come down so fast and in so great abundance as easily to have overpowered the thin Oily Scum on which they fell and being a little soaked in it and incorporate with it have weighed it down in Flakes to the bottom of the Waters upon the top of which it could no longer float as being overloaded with the heaviness of the imbodied Earth And truly the flowing of the Waters with a strong head now this way and their returning by and by with as much force the contrary way must needs put them into such restless agitations and cross commotions as would have much promoted the diving of the Flakes aforesaid Nor are we to measure the motion of the Chaotic Waters from the present great Seas For however they may be less discomposed by Tides yet nature then was in other circumstances according to the Theory than it is now and those Waters might be moved at another rate than these are For our present Earth was at that time all dispersed in the Air. And the thicker and fuller the Air was the stronger pressure would the Moon make upon that and that again upon the Superficies of the Waters and consequently the higher must the Tides rise and the more violent must they be And then the Theory makes another motion in the Chaotick Waters necessary namely A Defluxion of them from the Aequator towards the Sides or Poles of the liquid Globe in order to the forming it and consequently the Earth to be raised on it into an Oval Figure And this motion might create a new disturbance in that Element Yea not only so but it might moreover be fatal to the rise of the Earth For the watry Globe was to grow oblong by the slowing down of the Waters to the sides they are the words of the Theory and the disburthening the middle parts about the Aequator But then when these Waters did thus recede or discharge themselves from about the Aequator or middle of the Globe and flow down to the sides of it how easily might the Oily Matter have followed their course Yea perhaps how necessary was it for it to do so While the uppermost Waters thereabouts being most hurried and most at liberty would have fallen back and carried that away with them But then if the upper Waters thus drew off and the Oily substance slid away upon them what foundation could the Earth have had in those middle parts we speak of Especially if these Waters continued their course for any time as it was needful they should to bring about the effect mentioned For so vast a body of Waters as that of the Abyss could not by this means of a perfectly round be made into an oval or oblong Figure on a sudden 3. But in reference to this matter there is a Douâ—t made by the Theorist which must be considered and removed Otherwise most of what has been said touching the instability and fluctuation of these Waters will be vain and groundless The Doubt is Whether the Moon were then in our neighbourhood And truly I had almost said he might next have questioned whether the Sun were then in our Heaven there being in the Story of the Creation no better evidence for the one than for the other I confess the suggestion as wild as it is would have done the Arcadians a great kindness For they used to boast of what was always a Riddle and nonsense to the Wife their being more ancient than Iupiter and the Moon So says Ovid Ante Jovem Genitum Terras habuisse feruntur Arcades Lunâ Gens prior illa fuit But the service it might have done them as to this arrogant brag will by no means countervail that dammage which it does to the person who raises the Doubt For it involves him in the guilt of unhappy temerity towards the Holy Writings Yet the Theorist does not only start this Scruple but argues for it thus Her presence seems to have been less needful when there were no long Winter-nights nor the great Pool of the Sea to move or govern Too bold an affront to Scripture That says expresly That GOD made TWO great Lights and both upon the Fourth Day Gen. 1. 16. The Theorist suspects he made but One. And truly let him but allow Two to be made and the Moon of necessity must be come into our Neighbourhood because she alone could be a Great light in the neighbouring Heaven to make up the Sun Two There is no bringing any Star into the Number For though the smallest of them be a truer and greater Light than the Moon yet no one of them was ever a great Light in this lower World and GOD created more than Two such Besides Scripture says That when GOD made two great Lights he set them both of them both of them then on the same day in the Firmament of the Heaven to give light upon the Earth And must not both of them then be in our neighbourhood at that time And lastly It says That as GOD made the greater of these Lights to rule the Day so he made the lesser to rule the Night And when did the lesser begin to rule the Night Why just when the greater began to rule the Day For as to the Dates of those their respective Offices we find no difference Yet the Theorist declares That the presence of the Moon and consequently her rule then was not so needful because there were no long Winter-nights Whereas the Moon was no more made to shine only in long Winter-nights than the Sun was to shine only in long Summer-days And which is more as there were no long Winter-nights then 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 Upon the whole matter therefore there are no good grounds for this piece of Scepticism And to what has been said concerning it we need add but this Whereas it is argued that there might be no Moon upon the account that there were no long Winter-nights nor great Pool of the Sea to move or govern we being assured that there was a Moon may much better invert the reason and retorting the force of the Argument conclude that there must be long Winter-nights and the great Pool of the Sea because that Planet was present to rule the one and also to move or govern the other Though Possibly the shutting her out of our neighbourhood might be warily done and with prospect of her malignant influence in the case before us namely That she might not incommode or hinder the rearing of the Earth upon the Waters of the Chaos For truly had she been so near a Neighbour at first as she is now she might have been an injurious one as to that Affair She might have kept those Waters in such Motions as would have dissipated their Oily Covering
naked and imperfect Seminals through the several Stages of an incompleat 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Birth till they arrive at animation and maturity But then this implys that the First Fishes came into being by an extraordinary way and could not be produced as they are now because there were none before them none to propagate them by casting forth such spermatic Principles The aboriginal ones as I may call them for this very reason must be made by GOD's immediate hand Though whether he made them out of nothing or out of watry Materials is all one as to our purpose For either way it was absolutely necessary that Rivers should be extant as well as they that so they might be in a readiness to receive them But now according to the Hypothesis under consideration the Fishes of the two must exist first if the Creation as I hope we have proved were perfected in Six Days For they were made upon the Fifth Day says Moses and how could there be Rivers so timely according to this new contrivance The Sun it self was created but just the day before And so what a work must here be done to make Rivers coetaneous with the Fish we speak of The beams of the Sun must have pierced into the Earth and that so deep as to have reached the Abyss And from thence plenty of Vapours must have been exhal'd into the Air. And these Vapours being upon the wing must have taken their flight as far as the Polar Regions And there they must have been condensed into Rains And these Rains must have made Bodies of Waters And these Bodies of Waters must have been so great as to have slowed along through or against all obstacles And these Floods must have been so violent as to have hollow'd out Chanâ—ls for themselves all the way they went And all this in one days space Otherwise there must have been no Fishes made Or they must not have been made when GOD says they were Or when they were made there must have been no sutable Receptacles for them For as for the Waters of the Abyss they could by no means serve for this use as will appear in the Sequel of our Discourse 4. But we are to pursue this matter farther yet There could be no Rivers in due time that has been evidenced It is next to be proved that there could be none at all before the Flood How Rivers were first made we have been instructed by Rains descending from above But whereabouts were these to fall In the Frigid Zones or towards the Poles we are told and the Scheme representing them shows as much But then methinks they should have been in great danger yea under inavoidable necessity of Freezing For the Sun according to this Hypothesis moving always in the Aequinoctial before the Flood he would constantly have been as remote from those raining Regions as he is now from us in the depth of Winter when he runs through Capricorn or which is all one when the Earth traverseth the opposite Sign And there being then no such Clouds as now nor yet any Seas by their foggy Vapours to mitigate the keenness of the Air nor any Hills or Valleys to cause a warmth by confused and irregular reflections of the Sun-beams the Frosts within the Polar Circles must needs have been exceeding sharp and terrible And so the Fountains that should have fed the whole World with Water would have been fast sealed up Fig 2 Pag 115 Thus if the Circle c d e f be divided into Eight parts by the parallel lines 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 we shall find that the two Arches a and b forming the Circle into a moderate Oval will at the points a and b include such spaces between themselves and the sides of the Circle c and e as shall be equal in breadth to any two spaces betwixt the equidistant Parallels According to which proportions allowing the Earth to be 7000. Miles in Diameter though the true measure of it makes it more and then adding a fourth part to it to render it Oval viz. 1750. Mile thickness the Earth at each Pole must bear above fourteen Degrees Latitude or near nine hundred Miles extent more than if it had been exactly round And that Hypothesis which removes its Poles so much farther from the Sun must also allow the cold thereabouts to be proportionably augmented And though in the hundred and fourth Degree of Latitude as we must call it on each side of the Aequator that is at the very Poles there might have been perpetual day the beams of the Sun reaching a and b the two Poles of the supposed Oval Earth and illightning them continually yet his heat in those places must needs have been exceeding languid forasmuch as his Orb would always have been half above and half under the Horizon to them This will be clear from the Scheme if we do but conceive the line i d f to be the Aequator and the Sun ever moving directly in it For then it must divide him into two Semidiameters g and h at all times conspicuous at the Poles respectively That is to say the Semidiameter g at the Pole a and the Semidiameter h at the Pole b. But then the Sun 's being thus halved must of necessity be a mighty diminution of his influence especially at so extraordinary a distance It would have rendred his warmth more faint than it is with us in the Winter Solstiâ—e when he is just a Setting or half set But our business is rather to enquire what the temperature of the Air would have been nearer to the polar Circles where these Rains are conceived to have fallen Now if these Regions were as remote from the Sun as we are when he is farthest from us the Air must have been every whit as freezing there as it is with us in the very dead of Winter And that they were some degrees farther from the Sun I think we need not question For when the Sun is gone farthest from us he reaches but to twenty three degrees and an half of Southern Latitude which added to our fifty two of Northern the whole amounts but to seventy five and an half But granting the Earth to have been stretcht out to that length to which its oval fashion would have extended it and the supposed dripping Countries in the first World might easily have been farther from the Sun and consequently colder by several Degrees In case it be opposed That nights with us when the Sun is retired to his utmost point in Capricorn are some hours longer than they could be in the prediluvial State and that this might so far strengthen the Cold as to make it superior to what it could be in the wet Regions we speak of I answer though our Nights be somewhat longer yet we now dwell among Clouds and Seas which do very much bemist and thicken the Air and so make it warmer than it could be in the primitive World where neither of
