldiers for hankering after wine and for muttering for the want of it when they might drink their fill of this pleasant Stream Tho it is well known that an ingenious French Writer I mean Duval in his Geogr. Vnivers ascribes both the Muddiness Fruitfulness and Overflow of it to its Nitrous Quality His words are to this purpose It has lately been found out that the Nitre wherewith the Nile abounds so much is the cause of all those wonderful Effects and that being heated by the sun it mingles it self with the water renders it troubled swells it and makes it pass over its Banks But yet concerning this noble River it is as well known that as sometimes it has not increased at all as in the tenth and eleventh year of Cleopatra against the downfal and the death of that Princess and her admired Anthony and as sometimes it is defective in its increase to lamentable failures in the usual Products of that plentiful Country So if at any time it happens to exceed in its increment but two or three Cubits that excess is at once both a clear Prognostic and a certain Cause of a dearth or scarcity in the ensuing year But then that such a Deluge as the Theory supposes it being Universal and of long continuance and made of lean subterraneous water and full of dead and harsh and heavy soil fetcht off from numberless pieces of the broken Earth should occasion barrenness for a considerable time in the post-diluvian World is but reasonable to conclude Nor lastly does this part of the Objection lie against the common Explication of the Deluge with such force as it does against the Theory's Explication of it For tho a General Flood overtopping the Mountains must have left mud and slime and filth behind it yet where the water rise upon an Earth that remained unbroken they could be nothing in quantity to what they must have been where the Earth was dissolv'd and fell all to pieces and where the water boiling up from under these Fragments and then falling down again violently upon them raged amongst them with lasting incessant and unimaginable turbulence As a Fifth Reason against the Earth's being drowned by its being dissolved Disc p. 292 the Excepter added this All the Buildings erected before the Flood would have been shaken down or else overwhelmed Here as to the City Joppa which is the main hinge upon which the Objection turns he Answers it is incertain whether it was built before the Flood â— 64. But besides the authorities of Mela and Solinus cited for it it is generally granted to be so ancient and none that speak of its Antiquity take upon them to deny it Nor will the Fiction concerning Perseus and Andromeda subvert the receiv'd opinion in this matter For as many Fables are made out of true stories so many again are tacked to them â— 64 65. He goes on However suppose the ruines of one Town remain'd after the Flood does this prove that the Earth was not dissolv'd I do not doubt but there were several tracts of the Earth much greater than that Town that were not broken all to pieces by their fall Had that tract whereon Joppa stood continued whole yet falling down so very low a mile at least by the force of its weight it would have suffer'd such a shock as could not but have levell'd its Buildings with the ground Thus very good houses are oftentimes shatter'd down in Earthquakes meerly by the concussion or shaking of the Ground tho it never breaks And truly if only the bare ruines of it had remained which
we do not nor need not grant yet these must have given as fatal a blow to the Theory as the fall of the Earth would have done to this City For their very out-lasting the fury of the Deluge would prove that Joppa consisted not of a Number of Cottages made of branches of trees Answ p. 50. of Osiers and Bull-rushes or of Mud-Walls and Straw Roofs which then must all have been quite washt away but of Edifices made of such Materials as could never be prepared formed and set up without Iron tools And so we come to The Last Reason against the supposed dissolution of the Earth It would have made GOD's Covenant with Noah See Disc p. 296 297 298. a very vain and trifling thing Because then the Earth was not capable of or liable to such another Deluge It is here answered So much is true p. 65. that the Deluge in the course of Nature will not return again in the same way If it returns not in the same way that is in the course of nature it cannot be such another Deluge as Noah's was for that came in by the Course of Nature Read the beginning of the 6th Chapter of this Reply Answ p. 65. He proceeds But unless GOD prevents it it both may and will return in another way That is if the World continues long enough the Mountains will wear and sink and the Waters in proportion rise and overflow the whole Earth How possible soever such a Deluge may be in long process of time yet Christians who believe the Doctrine of the Gospel and that principal Article of it the World's Conflagration can never think that it shall come to pass For if the World in the end were to be overflow'd with Water how could it according to St. Peter be reserved unto fire 2 Pet. 3. ◠And GOD having thus declar'd that he will