Selected quad for the lemma: fire_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
fire_n	burn_v	earth_n	water_n	2,870	5	6.1160	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

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

of Water be of greater Gravity than the Crust of the Earth then the Mass of it will lie next to the thickest part of the Earth or where there is more Matter so that if the Earth be thicker about the Pole X or if there be any Internal solid there it will then lie round part of the Limbus of the Earth U T X Y and leave the Hollow at U Y. Fig. II. Now suppose the Diameter of the Earth or Terraqueous Globe to be as it is thereabouts 8000 Miles and the thickness of the Crust of the Earth a 32d part of this as the second Figure represents then the Crust will be 250 Miles thick which will be a solidity strong enough to contain the Internal Waters to resist the chapping from the Sun to keep a consistency in all the rapid motions of the Earth Or let it be an Eighth part as is represented Fig. I. and then the Earths Crust will be 500 Miles thick which to be sure is abundantly sufficient Now upon either of these two Suppositions there will be Water enough when drawn out upon the superficies of the Earth to drown the World to a far greater height than what Moses relates Now it is but supposing that God by a Miraculous power sucked out part of this Abyss through the Foramina or subterraneous passages which ly dispersed at Bottom of the Sea as suppose about the Point T of Fig. II. to the height of four or five Miles and then the highest Mountains will be laid under Water the Water diffusing it self both ways from h to k so that if it be in h four Miles high it will be at least three in k And then if after that the suspending force were taken off and the Water descended through the same Foramina and left the Earth dry as it was before you have Philologus at least a possible Account of the Deluge Phil. But truly Sir this Miraculous power sticks most in my Stomach That is so strangely Unphilosophical and such a subterfuge of dull Divines that methinks any Man of sense should be ashamed to make use of that shift Besides I am not very well reconciled to your Waters which you suppose to fill up the Hollow of the Earth Indeed those who allow a Central solid have somewhat more to say for themselves but your Hypothesis destroys the Laws of Specifick Gravity and makes the lighter Waters most unnaturally to ly below the Crust of the heavy Earth Cred. Let the supposition of a Miraculous Power in the Deluge be as Unphilosophical as you please I am sure it is more Unchristian and more Unreasonable to suppose that it came to pass by natural Causes For if it came to pass by natural Causes there must have been a Deluge whether the Antediluvian World had been so wicked or no and then the Preaching of Noah to them had been all collusion and God's Menaces before-hand had been inconsistent both with his Justice and Verity If they had repented upon Noah's Instructions they could not have escaped the Deluge which by this supposition depended upon necessary Causes and could not but have been Or to say that it was necessary both for the Antediluvians to be so perversly wicked and that the Deluge must likewise happen is to assert a Fatality of sinning is at the same time to destroy all Religion Free-Will and the Goodness of God 'T is therefore plain that the Deluge did not depend upon natural and necessary Causes but upon the just and providential Power of God which over-ruled the Power of Nature and might either bring the Deluge upon the World or withhold it according to his good Pleasure and Wisdom or as the Deserts of Mankind did require Neither is your Notion of specifick Gravity any Objection against our Supposition of an Abyss being included within the Crust of the Earth even without the Fancy of a Central Solid or Dense Fluid which some imagine For the notion of a Central Solid is but a Contrivance to keep in the Central Fire that some men fancy there which otherways would be quenched by the circumambient Waters But this Central Fire is only Cartesius his Conceit who by this means has contrived to turn burning Earths into Suns and incrustated Suns into Earth which is a Fancy the World now begins to be weary of And as for a dense Fluid that I take to be a more precarious Hypothesis and less to be relied upon than the other Neither can it be supposed that Nature must be confined to work in the Creation according to the Laws of specifick Gravity For according to this Rule the Sun which is the Centre of the Magnus Orbis must be the densest of all the Planetary System which though it be the biggest yet is the most thin and Refined See Mr. Newton's Princip Philos Math. Venus Mercury and the Moon though nigher to the Centre of the System are Denser than the Earth Neither is this rule observable in the Earth it self For several of the heaviest Fossils as Metals Marble and Stone lie often very high towards the surface of the Earth and other lighter Strata below them Nor is there any reason to think that God in the Creation wrought by such Laws of Gravity For without doubt he wrought either by his immediate Omnipotent Power or else by a subordinate Plastick Nature as he does in the Production of Animals and Vegetables since And here the Laws of specifick Gravity have little or nothing to do nay we see they are constantly superseded When the Fibres of a Tree thrust themselves upwards from the Centre and the Juices of it contrary to their own proper Tendency are drawn up so many foot from the Ground what become here of the Laws of specifick Gravity Is the body of any Animal composed after this manner If this were so there would be no such thing as Organical Parts which are composed so admirably for the Use and Beauty of the Animal If this were so a Man which is the most Beautiful would be the most clumsy Creature in the Creation His Bones must all lie towards his Feet his Flesh next to them his Blood and Spirits where his Head And then consider what a Monster of a Creature this specifick Gravity would make him Neither does it avail any thing to say that the Composition of an Animal does in some measure answer to the Laws of specifick Gravity because the heavy Bones which lie inmost are inclosed with the Flesh and Blood which are lighter But then pray consider that the Bones were not placed there by this Law but by the prudent direction of nature to support the pliable Flesh and to extend it to that just proportion which she designed But granting the supposition True yet the Marrow which is much lighter than the Bones is concluded within them the Bones being its superficial Crust in the same manner as we suppose the Earth to be to the Abyss Now why should not we suppose