least tendency towards jetting out or flying off from the whole but by the Laws of gravity were all impregnated with the contrary determination a nitency inward or downward towards the Central Point And then Secondly It was Liquid also and so of a yielding temper or consistency Ready to give way to the lightest pressures and by a forward pliantness to fall into that Figure into which the circumâ—luent Air would fashion it For that Element alone or a thinner than that but by moving and gently gliding upon it might easily smooth it into perfect evenness provided it did but encompass it around and so was capable of slicking it by a general levigation And therefore Thirdly It swam in such a fluid Element as did so environ it grasping it on all sides with a soft compression So that during its fluitation in that surrounding and gently constringent Medium it could not but be of a truly Globular Form Which admitted the Primitive Earth must needs be so too and not Oval as being cast upon this Globous Mould But to this it is opposed That the Liquid Mass whereon the first Earth was built was not quiescent So it might yea it must have been truly spherical And the Theory it self owns as much I nothing doubt but amass of Water will naturally make it self into a spherical Figure about its own centre if so be it rests immovable and quiet But then it adds But in case it be turned swiftly about its Center by that agitation it will necessarily make it self oblong and become of a Figure somewhat Oval just as when Waters are pusht forward in a Vessel or in some part of a Sea or Lake are driven by a Wind toward the Shores we see the Waves stretch themselves out long-ways In answer to which let it be confessed That the Liquid Mass on which the Earth was raised was rolled about and that very swiftly upon its own Centre Yet that by vertue of its gyration it should be shaped into an Oval fashion was not at all necessary nor will the Instances brought in prove it was so there being no parity or just proportion betwixt the several Cases For for Waters to be forced an end by the external violence of Winds where the impression propelling them is superficial and their motion progressive is a different thing from their circumrotation in one entire Moles where they turn only with a natural and most even Course carrying the ambient body whereby they are â—ircumscribed and helpt to keep their Figure round along with them For thus we see that notwithstanding the Earth turns so swiftly that every point in its circumference under the Aequator moves at the rate of fifteen Degrees nine hundred Miles an hour yet the finest Sand upon the surface of the Earth or the lightest Dust upon the tops of the Mountains is never dissipated or disturbed in the least by this whisking circumvolution Whence we may gather the case being much the same that the whirling Globe of Water was so far from a necessity of growing oblong by its rotation that that very thing might contribute to preserving it in a Globular Forâ— But therefore let us hear what the Theory says further and more distinctly yet touching the Cause of the Oval Figure of that Mass of Water which was the basis of the primitive Earth It speaks it fully in these words Nor is the reason of this Figure obscure in a Globe of Water which is moved circularly for the Mass of Water being much more agitated under the Aequator than the Waters towards the Poles where it passed through lesser circles those parts which were most moved endeavouring to recede from the Centre of their motion when they could not quite spring up and fly away because of the Air which lay upon them on every side nor yet could fall back again as being checked and resisted by that Air they were unable so free themselves any other way than by flowing down to the sides for Waters being pent do flow that way where they find easiest passage and from that flowing down of the Waters to the sides and disburthening of the middle parts about the Aequator the Globe of Water might become somewhat oblong So that the Cause of the Oval Figure in the Chaotic Waters seems in short to be this Their discharging themselves defluendo ad latera by flowing down to the sides or Poles of the Globe upon their swelling or rising up by means of their rapid circular motion about the Aequator But granting the Waters did swell and rise thereabouts which yet would admit of dispute against this piece of the Theory's Hypothesis it may be thus excepted Either the Waters did flow down to the sides or Poles of the Globe till it became Oval or they did not If they did not flow down so long the Hypothesis fails and the watry Mass could never be Oval If they did flow down so long then they must flow down till they flowed down upwards Pardon the absurdity of the Expression the absurdity of the thing occasions it For the Polar parts of the watry Mass as it became Oval were the highest being most distant from the Centre And yet from the Aequator they did defluere ad latera flow down to the Sides or Poles Which that they might do it was absolutely necessary that the parts about the Aequator should be highest else the Waters in flowing to the Poles would have been so far from flowing down that contrary to their natures they must have risen up above their Source And yet as absolutely necessary again it was that the Polar parts should be highest at last otherwise the watry Mass could never have been made of an Oval Figure And yet if it were made into that Figure by the Waters flowing down as the Theory says from about the Aequator to the sides or Polar parts then a third thing will be as necessary as either of the two mentioned namely That the Waters as was said before should flow down upwards So that it is as unlikely that the Mass of Waters was ever of an Oval Form as it is unlikely that a Contradiction should be true or that the Element of Water should of it self perform a motion which is beyond its power by being above or against its nature I say of it self for however there might be violence that of the circular motion in making it to swell about the Aequator yet when once it was risen there it was left to it self as I may say all farther force was taken off it and it might follow the duct of its own Principles of Gravity and Fluidity And accordingly it is said by the Theory se liberare to free it self from that force which it suffered in receding from its Center or rising up under the Aequator defluendo by falling off or flowing down a proper expression of the true natural motion of Water But then if the place it fell or flowed to
have hindred the same Waters from running back into it Not the Waters in the Bowels of the Earth for if they were there in such plenty as 't is confest there is room enough for them as to have been able to have made a much greater Flood than Noah's yet then against their nature they must have risen above their Source and being so risen they must have stood so long as the Flood lasted in a miraculous opposition to their own nature inclining them to retire from whence they came Not the Supercelestial Waters for then the breaking up of the Fountains of the great Deep and the opening of the Windows of Heaven must be one and the same thing Whereas by Moses they are very plainly and carefully distinguisht Not the inclosed Abyss for then besides that the whole Hypothesis so improbable must be allowed the forty days Rain would have been utterly needless Because then the falling of the Earth into the Abyss being the breaking up of the Fountains of the great Deep it must have fallen in the very first day that Noah went into the Ark because on that very day all the Fountains of the great Deep were broken up Gen. 7. 11. And if by the Earth's falling into the Abyss the World were drowned the first day that Noah entered the Ark as of necessity it must have been if the Earth were dissolved and fell that day to what purpose should it after that rain for forty days together And whereas it is said Gen. 8. 2. That the Fountains of the Deep were stopped the Earth broken down into the Abyss was never made up again nor the Abyss it self covered but remains still as open as ever To which Particular Heads let me add but one more which has a kind of general Relation to them all If either the open Sea or the Waters within the Earth or the Waters above the Heavens or the Abyss under the Earth had been the great Deep meant by Mosâ—s none of them had any true or proper Fountains in them And so what will become of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all the Fountains of the great Deep But now supposing that the Caverns in the Mountains were this great Deep how surprizingly do all these things fall in with them For First They are called great Deeps by the HOLY GHOST as has been noted Psal. 78. Secondly They were capable of being cleaved or broke open as being fast shut up Thirdly They were able to afford a competent quantity of Water even as much as it was necessary they should yield Fourthly The Water that came forth of them could never return into them more Fifthly The breaking them up must be quite another thing than opening the Windows of Heaven Sixthly They might all be broke up the same day that Noah took into the Ark. Seventhly The Rain which fell in the forty days would still have been as needful as ever Eighthly They were stopped again as strictly and literally as they were broken up Lastly They were as true and distinct Fountains as any in the World So that if they were not the real Fountains of the Mosaic Tehom Rabbah one would think they might well have been so 5. But let us now pass as it is time we should to a Second Ground upon which we build the probability of our Hypothesis above specified namely That the Flood was but fifteen Cubits higher than the highest parts of the surface of the Earth And that Ground is this Supposing that to have been the true height of the Flood it will not only be possible but very easie to find Water enough for it without recourse to such Inventions as have been and justly may be disgustful not only to nice and squeamish but to the best and soundest Philosophic Judgments For thus in the First place we need not call in the Theory's assistance an Hypothesis how ingenious soever in the contrivance and contexture of it guilty of unjustifiable absurdities Nor Secondly need we fly to a New Creation of Water to gain a sufficient quantity of it An Expedient that sounds harshly in the Ears of many And that not only because they are of Opinion that GOD finisht the work of Creation in the first six days But because he has expresly declared That the true and only Causes of the Deluge were these Two The breaking up of all the Fountains of the great Deep and the opening of the Windows of Heaven To which may be added That the Creation of so vast a quantity of Water as should have surmounted the highest Hills would certainly have inferred either an enlargement of the whole Universe to receive it and so a Dislocation and consequently a disorder of its parts respectively or else a Penetration of the Dimensions of Bodies while so much new matter should have sprung into being more than ever existed and yet have been confined to the same space of aboad that was before fill'd up in its whole capacity Nor need we Thirdly to fetch Waters from the Supercelestial Regions Where if the Heavens be Fluid how could they have kept from falling down so long And if they be Solid how could they possibly have descended at last For in their descent they must have bored their way through several Orbs as hard as Crystal and how thick we know not Besides these Waters must have been lodg'd either below the Stars or above them If below them they would have hid them from our sight The Sun himself cannot be seen through a watry Cloud how much less the Stars through a watry Ocean Nor will it help to say the Element of Water above is more fine and transparent than the Waters below For were it as thin as an ordinary Mist still it would hide the Sun's Face from us though it might transmit his light In case they were plac'd above the Stars they must have been delug'd before the Earth could have been so as intercepting them in their fall Nor could they have slid off the Stars again dropping down to the Earth unless that were the Center of the Universe which is hard to prove yea most absurd to think Nor will it be necessary in the Fourth place to suppose the Mass of Air or greatest part of it was changed into Water to make the Deluge A change which some will by no means admit of as being not hitherto proved by Experiment Yet I cannot but own that the best Philosophers have thought it fecible and also believed it to be actually done The Egyptians conceived Manethus and Hecataeus both attest 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That Rains were made by the version of Air. Plato was of the same Opinion 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That Air being thickned and condensed made Clouds and Mists And so was Philo. For besides that he affirms 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that it varies and runs through all manner of mutations He says expresly in another Place 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. That Air being