prevent it His Covenant with Noah could have no relation to such a natural Overflow This piece of answer therefore is so very thin that a weak eye may easily see through it and discern that there is shifting at the bottom of it He adds therefore Answ p. 65. GOD might when He pleased by an extraordinary power and for the sins of men bring another Deluge upon the World And that is the thing which Noah seems to have feared and which GOD by his Covenant secur'd him against Noah's Flood was brought upon the World for the sins of men And if another Flood may be brought in upon that account by GOD's extraordinary power then Noah's Flood might come in by that power too even by its creating waters to make it Which in case it had been but yielded at first it might have sav'd the pains of setting up this Hypothesis And not only so but likewise have superseded the collateral trouble of too weak and ineffectual endeavours to support it And when all is said the sole reason why such another flood as Noah's was shall never come in again is not any change in Nature rendring the thing difficult or impossible but the unchangeable covenant of GOD as appears Isai 54.9 Where GOD to illustrate the stability of his kindness to the Jewish Church and to show that its calamity shall never be reiterated compares it to the sure and perpetual exclusion of the waters of Noah to the return of which his immutable Oath is the eternal bar For this is as the waters of Noah unto me for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the Earth so have I sworn that I would not be wroth with thee nor rebuke thee Thus we have done with the Answer to our Exceptions In which I am not conscious to my self that I have omitted any one thing which deserves notice and a Reply And here I might speak freely of this Answer But because its defects are plain and obvious enough to the intelligent I only say this much That I expected a better from the Author of the Theory or none at all CHAP. XV. HEre the Scaene changes and our Answerer now becomes an Objector and manages this part as he did the other And as an instance of as much he trips in the first step that he makes and stumbles into a Mistake For he affirms Answ p. 66. that the first Proposition laid down for the establishing of our Hypothesis is this That the Flood was but fifteen Cubits high above the ordinary level of the Earth But as any one that pleases may see the Proposition laid down as the foundation of our Hypothesis is verbatim this Disc p. 30◠That the highest parts of the Earth that is of the common surface of it were under Water but fifteen Cubits in depth And between the common surface or ordinary level of the Earth and the highest parts of that surface or level there is great difference For according to the first the Waters were not 30 foot high as he noted Ib. l. 12. but according to the latter they might in most places be thirty forty or fifty Cubits high or higher as we observed Disc p. 300. l. 31. Ib. l. 27. And whereas it is said of the Waters of the Flood that they were but fifteen Cubits high in all above the surface of the Earth it is manifest that the highest parts of its surface were there intended by what follows in explanation of that Clause even to the end of the Paragraph Touching the Proposition he cries out This is an unmerciful Paradox Answ p. 66. But who could have lookt for such an Exclamation from him whose own Paradoxes are so many and unmerciful Here therefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 His Censure returns double upon himself And while he finds fault with the sliver in my Teeth I may justly give him the Talmudic answer usually directed to the more guilty Reprehender 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 take the Beam out of thine eyes Then he enquires Ib. p. 66 67. under what notion must this Proposition be receiv'd as a Postulatum or as a Conclusion If it be a Postulatum it must be clear from its own light or acknowledg'd by general consent It cannot pretend to be clear from its own light because it is matter of fact which is not known but by Testimony Neither is it generally acknowledg'd for the general opinion is that the Waters covered the tops of the Mountains and were fifteen Cubits higher We might bring this home to the vital Assertions of the Theory but let us try but one of them Namely that the Primitive Earth was without a Sea Under what notion must this Proposition be receiv'd As a Postulatum or as a Conclusion If it be a Postulatum it must be clear from its own light or acknowledg'd by general consent It cannot pretend to be clear from its own light because it is matter of fact which is not known but by testimony Neither is it generally acknowledg'd For the general opinion is