give an account of the old Chaldean Idolaters in Abraham's and Moses his time and to be wrote as long ago as that Vid. Maimon More Nevoch Part. III. Cap. 29. Now if these Zabian Books which Maimonides and his Followers so much rely upon prove to be Forgeries then all this Zabian Hypothesis fall to the ground Now these Zabian Books which Maimonides saw were one called Haistamchus another Hattel eshmaoth or of speaking Images another called Tamtam another named Hasscharabh another of the Degrees of the Celestial Orbs and of the Ascendant Figures in each degree another Book of speaking Images a certain Book attributed to Hermes a Book wrote by Isaack the Zabian which disputes for the Law of the Zabians and his great Book of the Customs and Particularities of the Zabians Besides another Book of Agriculture Now is not this a pretty Library of Books for the Abrahamical and Mosaical Times But if they are so ancient as is pretended how came they never to be heard of but among the Jews in Aegypt or Spain about four or five hundred years ago One would have thought that some of the Writers of the Old or New Testament should have spoke of some of them or some of the Learned Fathers who understood the Orientals as St. Jerom and Origen who were so inquisitive this way methinks they should have somewhere mentioned them But to go no further some of these Books carry forgery in their very Titles The Book of speaking Images looks like the stories of the Talismans which the Arabian talks so much of about that time The Book of Celestial Orbs and Ascendants looks like a forgery about Rambam's time when the Follies of Judicial Astrology among the Arabians were at the height But Isaack the Zabian was infatuated to give himself that name pretending to be older than Abraham and yet take his Son's Name Or however his Jewish Name must needs tell all the World he was no Zabian And besides Isaack in his great Book treats of the Temples dedicated by the Zabii to Intellectual Forms whence any body would know the Book to be wrote by some one who had been bred in a School of the Peripatetick Philosophy And the Disputes in those Books about the Eternity of the World shew they were compiled by some one who had been where Aristotle's Arguments upon that subject had been bandied about I should weary you to tell you all the simple Tales which Maimonides quotes of these Books which are all composed in the very strain of the Talmud from whence any body may guess their Original They make Abraham very doughtily disputing with a great King of the Zabians That there is another God besides the Sun and that the Sun is but the Hatchet in the hand of God For which the King claps Abraham up into Prison but notwithstanding that Abraham disputes there still so that the King at last fearing lest Abraham should do mischief among his People by his subtile Disputations seizes all his Goods and banishes him to the further part of the East Now does this look like a Zabian or rather not like a Jew who had a mind to aggrandize the great Parts of his Progenitor Besides the foolishness of that Writer is betrayed by making such great Monarchies in those Ages of the World when Kingdoms were generally confined to Cities or small Provinces as appears by Abraham's fighting half a score of such Kings with 318 Men. The same Books tell you strange Tales of Adam and Seth and Noah c. which plainly shew them to be wrote by one who was acquainted with the Mosaick Genealogy That Adam was the Apostle of the Moon and exhorted Men to her Worship that Seth was a Renegado to his Father's Worship and so was Noah who condemned Image-worship That Adam went into a far Country nigh India and brought home a Tree with Flowers Leaves and Branches of Gold and likewise a Tree of Stone with the Leaves of another green Tree whose Leaves would not burn in the Fire that was so large that ten thousand Men of the bigness of Adam might shelter themselves under it and that the two Leaves which he brought with him were so large that each of them would cloath two Men. But I will tire you no longer with these insipid Talmudical Lies which methinks any body might guess a Jew to be the Author of But however what rare stuff is this to explain Scripture by One would wonder how it should come into the heads of Learned Men to think that God in framing his Sacred Laws should have any regard to such idle Tales For my part I pity them when I see them so sweating themselves in such a silly Enterprise and throwing away so much Labour and Learning to no manner of Purpose and besides the great Advantage they give to the Infidels to expose the Laws of God when they see that Christians settle them upon so slender a foundation Phil. It behoves you to be as zealous for your Religion as you can for you find we get ground upon you every day We live in a very prying Generation and 't is not laying your hand over a sore place in your Religion that will secure it now you must maintain your cause by pure dint of Argument or lose it But what say you now to your great Legislator when we shall prove that all his Celebrated Religion which he pretended to give the Jews from Heaven was only pinched from the Worship of the Heathen Aegyptians And this your own Divines are sensible of at last and by reason of the plain Evidence of the Case have given over the Cause to us For some of them have proved the Christian Religion to be all Jewish and others the Jewish Religion to be derived from the Heathen and therefore for my part I am for taking my Religion at the Fountain head and so will continue a Primitive Heathen in defiance to all innovation I have nothing to say to Christianity for the Judaical Laws are the matter now in hand and these I say were most of them the Ceremonial especially nothing but Aegyptian Rites which Moses brought over with him thence which is a considerable Argument against the Divinity of them for to be sure God Almighty would never have copied his Laws from a parcel of simple Idolaters To begin with Circumcision which is pretended to be the Characteristick of the Jews that to be sure was taken from the Aegyptians or some other Nation that Ceremony being used not only in Aegypt but in Aethiopia by the Colchi and Arabians Thus the Vrim and Thummim was enjoyned in imitation of that Locket of Jewels which hung from the Neck of the Aegyptian High-Priest mentioned by * Hist Fab. Lib. 1. c. 37. Diodorus Siculus The Linnen-Garments which the Jewish High-Priest and other inferiour ones wore were copied from the Aegyptian Priest who wore the like as Herodotus † Herod Hist Lib. 2. c. 37. and Plutarch