condensed turns to Water And again 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That the Air being condensed may be compressed into Water And then brings in Heraclitus affirming 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Destruction of Air to be the generation of Water To this also the Lord Verulam consents offering to make it good by sundry Experiments Though all of them I think come short of Demonstration or of a clear and satisfactory proof of the Phaenomenon And to name the two greatest Philosophers next Aristotle asserts this transmutation in his Book de Mundo And Des-Cartes subscribes to it as possible and real When those Globules move a little slower than ordinary they may change Water into Ice and the Particles of Air into Water And the Famous and Honourable Mr. Boyle in his 22. Experiment leaves it undetermin'd whether or no Air be a primigenial Body that cannot now be generated and turned into Water And truly as Clavius his Glass of Spring-water mentioned in that Experiment Hermetically sealed up for fifty Years past and reposited in the Musaeum Kercherianum does not prove that Water can't be turn'd into Air because the Water continu'd there so long without diminution so neither will M. Rohault's Glass seal'd up the same way full of Air and kept in a Vessel of Water in a Wine-Cellar three whole Years argue that Air can't be turn'd into Water because none of that Air at the three Years end was found to have suffered such a change there being not the least drop of Water in the Glass We only learn from hence that we have not yet attain'd to the right Operation of changing these Elements into one another We will grant therefore that by the power of Nature Air may be turned into Water Yet neither will that take off the whole Difficulty in this Case For if most of the Air incircling the Earth had been thus changed and all of it could not because then respiration would have been impossible to Mankind and the surviving Animals in the Ark it could not have furnisht Water enough for the Flood a great deal of Air going to make up a little quantity of Water Which the proportion of gravity betwixt Water and Air of equal bulk it being found to be as of a thousand to one does sufficiently evince But in case it could have yielded Water enough yet inconveniences would still have remained Particularly it would have endangered sucking down the Moon as the Theorist observes The changing also of one great Body into another which after transmutation takes up so much less room than it did before does either suppose that the whole Frame of the World must sink closer together which would occasion a strange discomposure in it to fill up the space that Change would make empty or that in Nature there must be a Vacuum Though by the way when our SAVIOUR multiplied Bread upon Earth that need have no such influence on the World either as to expansion or contraction of it as the new Creation of Waters above mentioned or this production of them by transmutation does imply For besides that the Matter changed was much less in quantity the change might be made in such a Substance as did take up just the same room in the World before its mutation as after it Fig 4 Pag 317 Nor need we trouble our selves in the Sixth place about Sub-terrestrial Waters Which if never so free passages had been opened for them could no more have flowed up out of the Bowels of the Earth than Waters can do out of our deepest Wells Yea with much more difficulty they must have ascended in regard they were far deeper in the ground and also must have boiled up against the weight and pressure of the incumbent Flood even then when perhaps it was a Mile or two high As for Blood flowing out of a Vein when prickt in a Man's Head it is nothing like a Proof that Water may rise and flow above its source For there is a vital strength and motion forcing it out and Nature conspires as much to help the Course of that Blood as she does to hinder this Course of the Waters we speak of Engines it may be in the heart of the Earth might be able to send up Waters on to the surface of it as the Heart in the midst of the Body sends Blood to its Extremities But we hear of no Engines made to raise the Flood Nor need we in the Last place to betake our selves to a Topical or Partial Deluge A thing which some have done meerly to avoid the necessity of such a vast deal of Water as they knew not where to have for a general Flood according to the rate of the old Hypothesis or in case they could have had it knew not how to get rid of it again Whereas let fifteen Cubits above the Earth be the highest Water-mark of the Flood and then as the Clouds and Caverns would have yielded Water enough to raise it so when its work was done the quantity of this Water would not have been so excessive but it might easily be dried up in that space of time in which Moses declares it was so And this is that which in the Second place gives countenance to our Hypothesis It makes the Flood to be such as Nature out of her Store-houses could very well send on to the Earth and when she had done as conveniently take it off again And so we are excused from running to those Causes or Methods which seem unreasonable to some and unintelligible to others and unsatisfactory to most 6. A Third thing which gives credit to our Conjecture and makes it look like truth is its agreeing so handsomely with St. Peter's Description of the Deluge The Heavens were of old and the Earth standing out of the Water and in the Water whereby the World that then was being overflowed with Water perished 2 Pet. 3. 5 6. How exactly does this suite with the Hypothesis proposed For according to it the Earth stood partly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Water the most of it being overflowed and in such a measure as that the Animal World thereby perished And yet a great part of the Earth as much as the upper parts of high Mountains come to was standing 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 out of the Water at the same time Yea if a Zeugma in the words makes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 standing relate to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Heavens as well as to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Earth yet our Explication of the Deluge will fall in very fairly with that too Inasmuch as the Heavens stood then in the Water and out of the Water as well as the Earth For their Territories were then invaded in some measure the Water rising where it incroached least fifteen in most places it may be thirty forty or fifty Cubits into them And therefore so high they were standing in the Water as all above was standing out of the
same And which is something more the Heavens and the Earth will thus be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 standing together out of the Water and in the Water as some will have the word signifie there both of them being in the like circumstances at the same juncture of time I will only add under this head That taking the Heavens here mention'd for the lowest Region of the Air or for the lower part of that Region is but consonant to the Sacred Style 7. A Fourth advantage commending our Hypothesis is That it puts the drowned Earth into a far more habitable condition at the Flood 's going off than otherwise it could have been in That Noah's Flood was Universal is most clear from Scripture Behold I even I do bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh wherein is the breath of life from under heaven and every thing that is in the earth shall die Gen. 6. 17. So the ALMIGHTY threatned and what he threatned he fully made good And all flesh died that moved upon the earth both of fowl and of cattel and of beast and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth and every man All in whose nostrils was the breath of life of all that was in the dry land died And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground both man and cattel and the creeping things and the fowl of heaven they were destroyed from the earth and Noah only remained alive and they that were with him in the ark Gen. 7. 21 22 23. And if all flesh under heaven and every thing in the earth even every living substance upon the face of the ground were destroyed and died and Noah only remained alive and the creatures in the ark hence it will follow that the whole Earth was drowned or else that Mankind was not generally spread through all the Regions of the same But that the Earth was generally inhabited before the Deluge we need not doubt nor can we well deny For the Consequence would be That the Prediluvians begat fewer Children or lived shorter lives than the Postdiluvians which would not be phanciful only but false Though truly if some Countries had not been peopled still they must have been drowned that so fowl and creeping things c. might be destroyed according to the Testimony of the HOLY GHOST Yet admitting this that the entire Earth was overflowed and that to such an height that the loftiest Hills as is commonly believed had their Tops fifteen Cubits under Water and what a Case must the Earth have been in upon drying up of the Flood What abundance of Mud Slime and Filthiness must every where have covered the surface of it How thick must it have lain How close must it have stuck And how hard would it have been to have clear'd the ground of it Attica upon this account as was observed before after a far less Flood was not peopled for the space of three hundred Years Nor will the Theory's Explication of the Deluge help here unless it be to make things worse For had the Flood been caused by so strange a fraction and falling in of the Earth as that supposeth this would have added very much to its â—oulness and so to its Barrenness for a time as above remembred and consequently to its unfitness for immediate habitation But now according to the way that we go the uppermost parts of Mountains could never be drowned and so never clogg'd neither or dawb'd over with the filth of the roiled Waters So that let but the floating Ark have stopped at last by the side of some very large Hill and the Earth would there have been ready to receive all that came out of it And that after all its Tossings it did rest near to or in some sense upon such a tall vast Hill perhaps the biggest the Earth has is rightly believed as being taught from above And indeed its doing so seems to be no other than a signal Providence and a special effect of Heavens particular Care That so those few Creatures which out-lived that grievous 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or general destruction that fell so heavy on the animate World might not be destitute of fit habitations and sustenance And truely that Mankind upon quitting the Ark did inhabit Mountains for a considerable time may be gathered as some think out of the Tenth and Eleventh Chapters of Genesis For there it appears that they were grown numerous say they when they left the Hills and came down to settle in the Plains of Shinar But then if they did chuse the Hills for their Seat and stay there so long before they removed their Quarters one reason might be the unfitness of the lower grounds to entertain them as affording at first no commodious Dwellings And whereas they would have them to keep on the Hills with design to secure themselves from future Floods such a Design would have been utterly vain For what security could they expect by their abode in Mountains from Floods to come when the highest Mountains were over-top'd no less than fifteen Cubits by one so lately past 8. A Fifth Plea which may be taken up in favour of our Hypothesis is its Coherence with Geography Wherein it seems to be much more plausible than the old Hypothesis or that of the Theory It falls in with it by a far more natural and justifiable Compliance than either of them do As for the Theory it flatly denies that there were Hills or Valleys or Seas or Islands before the Flood which Geography hitherto never dreamt of The old Hypothesis also makes the Mountains of Ararat or Armenia the highest in the Earth and this Geography again cannot down with And indeed the chief reason why they have been reputed the highest is because the Ark has always been presumed to rest on the top of them and in that regard it was requisite they should be the highest But our Hypothesis ties up none to the belief of this neither Nor indeed does it seem to be worthy of credit as shall be noted by and by CHAP. XVI 1. Objections must be answered 2. Our Exposition of Scripture not to be made an Objection by the Theorist or any that hold with him 3. The First Objection from the Hills being covered answered 4. The Second from the Arks resting upon the Mountains of Ararat answered 5. The Third from the appearing of the Tops of the Mountains upon the decrease of the Waters answered 6. The Fourth from the possibility of Mens being saved from the Flood without the Ark answered 7. The Fifth from the likelihood of other Creatures escaping answered 8. The Sixth from the imaginary excess of Water answered 9. The Seventh from the Raven which Noah sent out of the Ark answered 10. The Eighth from danger of Shipwrack which the Ark would have been in 11. A General Answer to farther Objections 1. WE have seen a New way of explaining the Flood proposed or