two Cubits of Quails could cover this Camp then fifteen Cubits of Water might cover these Mountains And as for the Tops of the Mountains they are no where said to be covered any more than the top of the Camp was But he says the Tops of the Mountains were discover'd Answ p. 70. when the Waters began to decrease Gen. 8.5 Is not that a plain demonstration that they were cover'd before and cover'd with those Waters To this Objection also an answer was given by the Excepter Disc Ch. 16. §. 5. However to make it more full we are content to recite part of what was formerly said and to add somewhat new as occasion requires We say therefore that the tops of the Mountains being discovered upon the decrease of the Waters is no demonstration that they were covered with them for they might be discovered by their Emergency out of darkness Upon that Answer he brings this Quaery Answ p. 73. Where finds he this Account 't is neither in the Text nor in Reason It was fairly gathered out of both as plainly appears in our Discourse The holy Text we went upon was Gen. 8. ult Where day being settled upon the recovering World the very settling of it then implies that in time of the Flood the Earth was strangely benighted And for a Reason was suggested the Exclusion of Frost Which had not the Air been very thick thick enough to hide the Tops of the Mountains from the Eyes of men would have seiz'd the Waters with exceeding vehemence and have thereby hindred the so speedy drying of the Earth But he goes on in his way of objecting If it was always so dark and the Tops of the Mountains and Rocks naked and prominent every where Ib. how could the Ark avoid them in that darkness And could it by an ordinary Providence have avoided them in the Light For tho the H. GHOST in that Description which he was pleas'd to give of the Ark descends even to Particulars and that to the very Door and the Window of it yet He hints not the least concerning a Rudder belonging to it And being destitute of that there could be nothing whereby to turn or govern it but at all times it must be left to drive right on whatever Dangers tho great and visible might come in its way Or say it had an Helm yet what Pilot without inspiration could have steer'd its Course safely in those perilous new-made Seas upon Earth Where as Rocks and Banks and Flats and Sands were thick set and innumerable so there was not so much as one Buoy or Sea-mark which by showing any of them might help to shun them And as these dangers according to the Common Hypothesis would have been equal when first this Vessel was set afloat so according to the Theory they would have been much greater He continues to object Ib. I see no reason to imagine that there would be darkness after the forty days rain For he the Excepter says the Atmosphaere was never so exhausted of Vapours and never so thin as when the waters were newly come down Tho the Atmosphaere was never so exhausted of Vapours and never so thin as at that time in the vast Body or general Comprehension of it upwards yet here below the Air might still be foggy and thick So we are often invelop'd with caliginous Mists in this lower Region next the Earth when let them but disperse and wear off and the heaven above is most serene and in the Skie there 's nothing but glorious day He objects still Ib. p. 74. It was in the Tenth month that they the Mountains begun to be seen when the Waters were decreas'd 't was therefore the Waters not the gross Air that hindred the sight of them before For if according to the method of the Excepter the Deluge begun to decrease after the first forty days rain by the Sun 's resolving waters into Vapours and Exhalations this in proportion must lessen the waters of the Deluge But we do not read in Moses of any abatement in the Deluge till the end of one hundred and fifty days Gen. 8.3 which is four Months after this term Nor do we imagine that there was any considerable abatement of the Waters till that time For after the Flood was come to its height it was necessary it should stand there a good while the better to effect that fatal destruction of the Animal World for which it was sent Yet during the time that the Flood was thus Stationary we suppose that GOD did work no Miracle for we read of none to weaken Nature in its force and put by its proper Operations And so the Sun which had then a more than ordinary power upon the outragious and prevailing Waters as shining on them through a thinner Medium than ever yet he did could not but turn them a great pace into Misty Vapours and Exhalations And these ascending swiftly and copiously to replenish the Atmosphaere so lately emptied by excessive Resolution might render the Mountains as Mists always do quite invisible at a little Distance Yet this work being done only by Nature's hand or to use the Answerer's elegant style by the Sun 's setting his Engines awork tho it was carried on for several Months the diminution of the Waters I say might be inconsiderable So inconsiderable as not to be worth the Spirits notice And withal so ineffectual that if some better course had not been taken the Waters would have remain'd a very long time upon the drowned Earth beyond the hundred and fifty days mention'd without any considerable degree of abatement For if in the hundred and ten days succeeding those in which the rains fell the Waters went up in misty Vapours towards restoring the Atmosphaere to its lost Consistency in such a quantity as to sink the Flood suppose but one or two Cubits tho this reeking