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
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
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
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