he returneth to his Earth According to which where it is said That the Waters returned from off the Earth continually we are to understand their continual version or return into that Principle out of which they were made namely Vapours And the same is to be understood concerning them where it is said Gen. 8. 5. That the waters decreased continually 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 They were going and decreasing And so the Expression does not denote a violent motion or agitation of those Waters as hath commonly been thought so much as a constant wasting or diminution of them by going quite away And indeed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies it went away and as Schindler notes is spoken de rebus evanescentibus of things that are vanishing Yea the learned Lexicographer brings in this very Passage as one instance of that its signification Which farther insinuates That when the Waters of the Flood decreased it was done by their vanishing or going away into their first natural Principle by their returning or being converted into Vapours Now this being done at a great rate or very fast as we may gather from so much Water being dried up in so short a time and from the miraculous Wind Gen. 8. 1. sent on purpose to hasten the work by helping forward the attenuation of the liquid Element it must in likelihood overcast and bemist the Air and so conspissate and obscure it as to render things invisible at a little distance from the beholder's Eye Whence it will follow That when the tops of the Mountains were seen this might come to pass not by the Waters sinking below those tops whither they never ascended but by the clearing up of the Sky and the wearing off of its unusual thickness and fogginess And yet this their visibility or new appearance might properly be ascrib'd to the decrease of the Waters too inasmuch as till they were so diminisht as not to afford Vapours enough to thicken and darken the Air any longer at the rate they had done the Mountains tops could not be seen Should it here be objected That according to this way of explaining their appearance they could not have been seen so soon as in the tenth Month because the Waters were then upon the Earth in great abundance that Objection might be thus taken off Though there were waters upon the face of the whole earth then yea and forty days after that which was the reason why Noah's Dove could find no rest yet these Waters were so far exhaled drawn so low and grown so gross and muddy that now they did not return or go away into vapours half so fast as before The Atmosphaere also was now come pretty well to its old consistency again and so the attractive power of the Sun was much damped and weakened and he did not draw vapours so briskly and plentifully as he had done And yet the lower Regions of the Air might be very thick and foggy still so that the Mountains might not be seen by looking right on but rather by looking upward And so the highest parts of the Mountains that by thrusting up aloft did intercept the lightsomeness of the glimmering Skie and terminate the eye-sight might by that means be discerned And therefore indeed only the tops of them were said to be seen Nor let it be thought a meer phancy a whimsical groundless Figment of ours that the Waters of the Deluge did decrease in this manner I mean by going or returning into Vapours and that at such a rate as to fill the Air for a time with constant Mists and make it very caliginous and dark This is so far from being an empty fiction or conceit that I may venture to say It was a necessary Phaenomenon For when the Earth was so generally drown'd the Water being of a smooth Superficies if the Air had been clear yea if it had not been more than ordinarily thick it would certainly have been most exceeding cold Even as cold as it is now in its middle Region where Icy Meteors are continually floating So that in the Natural Course of things the Waters of the Flood would presently have been frozen extreamly hard And if we can suppose they should ever have been melted again as by the force of meer Nature they hardly could yet they could not have been so in that space of time wherein the Deluge went off and the Earth became dry And that a vehement Frost would have seiz'd the Waters of the Flood as soon as they were come down if the Air had not been strangely thick is but reasonable to conclude upon this account Because the Atmosphaere was never so exhausted of Vapours and so never so thin and so never so sharp and terribly cold since the World began as it was at that time And then lastly that the closeness and thickness of the Air was such as to darken and benight the whole Earth at once may fairly be inferred from Gen. 8. ult For there GOD promiseth that while the Earth remaineth there shall be day as will as seed-time and harvest Implying That during the Flood there was as perfect an intermission of day upon Earth as there was of seed-time and harvest 6. A Fourth Objection may be framed from the Possibility and easiness of Mens escaping the Flood For if the Waters prevailed but fifteen Cubits upwards upon the Plain of the Earth and the tops of the spacious aspiring Mountains stood bare excepting a little of the lower parts of them all the time of the Deluge how easily might Men have run up those Mountains and so have been saved from the violence of the Waters and then what need of an Ark to preserve them To this it may be answered For People to ascend these high Mountains when the Flood was coming in could be no such easie matter For at what rate soever the Rains descended in other places it is not to be doubted but they fell in great abundance about the lofty Mountains For the pitchy swollen loaden Clouds which then hung every where bagging in the Air driving and crouding and squeezing against those Mountains could not but empty themselves there like full Spunges when pressed or nipped in prodigious Showres that would have run down in furious and mighty Torrents Yea 't is more than probable that these squeezed Clouds would not only have discharged themselves in immoderate Showres thereabouts but in kind of Ecnephiae or Exhydyriae such as sometimes fall in the Pacific Ocean very terrible Tempests wherein Rain pours down as it were out of Spouts or Buckets and falls in whole Sheets of Water at once So that the sides of the Hills would have been full of Cataracts and the Waters would have come roaring and gulling down them so forcibly that no living Creatures would have been able to stand much less to climb up against them And then the higher sort of Mountains as the Alpes and the like being covered with huge quantities of Snow that
fail to drive it out from thence But then as to the Way of the Earth's Formation we are more at a Loss as being not so satisfactorily instructed concerning it Here Providence seems to have left us to our selves and for the improvement of both remits us to the Conduct of Philosophick Learning in some measure and to our own Judgments Only we must be careful that the Idea's we frame be congruous to the Truths that came down from above and are or should be the Touchstone of all Hypotheses among Christians Which because the way of the Earth's Formation according to the Theory is not it overthrows the first vital Assertion which is this There was a Primitive Earth of another Form from the present and inhabited by Mankind till the Deluge The latter Clause of it touching the Earth's being inhabited till the Deluge we do not question The former part of it cannot stand by reason the Manner of the Earth's Rise which the Theory ascribes to it overturns it It is supposed to have proceeded thus Fig 1 Pag 47 Where 1 denotes the fiery Centre of the Earth 2. The Interior Orb of the Earth composed of the grossest particles of the Chaos 3. The Element of Water or the Abyss 4. The Oyly Liquor upon the surface of the Water 5. The Mass or Body of the Air. But this Body of the Air being at first very muddy and impure through abundance of terrestrial Particles that as fast as they could free themselves from the Air with which they were mingled and in which they were intangled they sunk downward And meeting in their descent with the Oyly Liquor on the face of the Deep there they stuck and incorporating with that unctious Substance made a certain Slime or a fat soft light Earth spread upon the Waters Which growing thicker and thicker by a continual accession of more terrestrial Particles sliding down still out of the Air as it purify'd it self at last it came to its just Dimensions And then waxing more dry and stiff and firm and solid in fine it attained to its due Consistency and so became the First habitable Earth Thus have I briefly but I hope truly represented the Manner of the Primitive Earth's Formation If there be any thing of Mistake in the Description it is altogether involuntary But I think I have spoken the very mind of the Hypothesis as it is more largely set down by the Theorist 2. But if the Primitive Earth's being of another Form does depend upon its rising in such a method as this as indeed it does then it could not be of another Form from the present Earth because it could not rise in such a manner for several Reasons As First Because it would have taken too long time in doing it A longer time by much than that Divine Account we have of its Origination does mention or will allow For to say nothing how long the Inferior Earth would have been in forming by the subsiding of the grossest parts of the Chaos to the Centre of it till which were sunk the other Sedimentals could not so well have separated And to say nothing how considerable a space of time it would have required for the Aereal Matter to have clarify'd it self and to have setled in its proper Region And to say nothing of the Lastingness of that other Purgation whereby the liquid part of the Chaos would have sent forth its Oyliness to invest the Waters to receive those Dregs that fell out of the Air To say nothing of these how much time must have been spent in producing the exterior Orb of the Earth which was to be made up of those terrestrial Particles which fell from above and rested upon the Oyly out-side of the Deep Should these fine Particles have showred down as fast as ever we saw small Rain or Snow do yet how many Days and Weeks must have passed before they could have swell'd into so huge a Body as the Earth was at first I say as the Earth was at first For according to the Hypothesis now before us the Primitive Earth was bigger than this So much bigger as to take all that space into its Ambit which reacheth up to the tops of the highest Mountains at least Yea if the first Earth did not fill a much bigger space than that as it might do for according to this Hypothesis we know not how far its Circumference might extend yet a space somewhat bigger it must needs occupy in regard the Mountains are now worn lower than they were And for such inconceivable Quantities of little Particles to descend out of the Air as would be sufficient to make such a bulky Globe as the Primitive Earth must necessarily be a good whiles work And so it is expresly acknowledged to be Theor. p. 58 59. And then if as fast as they showred down into the Oyly Substance they did immediately mix and incorporate with it yet then it would take up some time again to dry and harden this new made Earth and to reduce it to an habitable Consistency And therefore its Formation this way could by no means fall in with the real time of its Production Nay it could not be compleated in that space of time in which GOD declares that he began and finisht the whole Creation 3. For that glorious Work is expresly limited to Six Days And every Day has its respective Task particularly specified and appropriated to it And however more might be created on some Days than is mentioned as Angels Hell c. yet we may be sure there was no less Not but that GOD could have done all in one Day if he had so pleased or in one Hour or Minute As he could also have given Being to the World many millions of Ages before He did But it was not his Will that it should exist sooner and his Will it was that the Creation of it should be protracted to an Hexaemeron or Six Days Work and therefore he drew it out to that length But then when Philo Iudaeus St. Austin and others teach that the World was created in an Instant we have no reason jurare in verba to give up our selves to a Belief of their Doctrine Nor is the Saying of the Son of Syrach sometimes alleged in Proof of the Opinion to be at all regarded He that liveth for ever creavit omnia simul created all things together As if he created them together in the same moment Whereas besides that the Book is Apocryphal the Greek Copy reads it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He created all things in common as well one as other in which sense it relates to no time And accordingly our English is most proper he created all things in general Yet this Apocryphal Text seems to be the chief ground upon which St. Austin built his Opinion of the World 's being made in an instant But by that Account which Moses gives in the Earth brought forth Grass and Herbs and Trees