evaporation might so darken the Air as to hide the Mountains yet how little would such a diminution of the Deluge be taken notice of by Heaven or how little would it contribute to drying of the Earth And therefore to speed the work which by the strength of Nature went on but slowly GOD made use of a certain Wind Gen. 8.1 as an extraordinary Instrument And by this added at length to the Attractive influence of the Sun the Waters asswaged so very fast that as the SPIRIT notes on the first day of the Tenth Month the Tops of the Mountains were seen Gen. 8.5 And whereas the sacred Story makes the appearance of these Mountain-tops to follow the decrease of the Deluge-waters nothing could be done more properly according to the tenour of this new Hypothesis For in case the Waters had not been decreased and so decreased as to have refill'd the Atmosphaere with Vapours and so decreased as to have dampt the attractive power of the sun and so decreased as to be drawn so low and grown so gross and foul and heavy as to
to his concluding Objection against our Caverns What reason have we to believe that there were such Vessels then Ib. p. 77. more than now To this we have spoken so very fully Disc p. 306 307 308. that nothing more needs here be added in way of reply Who would have thought there had been such fountains in the Rocks of Rephidim and Cadesh if God had not opened them But he draws out the Objection farther thus Answ p. 77. If the opening the Abyss at the Deluge had been the opening of Rocks why did not Moses express it so and tell us that the Rocks were cloven and the waters gushed out and so made the Deluge This would have been as intelligible if it had been true as to tell us that the Tehom Rabbah was broken open But there is not one word of Rocks or the cleaving of Rocks in the History of the Flood To which we reply first Moses does not say that the Tehom Rabbah was broken open but only the fountains of it were broken up And what fountains belonging to the Tehom Rabbah could more properly be so broken up than these Caverns Secondly the Intelligibility of a thing is no reason why it must needs be expressed How many things are passed by with silence in Scripture even where occasion is offered to speak of them which yet are true and had they been expressed might easily have been understood And thirdly the same Objection which he throws at the Excepter rebounds back with violence upon himself If the breaking up of the Abyss at the Deluge had been the Disruption and fall of the Earth into the Abyss which lay under it according to the Vital Assertion of the Theory in that case why did not Moses express it so and tell us that this Disruption and Fall of the Earth into the Abyss which lay under it made the Deluge This would have been as intelligible if it had been true as to tell us that the Fountains of the Jehom Rabbah were broken up But there is not one word of this Fall of the Earth in the History of the Flood Thus have we seen the Assaults that are made upon the new Hypothesis for the Explication of the Deluge But so far are they from overthrowing it that they seem to me not to shake it in the least And I cannot but own that I am never so inclinable to believe it may be true as when I consider how weak the answers are to the reasons and arguments alledg'd to confirm it and how inconsiderable the Objections against it But yet I do no more affirm it to be true now than I did at first Tho I am apt to think it may as well pass for true and may as easily be maintained to be true as that Hypothesis to which it is compared and which arrogates to it self the glorious Title not only of a true piece of Natural History but also of the greatest and most remarkable that hath yet been since the beginning of the World CHAP. XVI THE principal matter and the only thing to be noted in this Chapter is what our Author omitted in its proper place and is here thought on by him to be answered According to his usual way of mistaking Answ p. 78. he calls it one objection tho there be two very distinct ones He answers the last first and therefore I begin with that Disc p. 311. which was this If the Abyss under the Earth to wave the other things mention'd had been the great Deep meant by Moses it had not had any true or proper Fountains in it And so what will become of all the Fountains of the great Deep His Answer is Answ p. 78. there were fountains in the Abyss as much as Windows in Heaven The word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 rendred Windows signifies as well Cataracts and it might have been rendred so more properly And indeed in the Margent Gen. 7.11 it is rendred Floodgates which in signification is somewhat nearer to Cataracts Tho that I say would have been the properest reddition in this Text. For Cataracts are high and broken places from whence waters do impetuously rush down And therefore thick and broken Clouds condensed into hardness or an Icy consistency from which prodigious waters by falls from one concameration of them to another came tumbling down in excessive quantities and at last were discharged hideously on the Earth in many places especially