that is as containing a kind of tangible thickness and clamminess in it Yet in the first day upon GOD's most powerful â—iat given there was light Gen. 1. 3. Which plainly argues That the Body of the Air could not then be of so foul a Constitution If it had though GOD when he pronounced Let there be light had made the Sun which he did not and made him much brighter than he is he could not have illightned these lower Regions as being not only clouded and covered but even stuffed as it were with an impenetrable density or kind of material darkness so far as the aforesaid Ring of Circle about the Chaos reached But then how much less could that Light have done it which was pre-existent to the sun and was no more than a faint glimmering in compare with his Glory Yet on the first day I say there was Light in the Chaotic World even on the very Waters of the Chaos For when GOD said Let there be light where can that Light be thought to have shined more especially than where he said before there was darkness And where was darkness said to be before but upon the face of the deep Gen. 1. 2. And therefore Light must be shot down thither in obedience to the Divine Command But then here again this Hypothesis seems to be unwarrantable as grating too much upon Holy Scripture For whereas that certifies That there was Light on the first day and upon the superficies of the Abyss as the Context intimates this Hypothesis puts nature into such a condition as made it impossible it should be so and positively avers That it was quite contrary For it tells us The Air was as yet thick gross and dark And when was it thus Why most certainly after the first day was past For it was after that the immense Aereal Mass had had time to purifie it self in a great measure as appears by what follows There being abundance of little Particles swimming in it still after the grossest were sunk down And if the Air were thick and dark then after the grossest Particles were sunk down what was it before when they were but sinking And therefore as the first darkness at the World's Formation is acknowledged to proceed ex ipsius Aeris impuritate perturbatione from the impurity and roil of the Air so the Theory calls it by the name of Tenebrae diuturnae lasting darkness CHAP. IV. 1. A Third Exception against the Formation of the Earth the Fire at the Center of it 2. The Theory faulty in not setting forth the Beginning of the Chaos which was necessary to be done 3. Such a Chaos was not Created 4. Nor yet produced in Des-Cartes his way 5. And therefore that Central Fire seems a thing unreasonable 6. That the Chaos was produced in the Cartesian way not to be allowed by the Theory 7. The Word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 also insinuates the contrary 8. The Septuagint cleared in one passage 9. The Story of the Creation not to be restrained to the Terrestrial World 1. THAT the Earth is not the solidest of the Planets may well be inferred from its nearness to the Sun And therefore we see Mars a less Planet by much advanced above the Earth upon the account of his solidity And for the same reason he may be of such a rutilant or â—iery colour as he is which Complexion among the Hebrews gives him the name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the red Planet But though that degree of Proximity which the Earth holds to the Sun shows her to be of a looser substance of a more porous and less solid nature yet it cannot presently be improved into an Argument of her having a great quantity of Fire at her Center This the Theorist admits of as a thing very reasonable that there is a Fire at the Center of the Earth as there is a Yolk in the middle of an Egg. But how can it be so reasonable according to his Hypothesis For according to that the Earth was formed out of a Chaos as we have heard And that Chaos was nothing but a fluid Mass consisting of earthly Principles as is intimated in these words By the Chaos I understand the matter of the Earth and Heavens without form or order reduced into a fluid Mass wherein are the materials and ingredients of all Bodies Suppose then the Elements Air Water and Earth which are the principles of all terrestrial Bodies mingled without any order c. Now when the Chaos was a confused Mass in its principles so wholly terrestrial and in its constitution so wholly fluid it is so far from being very reasonble to allow a Fire at the Center of it and if there were not a Fire at the Center of that how could there be one at the Center of the Earth that it would rather be very absurd to do it For so in the First place very contrary and discordant natures must have been tied to dwell together in the closest cohabitation or a perfect contiguity In which state of conjunction or immediate vicinity how could they have subsisted without preying upon and destroying one another Either the Fire would have dissipated the ambient fluid Bodies that were near it or else those fluid humid Bodies would have suffocated and extinguish'd the Fire they inclosed Or if they could have dwelt together peaceably for a while and not have invaded one another Yet Secondly When the Chaos began to separate and the grossest parts of it to sink down those that subsided first it being a fluid Mass must have met at the very Center of it and the rest as they followed would have gathered close about them and so constituting a central Globe of Earth solid throughout would have left no hollow space within it for a receptacle of Fire Or Lastly If there had been room left for Fire at the Center of the chaos yet how should Fire have conveyed it self into that place of reception or by any means have come to dwell there 2. To make this out it was necessary that the Beginning of the Chaos or the way of its entring into the World should have been declared by the Theory But it is not done which seems to be a king of flaw in the Hypothesis It takes no notice of the cause of its Origin nor of the manner of its Production whereby this difficulty might have been prevented or cleared up And truly the way or manner of its rise or emergency into being is necessary to be known for the explaining of other difficulties as well as this For upon it depends the solution of several Phaenomena's and very material ones I name but one The Magnetism of the Earth as to the influence it has upon the Index nauticus or Needle of the Mariner's Compass the pointing or Direction of which is not so curious and surprizing but it is a useful in the affairs of human Life But then if the Theorist by setting his
Chaos which came from we know not whence in the room of an Earth of a Planetary Origin sunk down from its lucid or Sidereous state takes away the supposed causes of this notable effect it will be incumbent on him to assign others from whence it may be derived In case it be objected that the Phaenomâ—non alledged is not satisfactorily accounted for in the Cartesian way neither forasmuch as it stumbles in the formation of the Striate Particles the main instrument of the work and that Des-Cartes himself dares not trust his own Hypothesis but professes the Earth to have been otherwise produced than that determines as shall be noted by and by then I answer As this is really nothing to us so it will not excuse the Theorist in the least from clearing up the thing according to those measures he hath taken by himself It only shows that the French Philosophy of so great fame is too short to fathom the deeps of Nature and by no means quick-sighted enough to see to the bottom of her profound Mysteries Though that Philosophy may grow up apace to so happy a perfection as to be able to make a more full discovery of such secrets must needs be the desire of wife and good Men. And so we return to the Enquiry we were upon viz. How Fire should come to the Center of the Earth Which is a Problem the more intricate and perplexed in regard The Theory takes no notice of the beginning of the Chaos It tells indeed that there was a Chaos and what kind of one it was but it gives no manner of account how it came into Being As to that the Reader is left at a loss and has nothing to guide him but his own Conjectures I shall guess therefore as fairly at the thing as I can And to me it seems probable that this Chaos should be produced one of these Two ways either by Creation or by Des-Cartes his way for generating Planets Thought it will not be over easie to make out That it came into existence by either of them 3. For first to affirm that it dropt directly out of the hand of Omnipotence in way of Creation is more than we find warranted Yea we are taught something and that from Heaven which is very different from it Namely That in the beginning GOD created the EARTH And if it was and Earth that he created in the beginning it could not be a Chaos I mean Such a Chaos as the Theory makes it for that was no Earth nor had it any specific or distinct Earth in it as being without distinction of Elements It is said indeed Gen. 1. 2. That the Earth was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 desolation and emptiness Inanis vacua as the Vulgar doubly void That is of its designed order and comeliness which were to beautifie it and of all those creatures which were to furnish it and dwell in it And therefore says the Targum of Ierusalem it was empty 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Children of Men 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and void of every brute And the Prophet describing a most fearful destruction to come upon his People by Wars through which their fruitful Land was to become a Wilderness and Men and Birds were to be driven away tells us in the very Words of Moses That the Earth was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 desolation and emptiness And in this sense I confess the Earth in its original imperfection and nakedness was a Chaos an incultivate and uninhabited lump rude and confused beyond all imagination as having neither good from nor furniture in it But then at the same time it was an Earth too and so not such a Chaos as the Theory speaks it I might also note would that be of weight that the Praefix 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Genesis 1. 1. is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 notificationis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 scientific or demonstrative and so it points at this Earth and intimates it was this very same Earth at first that it is now The same as to substance and nature though not as to condition and ornaments And this Earth in the state of its primitive disorder and destitution being the true Mosaic Chaos created in the beginning we have no grounds to belive that any other besides it was ever brought forth in way of creation But we have good grounds to believe that no other was so produced inasmuch as to assert it would be to set up Phantasie against Moses's authority and to bring presumptuous conceiâ— into competition with Scripture But grant the Chaos to have been such as it is supposed to be and that it entred into the World at the door of Creation Yet here will be nothing to make it reasonable very reasonable to admit Fire at its Center For if there was a central Fire in it it must either be placed there supernaturally by the immediate power of the ALMIGHTY and we have no reason to admit it upon that score because we are no where informed of it Or else it must be generated there in a Natural way and to admit that would be against reason too For how could a vast quantity of Flame be bred in the Bowels of an Earthy Mass consisting of the Principles of all terrestrial Bodies And whoever shall peruse the first half of the Fifth Chapter of the English Theory will soon be satisfied that the Chaos could consist of no other but terrestrial Principles For there it appears that it was resolved into nothing but Earth Air Water and an unctious substance and so could be made up of nothing else But Fire is quite another thing and as different from those Elements as motion is from rest or the most Celestial from the most Terrestrial Matter and so in a course of Nature could not possibly issue from them and settle it self in the midst of them 4. We will pass therefore to the Second Conjecture whither indeed the Notion of central Fire in the Earth does most directly lead us and that is Des-Cartes's Method by which he supposeth Planets to be formed And according to that the Earth was one of those fourteen or fifteen Stars which once shined gloriously in their respective Heavens hereabouts But being all overgrown and incrusted with Maculaes except one and losing their native strength and light were swallowed up by the Vortex of the surviving Luminary the Sun and so move round about him as so many Satellites or Waiters of his to this day Though some of these Planets also that is Secundary ones are at the same time carried about others of them As the Moon about the Earth the four Medicean ones about Iupiter and Saturn's three Asseclae or Pages according to Cassinus about him And here there may seem to be a plausible account given of the declared Central constitution of the Earth or of a Region of Fire at the heart of it For it having been all Flame