about the lofty Mountains were at that time true coelestial Cataracts which by ALMIGHTY GOD were then opened even in a literal sense And therefore these Cataracts or Windows of Heaven by some learned Commentators are expounded to be Nubes densae Copiosae thick and huge Clouds But now in the inclos'd Abyss there were no answerable Fountains broken up no such real Fountains as these were real Cataracts of Heaven and therefore the Answer given is not home to the purpose The other Objection was this Whereas it is said Disc p. 311. Gen. 8.2 That the Fountains of the Deep were stopped the Earth broken down into the Abyss was never made up again He answers those were shut up that is Answ p. 78. ceas'd to act and were put into a condition to continue the Deluge no longer But then if the Stoppage of these Fountains was Figurative the Fountains themselves must be the same And so they were not so real as the Cataracts of Heaven were Nor could they be stopped so properly as our Caverns might be the thing that we argued for and the drift of our Objection was to make it out And as for this answer it rather strengthens the Objection than takes it off CHAP. XVII IN justification of that Positiveness wherewith he was charged in the beginning of this Chapter he makes profession of his belief of the Theory And let them that can do it envy him the satisfaction and benefit of it But if he has no better proofs of its certainty than what he has produced when by his faith he apprehends it for a Reality he may do no better than he did who embrac'd a shadow for the Goddess There are many thousands and they not unlearned who take Legends for truths and equal Tradition to the written Word Who put Apocryphal Books into the holy Canon and give fullest assent to that pregnant absurdity the Doctrine of Transubstantiation But this is so far from changing the Nature of the things that it only betrays the folly of the Persons For it evidently shows the blindness of their Minds that they are so strangely impos'd on and the weakness of their Judgments that can be led captive into such gross and groundless Errors And from these and other Instances we may infer that a strong faith and confident assurance may be no arguments of the objects truth but of the Believers Credulity It is a notable word that Demosthenes spake in his Third Oration to the Olynthians 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 See Disc p.
358. 'T is easiest of all to deceive ones self For that which every one wills he phantsies is But the nature of things is often otherwise The eloquent Man gave this hint in another Case but it is not inapplicable to that in hand Our Answerer believes his Theory to be true But may he not here practise that upon himself which is so easie to be done The Man that would fain have a thing be real will soon believe it is so strong inclination being equivalent to evidence And which we may well wonder at as one symptom of the strong faith he has for his Hypothesis he declares that his believing his Theory to be no more than a Romance or phantastical Idea would be both to bely his own Conscience and to mock the World Now in short if his Theory be not true it is but a Romance or phantastic Idea And if it be true I speak it with reverence the HOLY GHOST the SPIRIT of truth must be no longer so and GOD did most certainly mock the World the thing which our Answerer is asham'd to do For He granted to Adam and his Off-spring a Dominion over the Fish of the Sea as well as over the Fowls of the Air and the Beasts of the Earth and the H. GHOST recorded as much Gen. 1.28 But when GOD passed that Grant to Adam and his Posterity if there was no Sea nor Fish for him or them to command or come at in the Primitive Earth must not this be down right Mocking of the first World And yet if he did not pass that Grant the H. GHOST for recording it done must be as was said and what I love not to repeat Tho at last this Grant could never pass and take place unless the Theory be a Romance and phantastic Idea For it asserts expresly of the first Earth that it was without a Sea Yea this is put amongst its Vital assertions and therefore if it fails the Theory dies and the whole Hypothesis is ruin'd at once But how much better is it that this piece of Natural History as true and great and remarkable as it is in its Authors esteem should prove a Romance than that any piece of the Divine History should prove an untruth and the H. GHOST and the HOLY GOD should be suppos'd to do such unworthy things as would mightily disgrace any honest man The next Passage that presents it self to notice is this Ib I remember I have heard a good Author once wish that there were an Act of Parliament that whoever Printed a Book should when he took a License swear that he thought the Contents of his Book to be true as to the substance And I think such a method would keep off a great many impertinencies Had our Honourable Senate a power to over-rule the minds of men and to enact that none should think things true which in themselves are false I doubt not but they would soon secure us by Law from erroneous impertinencies But so