them were to be â—ound at the rate we have them And truly the perpetual absence of them must needs have made the Air more severely nipping in the Frigid Zones then than it is now Especially they being shot out so far from the Sun by virtue of the oblong figure of the first Earth For even as the Earth is now of a Globular make the Rains might have fallen in the Frigid Zones for ten Degrees latitude or six hundred Miles together and yet on the one side have been five Degrees distant from the Poles themselves and on the other side have been seventy five Degrees distant from the Sun in the Aequinox which is as far to half a Degree as he is ever remov'd from us But then if we add better than fourteen Degrees more to each Pole upon accompt of the Earth's Oâ—iformity the Rains must be removed a great way farther from the Sun still perhaps the whole fourteen Degrees into Climates most horridly cold and freezing And though there would have been constant Day about the very Poles yet in this Oval Earth there would have been as much Night in the presumed rainy Regions as in any other part of it whatever For so we may observe that those rays of the Sun which fell upon that Earth suppose at k and l whereabouts according to the Hydrographic Scheme in the Theory we may imagine the Rainy Regions were could not illighten the opposite side of it at m and n till such time as those points were turned to him which they could not be sooner than the point f where it must have been of the biggest circumference measuring it in way of Longitude Indeed it must be owned that it is not the Sun's distance in Winter which does only or chiefly make our Climate so cold but the oblique falling of his beams on the Earth So that instead of his retreating Southward forty seven Degrees the whole space between the Tropics were he at the time of his entring into Cancer when he is nearest to us but elevated directly as many Degrees or removed only perpendicularly from us our Winter if any would be very moderate because his beams would be reflected in the same Angles as before But his recession from us being in way of latitude or declination â—is Rays must fall the more obliquely upon the Earth From which kind of incidence it comes to pass that they rebound in obtuse Angles and the heat which should be caused by more direct reverberations is impaired As also many of his beams are reflected by the Atmosphaere another way and come not at us at all But then the Sun being farther distant from the rainy Regions in the praediluvian Earth his beams must have fallen more obliquely upon them still and so the cold must have been greater there because his influence was less And therefore what can be thought but that the Dewy Rains if any could have been in those parts should either in falling have been turned into Hails or if they fell in Water have been frozen into Ice And so instead of streaming along and refreshing the Earth they must have stood congeled into Mountains Especially if we consider that extremely cold hanging Mists must have always incircled those Regions above and so have shut out that sorry kind of influence which might have been derived from the so remote and feeble Sun It may a little inforce what has been said that all who have held with the Theorist the Torrid Zone was uninhabitable by reason of heat ever believed that the Frigid ones were so through extremity of cold as Aristotle Cicero Strabo Mela Pliny and others To which add That several Navigators attempting to find out a nearer course to China have been frozen to death Yet they failed nothing so far Northward as the rainy Regions in the Oval Earth must have lain Though without question they chose the most seasonable time for the Enterprize I mean when the Sun was on this side of the Aequator where now he may advance though he could not do so says the Theory before the Flood twenty three Degrees and an half which on Earth we reckon about fourteen hundred Miles Nor is what Mercator remembers touching Novâ— Zembla impertinent to the Case Here the Air is very sharp and the Cold most vehement and intolerable And again their Tents are covered with Whales skins the Cold being continually very sharp in these parts Their drink the Geographer goes on is warm blood of wild Beasts or else Ice water there are no Rivers or Springs because the violence of the Cold does so shut up the Earth that Springs of waters cannot break forth And where Rivers cannot flow out of the Earth for Forst surely they cannot fall down from Heaven Yet this Island is extended but form the Seventieth to the Seventy sixth Degree of Northern Latitude or thereabouts Speed also informs us that the Isles of Shetland in the Deucalidonian Sea are ever covered with Ice and Snow Yet Ptolomy placeth them but in the Sixty third Degree of Latitude which is a good way on this side of the Arctic Circle Heylin also says of Island that it is a damnable cold Country And Blaeu reports of the Frigid Zones Perpetuum istic horridumque est frigus There is perpetual and horrid Cold. Lastly the Theorist himself so far agrees with us as to own that the Frigid Zones in the first Earth were uninhabitable and that by reason of Cold as well as Moisture CHAP. VI. 1. Another Exception against the Hypothesis it would have drowned the world though Man had not sinned 2 Or though Mankind had been never so penitent 3. Which would have reflected upon Providence and imboldened the Atheist 1. WE are taught from above That GOD brought in the Flood upon the World of the VNGODLY That is it was a Judicial act of His and a just revenge which he took upon the impious They had grievously offended and provoked His MAJESTY by very great and epidemical Sins For as we read in the Sixth of Genesis the wickedness of Man was great and every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually and all flesh had corrupted his way before him Whereupon the HOLY GHOST speaking of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 after the manner of Men declares that he was grieved at the heart to see this And such was the grief he conceived that He repented He made Man And so vehemently did He repent of making him that He resolved to destroy him again And not only him but most of his fellow creatures with him made in good measure for his use and benefit And not only them but the Earth it self in some sense which had been the scene of his vanity and unrighteousness And at length He decrees and proclaims aloud that the Instrument of this fearful general destruction should be a Deluge of water Gen. 6. 17. So that nothing can be more clear than that the Flood
it to others And when it was thus secret and hidden from all learned Men why should the HOLY SPIRIT I say tax these Scorners with wilfull ignorance for not understanding it Who however they might abound with conceited knowledge as the name Gnostics which they arrogated to themselves imports were but piâ—iful Sciolists The Theory also affirms that Paradise and the Vniversal Flood were by length of time and the changed face of nature so much obscured that if holy Story had not minded us of them we should not only not have known them but never have thought of them And if the Flood had been utterly buried out of mind and might never have come into the thoughts of Men if Scripture had not kept it in memory then what hope of understanding that it was occasioned by such a form or Fabric of the Earth as the Theory has invented unless the same Scripture minds us of that also But because it does not how could the Persons whom S. Peter reproves be wilfully ignorant of the Phaenomenon Wilfull Ignorance is that which GOD blames and which is really faulty upon our account which we carelessly rest in when we might come out of When Men might have means of knowledge but will not seek them or when they actually have them but will not use them but in the midst of proper helps to science sit down and chuse to acquiesce in Ignorance this is wilfull and affected But these were not the circumstances of those whom we find to have been Objects of the Apostolical Censure They were so far from standing fair for acquaintance with this structure of the Earth or from being in a probable way to the knowledge of it that they were next door to an utter impossibility of ever attaining it supposing it had been real For their Minds were set I may say with a contrary Biass and it was morally necessary that they should be drawn the other way For the whole World was of that Judgment it is of now and which these Mockers were of then and why should they differ from all people then alive or that ever lived It hath been generally thought or presum'd says the Theory that the World before the Flood was of the same Form or Constitution with the present World And how could they help swimming with the general Stream Yea which is more the Opinion was as Strong as it was general and stood very firmly in Mens apprehensions they thinking it built upon Scripture Grounds For that speaks of Seas created in the beginning and of Mountains covered with Water in the Deluge And all agreeing that the Seas mentioned by Moses were no other than those which are now extant and that the Mountains so covered were praeexistent to the Flood the present face of things which is presumed of good use to evince the Earth was of another Form once became a great Argument to perswade these Scorners that it was always of the Form which it now bears and a means to fix them in that Perswasion And when their condition was such as to be destitute of the knowledge of the Form of the Earth and the most likely means they had to help them to it would rather have run them upon the contrary belief and rivetted them fast in it there could be no reason why they should be charged with Wilfull ignorance of the thing And if they could not upon just grounds be charged with Wilfull ignorance of the Form of the Earth then neither with the like ignorance of the Constitution of the Heavens and of the Change and Dissolution that happened to either they being things as much in the dark and as far removed out of the way of their notice Let us but just point at each of them The whole Superficies of the Terrestrial Globe was entire and continued smooth and even regular and level No Lake nor Sea no Rock nor Island no Hill nor Dale was any where upon it But as the Earth was made of two distinct Orbs so betwixt its outward Orb of an Oval figure and that within was the great Body of the Waters lodg'd and shut up so close as to hold no commerce with the open Air. Such in gross was the Form and constitution of the first Earth The Sun piercing through the outward Orb of the Earth drew up chiefly about the Middle parts of it great quantities of Vapours out of the Abyss Which Vapours directing their Courses in the Air from the Aequinoctial to the Polar Regions they were there condensed into Rains to furnish the World with Rivers But these streams of Exhalations flowing continually through the Aereal Regions made them exceeding watry And such in general was the Form or Constitution of the Heavens The Sun moving always in the Aequinoctial the Earth grew extremely dry about the Aequator and full of Chaps which rendred it more weak and brittle in its exterior Orb. Which Orb being fill'd with Vapours within raised by the penetrating heat of the Sun was still more apt to be blown up and broken At length being able to hold no longer it flew in pieces and down it fell into the Deep beneath sinking till it rested on the Orb below Such in short was the Earth's Dissolution By the fall of that into the Waters under it they were forced violently to fly up aloft and surging and raging in a tumultuous manner the great and fatal Deluge was caused Hence also Seas and Lakes arose while the watry Element abating of its fury quietly retired into such hollownesses as were ready to receive it And whereas the external Orb of Earth was so much bigger than that within as to contain the whole Mass of Water in its Cavity and so could not possibly surround and sit close to the inward lesser one in an orbicular fashion about it but several of its parts in several places were fain to stand erect inclining c. these various Prominencies of different sizes shapes and situations made Mountains and Rocks of all sorts But the Outward Earth being thus dissolved and fallen as low into the Waters as it could it was no more liable to a general Flood but was certainly put past that danger for ever And thus Its Form and Constitution was altered Now the Sun also running a new course about the Earth by reason she had changed her old Position and the Abyss being disordered by the Disruption of the Earth and its falling into it Vapours could no longer be drawn out from thence as they used to be nor fill the Aereal channels with store of Exhalations And so they growing dry the watry Complexion of the Heavens perish'd and Their Constitution was changed also Such in brief so far as we are concern'd to note at present was the Form and Constitution of the Heavens and the Earth and such the changes they both underwent as the Theory teaches If therefore the Parties S. Peter reproves were blamed for not knowing the first constitution of