long as Authors can believe their Writings and think them true when if they be so even in the substance of them the Word from Heaven must be false There is little hope that the wished Act imposing such an Oath should be an effectual Expedient However it might keep off some impertinent errors many would come on and the greatest and most remarkable Natural History would have been a proof and pregnant exemplification of as much had such an Act been passed After this he compares his own Positiveness with my Partiality Wishing the Excepter had not more to answer for as to that than the Theorist hath for the other Here I am most ready to join Issue with him and to go to Trial immediately at any Bar. And let the Judge be even who he will so he be no more partial than the Excepter has been Then I shall fear neither his Examination nor yet his Sentence let the one be as strict and the other as severe as Justice can make them Then he comes upon us with a double charge Ib. as if we had fail'd in the Sincerity and also in the Meekness which we promised to use But 't is a sign he wants matter for accusation when he is fain to make these things Instances of it As to failing in Sincerity tho the charge be heavy the Proofs of it for our comfort are light enough For they are only defective and partial Citations and our not taking notice of the last Edition of the Theory to which we have sufficiently answered already that is in the last Paragraph save one of the seventh Chapter of this Reply But his pursuing us thus with this clamour of our not taking notice of his last Edition minds me of what a certain Friend did once suggest Who observing how many particulars were left out of that Edition which were censured in my Exceptions and understanding that those Exceptions in writing were about the Town where at last they were printed for above a year and half together at one time long before his Edition came forth would fain perswade me that during that time my Exceptions straggled into the Theorist's hands or that by one or other he was made acquainted with them and so shifted as many of his Errors as he conveniently could out of the way as being sensible they could not bear that blow which he foresaw was coming Our want of Meekness is a new crimination and he proves it by this fierce Charge as he calls it in our Preface The Theorist hath assaulted Religion and that in the very foundation of it If any thing like fierceness can be found here it must be forced out of the form of the words And that I do declare is not owing in the least to any heat of Spirit but meerly to the real truth of the Matter which in other terms could not be better exprest For I hope it will be granted that holy Scripture is the Foundation of our Religion And then of necessity Contradicting Scripture must be assaulting that Foundation And there was no more of Fierceness let him assure himself than there is of Falseness in our Assertion But I plainly see that he who touches a Sore tho with greatest tenderness and with no other intention than purely to heal it must have hard words as well as heavy complaints from the Party affected But this charge it seems ran too high For here Ib. says he I expected to have found two or three Articles of the Creed assaulted or knockt down by the Theory I must tell him freely and I do it meekly that contradicting Scripture the burthen of our charge is the readiest way not only to knock down two or three but even all the Articles of the Creed at once Undermining the Foundation must needs sink the whole Building But what course does the Doctor take to free himself from this Charge which because it lies justly against him lies heavy upon him Why he makes Two faint Offers
any Writer knowingly and causelesly deserts the literal sence of Scripture or dissents from it he cannot be innocent For to use the Answerers own words Ib. p. 85. tho we all leave the literal sence in certain cases and therefore that alone is no sufficient charge against any man Yet he that makes a separation if I may so call it without good reasons he is truly obnoxious to censure And so in short he becomes his own Judge and pronounceth a most just sentence on himself Ib. And thus he comes to the great result of all which is this To have some common Rule to direct us when every one ought to follow and when to leave the Literal Sence And such a Rule it seems is not wanting For as he tells us in the next words That Rule which is generally agreed upon by good Interpreters is this Not to leave the literal sence when the subject matter will bear it without absurdity or incongruity But must not the knowledge then of this good Rule aggravate the breaking it Ignorance which sometimes excuses error does always extenuate it But if with open eyes we go against the light and swerve from the Rule we see standing before us our senses take from us all plea of oversight and our presumptuous enormity will admit of little or no apology But yet the Answerer offers somewhat to clear him in this matter and it follows immediately in the next words This Rule I have always proposed to my self and always endeavoured to keep close to it May his next proposal then and endeavour of this nature be more fortunate And to that end perhaps it may be proper they should be better inforced For must not his proposal here be too slight and must not his endeavour be too faint when both of them proved so insuccessful For had the one been as serious and the other as vigorous as it ought what could have defeated him in so just an Enterprise or diverted him from it For example had he really proposed and heartily endeavoured to keep close to the letter where Scripture says GOD made two great Lights or where it says he gave Adam Dominion over Sea-fish or the like what could have hindred him or beat him off it As for absurditys or incongruitys in the subject Matters the only Bar according to the Rule which can exclude that sence nothing can be more vain than to pretend any here For as we have plainly seen the readiest way to open a wide Door and let them in is to receede from the literal sence 'T is confest indeed that the literal sence in these and other cases would have brought in absurdities and inconveniencies upon the Theory in good plenty But then this is so far from being any reason why the literal sence of those places should not be received that it is a most clear and convincing Argument that that Hypothesis is to be rejected For by the Rule laid down I say where no kind of absurdities or incongruitys do accrue to any Texts from the literal sence there it must be kept to And therefore if the Theory cannot stand and maintain it self free from absurdities and incongruities without perverting or depraving the literal sence of the now cited Texts or any other and without causing a needless departure from it it must sink and fall And then as he somewhere interrogates the Excepter why does he trouble himself Answ p. 67. or the World with such an Hypothesis Ib. p. 79. Did he do it meerly out of an itch of Scripturiency as he speaks methinks he might have laid that prurient humour by scratching himself with the briars of a more innocent Controversie or by scrubbing soundly against something else than the holy Scripture Ib. p. 85. He goes on But some inconsiderate minds make every departure from the letter let the Matter or Cause be what it will to be an affront to Scripture And there where we have the greatest liberty I mean in things that relate to the natural World they have no more indulgence or moderation than if it was an intrenchment upon the Articles of Faith Let them that are thus inconsiderate in their minds and immoderate in their ways answer this charge Prove the Excepter concern'd and besides acknowledging his past fault he 'll be cautious of recommitting it for the future But yet the greatest liberty we have or may pretend to in things relating to the natural World can by no means authorize us to go against the letter of Scripture in any case where it is to be literally taken or may be so understood without absurdity If we do we go directly against the Rule of faith and so shall soon come to intrenchment upon its Articles He concludes thus Ib. In this particular I cannot excuse the present Animadverter yet I must needs say he is a very Saint in comparison of another Animadverter who hath written upon the same subject c. In this particular as the Animadverter needs no excuse so he asks none Yet if he used the Theorist so well he again should have used him the better But whoever reads over the present Answer will easily find that he is treated rather as a grievous sinner against the holy Theory than as a Saint Excepter Who that Animadverter is of whom he complains I know not I have seen no other Writings or Animadversions upon the Subject he speaks of but the Lord Bishop of Hereford's And I own that his Lordships publishing his Animadversions was good encouragement to me to Print my Exceptions at first and to Defend them now To see that therein I should follow the great Example of a Reverend Prelate and in fighting for the Truth against the Theory of the Earth should militate under the Episcopal Banner I was now thinking that I had done and just about to lay down my Pen. But then calling to mind that the Answerer quoted a Review of the Theory against us as to some Texts of Scripture on which the Theory is bottom'd or does depend I held my self oblig'd to take notice of this Review And because in it he offers to justify his Exposition which he formerly made of S. Peter's words and we endeavoured to confute It will not be improper briefly to except against what is there said to that purpose And tho enough has been alledg'd against the Theory's sense of those words already yet ex abundanti we 'll here cast in a little more speaking to S. Peter's words chiefly tho not to them only And yet we shall speak only to Scriptures because in reference to them alone was this Review cited against us Answ p. 21. and 61. Review p. 8. In it he tells us that the sacred Basis upon which the whole Theory stands is the Doctrine of S. Peter deliver'd in his second Epistle and third Chapter concerning the Triple Order and succession of the heavens and earth and is comprehended in seven verses of that Chapter