disruption of the Abyss as if the fall of the Earth had caused such extraordinary commotions in the Air or convulsions of its Regions as made them every where to pour down Waters For the Theory will have the Rains to be antecedent to the disruption I do not suppose the Abyss broken open till after the forty days rain But then this is most directly against Scripture again for that plainly affirms the contrary that the Fountains of the great Deep and the Windows of Heaven were both opened upon one day Gen. 7. 11. In the six hundredth year of Noah's life in the second month the seventeenth day of the month the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up and the windows of heaven were opened So that in the same year of Noah's Life and in the same Month of that Year and on the same Day of that Month the Fountains below and the Windows above were both set open that the Waters issuing out of both might raise the Deluge 6. Let me add in the next place That it is a known Question that has been moved by Writers of all sorts Ancient and Modern Iewish and Christian Divines Historians Chronologers c. at what time of the year the Flood came in Iosephus for instance will have it to happen in Autumn others in the Spring and they give their reasons for it The Question does manifestly proceed upon inadvertency their not minding that when it was Spring in one part of the World it was Autumn in another And the like Question is put by Writers and bandied among them touching the Creation at what time of the year that great Work was done But somewhat more improperly there being no Seasons of the year before the Creation Now this being the general Judgment of the Learned That the year had Tempestival Changes from the beginning even the same that it has now as these Questions import from hence it may be inferted that they never dreamt of this Position of the Earth or a Perpetual Aequinox but were all of the contrary perswasion or common Opinion 7. As for the Authorities that are made use of to establish the Doctrine we are upon if they be examined they will hardly be found to speak home in the case For though in the Contents of the Tenth Chapter of the Second Book of the Latin Theory it be thus declared the last Article concerning the right Situation of the first Earth is establisht by the sentences of Philosophers yet if their Sentences alledged in that Chapter be well considered they will appear to be too weak and insufficient I shall set them all down fully to avoid suspicion of perverting or misrepresenting them The first is taken out of Plutarch and delivered by him as the joint Opinion of two ancient Philosophers Diogenes and Anaxagoras think that after the World was constituted and living creatures were brought forth out of th◠Earth the World in a manner was inclined towards its Southern part of its own accord And that this perchance was done by providence that some parts of the World might be inhabited and others not by reason of cold heat and convenient temperature But this will do the Theory little service it rather fights against it For the Inclination here is said to be made by Providence that some of the Worlds parts might be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 habitable by reason of a good temperature Which agrees not with the Theory for that holds the World to have been of the best temperature before the Earth was inclined insomuch that it knew no Season but Spring And what then could mend its habitableness Yet in order to that the Earth was inclined as the Citation intimates And when in the Judgment of these Philosophers the inclination of the Earth was to conduce to or improve its habitableness and according to the Tenor of the Theory it would rather have been an hindrance or disadvantage to the same it is apparent that this Allegation does rather cross than confirm the Hypothesis In case it be argued That this Inclination might promote or mend the habitableness of the Earth as it quenched the flame in the Torrid Zone and reduced its intolerable to a gentle hea◠neither thus can the Passage be drawn to favour the Theory For say the Philosophers by vertue of this Inclination some parts of the Earth were to be rendred 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 uninhabitable and that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 too upon the account of vehement heat Whereas this very Inclination was of necessity to be a qualification or corrective or indeed a perfect extinction of all furious burning in the Torrid Zone as the Theory owns So that the Authority cited is so far from establishing the Theory's Hypothesis of the Earth's Inclination that it will not be easily reconciled to it Nor can it excuse the matter with this Pair of Philosophers to say that they were blinded here with the common Error and ran for company with those that believed there was a Torrid Zone when there really was none For allowing they were so sagacious as to discover this Secret of the Earth's Inclination we must also grant that by the same quick-sightedness they would clearly have discerned that the effect thereof could not have been 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a scorching raging insufferable heat about the middle of the Earth but a certain mitigation or quenching of the same The second Sentence is that of Empedocles which occurs in the same Chapter of Plutarch Empedocles teacheth That the Air giving way to the force of the Sun the North inclined the Northern parts being elevated and the Southern ones depressed and this happened by that means to the whole World Here is a mighty effect produced without a cause assigned at least here is non causa pro causa the assignation of a cause altogether incompetent and not to be understood For why should the Air yield to the force of the Sun more towards the South than towards the North when his force was equal upon both the Regions at once For he moving at all times exactly in the midst betwixt them his influence must be exactly alike upon each and therefore that it should cause the depression of one more than of the other is a thing in the dark and unintelligible But say the Sun had had power to displace the Earth and by sinking one Pole of it through such a cession of the Air to have raised the other yet then that this cession should not be in the Air nor consequently this dislocation of the Earth till the Flood happened is not to be thought And therefore this Sentence favours not the Theory neither for that has positively determined the time of the Deluge to have been the juncture of the Earth's declension or dislocation Whereas if the Sun had been the cause thereof by working a change in the Air conducive thereunto it must have been accomplisht
was higher than that it fell or flowed from as in this case it must prove before the watry Globe by Defluxion of its Water could be made Oval it is evident that the Water by a natural motion or of it self did perform a course against its nature For when it flowed down or is said to do so and according to its own nature ought to have done so in reality and according to the reason of the thing it flowed up Nor indeed could it possibly do otherwise to produce the great effect pretended unless it were possible for an Oval body to be highest in its middle parts And then truly but upon no other terms the watry Globe might become oblong ex illo defluxu aquarum ad latera exoneratione partium mediarum from that flowing down of the Waters to the sides which the Theory mentions and the disburthening of the middle parts of it Now if the watry Mass upon which the ingenious Theorist founds the first Earth could not be made Oval in the way he has invented then neither could that Earth be of an Oval Figure it being bound to put on the same shape which the Water had 2. Very improbable it is also that the first Earth should be Oval considering its Position or Direction in its Annual Motion For that was such as could not well consist with its Oval Figure In it its Poles are said to have pointed always to the Poles of the Ecliptic and so it would have been directed not unlike to Ships swimming side-ways Now put a Ship which is an Oval body into the smoothest stream imaginable and lay it cross that stream and see how long it will keep in that Position Will it always hold it No nor for any considerable while but by degrees will quickly wind and fall in to swim long-ways with it and continue mostly in that posture as suiting best with its own shape and the course of the Waters And truly that an Oviform Earth should lie cross-ways in the aâ—thereal Chanel and be carried round the Sun for Sixteen hundred years together and not change its site in compliance with the tendency or stream of it seems very strange if not impossible Especially when that Earth was thin comparatively and hollow like a Shell and so more light and ready to verge or be drawn aside from its supposed primitive situation The Present Earth though generally allowed to be of a spherical Figure and also of a solid composure throughout unless at its Centre and likewise according to the French Philosophy to be held by a particular hand of Nature in its inclining posture which must be more easie to be kept by a round Earth in the Medium which carries it than a Right Position by an oblong one is yet subject to wallowings in its Annual Motion And how then can it be thought that the First Earth which was oblong and had not that hand to hold it steady could preserve its axis in a constant parallelism to the axis of the Ecliptic till the time of the Flood It would rather have turned end-ways in the Celestial Stream and have stood for the most part in that direction as best agreeing with its own Form and the vehicular Current wherein it floated And so its axis by force of the aethereal matter being wrought into a coincidence with the Plain of the Ecliptic and the Ecliptic like a Colure passing through its Poles while its Poles would have lookt East and West and its Diurnal revolutions have gone North and South it would have brought such a confusion into the Heavens and Earth at once as is not easie to be expressed 3. And that the First Earth was not Oval methinks may in some measure be gathered from the Roundness or Sphericalness of the Present Earth For this Terraqueous Body on which we dwell is of a Spherical Fashion So Anaximander thought and also Pythagoras Parmenides and others of old as well as all of later days And as much is fairly inferrible from several things As First From its Conical Shadow Which Figure Zeno almost Two thousand Years since noted the Shadow of the Earth to be of And a common Argument for the Proof of it is fetcht from the Moon For in whatever place she has at any time entered into an Eclipse or emerged out of the same and whatever part of the Earth during any of her Eclipses has been turned to her still it has been observed that the Shadow cast by the Earth upon her Discus was always Circular which argues the Earth it self to be Globular And that it is so may be inferred Secondly From the Place of the Waters For were it Oval they would not fail to retire out of the Seas near the Poles and running down towards the Aequator of the Earth which would be the lowest part of it settle themselves around it in the middle Regions thereof But instead of this we see the Waters are so far from drawing off from the Northern Seas about the Pole that they abound most and are deepest there nor do we know of any thing but vast and deep Waters about the South-Pole neither Whereas I say were the Earth Oval and so the Poles of it highest the Waters must necessarily have settled about the midst of the Earth there being the lowest place and so the properest for their Situation And so the Sea in Figure would have resembled an Hoop or as a liquid Zone would have encompassed the Earth and divided it into two Hemispheres in the same manner that some worthy Ancients conceived it did for want of better Skill in Geography Thirdly If the Earth were Oval Navigation towards the Poles beyond such a Latitude as bounds the Sphericity of the Earth would be extreamly difficult if not impossible For then in such a course Ships must steer up hill and climb as it were all the way they swim as sailing in a perfect ascent But where would be Winds strong enough to heave them up such watry steepness Or in case they had sufficient strength to do it yet would not the Vessels rather pitch into and run under the Waters that bear against them than drive up upon their rising surface And let but the blustring Gales which push them upward cease and would they not forthwith stop Yea immediately tack about and being left to themselves settle down towards the Aequator again But we hearing of no such difficult sailing up the Polar Seas nor such retiring of Ships down to the Aequinoctial ones have still more reason to believe that the Earth and Water make a True Globe And grant that these Arguments will not perfectly demonstrate the Earth to be Spherical yet they being of more force to prove it is so than any ever brought to prove it otherwise we have reason to acquiesce in the received Opinion 4. But to this it may be answered In case the Earth be Round or Spherical now this is no good evidence that it
or Humane Wisdom is interessed in the Affair That the Clouds were made that is and also are managed by a GOD whose Infinite Wisdom indu'd them with that Nature and placed them in that Order and put them in that capacity of serving us as they do So incomparably that is as no wit of Man can mend their Method For let the skilfullest I say chuse at what rate he would have his Grounds to be watered and then see if the Clouds commonly come not up to his Rules and exceed them too in what is fit to be done First We may be sure he would appoint the best kind of Water to be used And what Water so fit for all sorts of Plants as that which descends from the Clouds above For considering how it is raised by the exhalative influence of the Sun it can have nothing of saltness acrimony or deadness in it nor yet of starving thinness nor coldness neither but must be as light and unctuous and spirituous as that Element when simple can well be and by vertue of its sutable qualities and consistency be most proper for invigorating the Seminals of all things And then being drawn up from all parts of the Earth almost as simple as it seems to be there must needs be very great mixture in it I mean though it be all Water yet it must be a Compound of all Waters as it were as being an extract of all sorts of moisture that the Earth affords in its several Regions Whence it follows that all sorts of Plants must find something in it it being originally in part derived perhaps from the Countries in which they grow highly agreeable to themselves as consisting of Particles fit to enter them and easie to be turned into their substance Which being suckt up by them and drained by exquisite percolation through their fine digestive Pores immediately becomes Sap which is the Plantal Chyle or Blood for their nourishment and accretion Secondly Without question he would have these Waterings seasonably performed And here the Clouds are most kind to Vegetables again and by a regular method answer their necessities For they yield both former and latter Rains Such as may cherish them while they are young and make them grow and strengthen them as they grow and carry them on to perfection Whereas if all these Rains should fall at first the tender Springals would come to nothing as being surfeited with too much moisture and the principle of their Life irrecoverably chill'd if not extinguisht And if all should pour down upon them at last the Showres would be to no purpose For coming too late they would be in vain especially as to all Frugiferous things which being shrunk and stunted with immoderate exiccation would be unable to yield their kindly Products Thirdly We need not doubt but he would have his Grounds watered in a gentle manner And this I may say the Clouds do unimitably Sometimes with dewy Mists sometimes with greater sometimes with lesser commonly with soft and moderate Showres Whereas should they discharge themselves in extravagant quantities they would wash up the weaker and beat down the stronger Plants and by their too free and impetuous Defluxions be extreamly injurious if not fatal to both And can we think that what we have noted already should be done by meer accident That the Regions above which need them not but are rather clogged and cumbred with them should draw up such plenty of Waters for us who cannot possibly subsist without them and then send them down again of so elaborate a nature at so seasonable times and in so sutable measures and all by casual Oeconomy and the conduct of blind and incertain Chance Fourthly We may ground upon it that he would have these Waterings to be constant Not only for two or three Months or some few years but so long as he lives at least to name no longer period Nor are the Clouds deficient in this circumstance neither For as they have watered the Earth through all ages past so they will do the same indefatigably for the future even till the final Consummation of all things And though no one Sett of Clouds can ever be fixed or permanent they being perpetually flitting and volant yet as some fly from us others arise and so from new successions of them we have supplys of fresh Rain And therefore albeit they are passant things they leave very good and lasting effects of their transient fugitive presence with us And here the hand of Providence is visible again For put case that things by a fortuitous hit had fallen luckily at first into that convenient posture for Rain in which now they stand which would be most surprising to think yet that then they should persist of themselves so long and steddily and inalterably in the same is not to be imagined No where the Wheel of Order runs on in so even and withal in so laudable and holding a Course 't is a plain case that its Motions were derived from the impulse of Heaven and are maintained by the help of a Divine Influence or Providential Direction and Concurrence Fifthly We may reasonably conclude that he would appoint things to be watered intermittingly Lest too much driness together should injure them on the one side or too much moisture prejudice or bane them on the other Nor are the Clouds faulty in this piece of service but perform it as it were with a great deal of care and seeming Officiousness For when they have poured out their kindness liberally on the Earth they usually stop up their Bottles again and by suspending their effusions promote its fruitfulness as well as by sending them down upon it For as Rains that are new and fresh from above are most nourishing to Vegetables so their intermissive descents make them to be more nutritive still For then having drunk up and digested those that are past they become more receptive of them that succeed And so sucking in what is fit for their aliment with the more greediness they disperse and concoct it with the more ease and speed And truly in the alternate vicissitudes of wet and dry weather there is something at times most remarkably Providential For when we have had sore and tedious Rains for that very reason they should hold and increase because Nature is prepared and inabled thereunto by abundance of Vapours And when we have had a long and excessive drought for the same reason it should continue because Nature is sitted to carry it on the parched ground affording fewer Exhalations and there being a scarcity of matter out of which Rains should be made Yet as experience proves it happens not thus but on the contrary For when Nature's Disposition in the case does sensibly stand one way she is turned about and as it were against her seeming and set Inclinations led into another Which whispers and suggests to the thinking Man that she is certainly directed by an hand from above and in these
as they continue what they are no more could the Earth be drowned a second time so long as it continued a dissolved Earth Yet that it may be delug'd again is clear from GOD's covenanting that it shall not and from the Terms of that Covenant For the Bow in the Cloud is said to be a Token of the Covenant And that when that Bow is seen GOD will remember his Covenant And that he will look upon it to that very end that he may remember the everlasting Covenant Plainly intimating that if that Covenant were not made or being made if by GOD it were not remembred the Earth might again be drowned with as universal and fatal a Flood as ever But then if it may be so from thence it will follow that Noah's Flood could not be caused by the Earth's Dissolution Because then Nature could no longer have been subject to a second Deluge and GOD need not have covenanted to prevent it His very doing it must have been a kind of imposing upon Men as being but an ingaging to save them from an impossible evil and to keep that sad Calamity off them which nothing but miracle or his own Omnipotence was able to bring on So that in fine the case is come to this issue Either that the Glorious GOD has done mighty unworthily pardon the word in making a Covenant which has nothing but vanity and mockage in it or else that the Theory determines falsely in making the Deluge to flow from the Dissolution and Falling in of the Earth CHAP. XV. 1. The Flood Explicable another way as well as by that in which the Theory goes 2. What the height of its Waters might be viz. Fifteen Cubits upon the surface of the Earth 3. The Probability of the Hypothesis argued from Scripture 4. What the Fountains of the great Deep were 5. A Second Argument for the Hypothesis from the easie and sufficient Supply of Waters to raise the Flood to such an height 6. A Third from its agreeableness with St. Peter's Account of the Deluge 7. A Fourth from the Habitableness of the Earth at the Flood 's going off 8. A Fifth from its Consistency with Geography 1. WE are now come to the last Vital or Primary Assertion of the Theory which is this That neither Noah's Flood nor the present Form of the Earth can be explained in any other method that is rational nor by any other Causes that are intelligible That is besides those which the Theory makes use of or assigns Now as to the present Form of the Earth we have spoken something to that already So that could but such an Explication of the Flood be given in as would solve it and the several Phaenomena's of it as rationally and intelligibly as the Theory does this Assertion likewise would be sufficiently encountred in our way of Excepting against it Let us therefore be allowed but some of that liberty which the Theory takes that is to make bold with Scripture a little as that has done a great deal and we 'll try what may be done of this nature Not that I will be bound to defend what I say as real and true any more than to believe what I cannot well endure to speak that the Church of GOD has ever gone on in an irrational way of explaining the Deluge Which yet she must needs have done if there be no other rational method of explaining it and no other intelligible Causes of it than what the Theory has proposed 2. We are now therefore attempting or â—oving at a New Explication of the Flood And if in any thing it seems strange let none wonder or be offended at it We are only trying whether we can hit upon somewhat that may be as rational and intelligible as to the matter in hand as what the Theory offers though it be as extravagant as that is So that where we speak never so positively still what we deliver is to be lookt upon not as an Absolute but Comparative Hypothesis And first let us sound the Waters of the Flood I mean by a true and infallible Plumb-line even the same which Moses reaches out unto us in the Seventh of Genesis So we shall find there is a great mistake in the common Hypothesis touching their Depth For whereas they have been supposed to be fifteen Cubits higher than the highest Mountains they were indeed but fifteen Cubits high in all above the surface of the Earth Not that the Waters were no where higher than just fifteen Cubits above the Ground they might in most places be thirty forty or fifty Cubits high or higher The reason is evident because the surface of the Earth were all its Hills gone would be still â—even and some parts of it considerably higher than others Thus Helvetia is reckoned the highest Country in Europe And in proof of as much it sends forth four great Rivers into the four several Quarters of the Europian World That is to say the Danube Eastward the Rosne Westward the Rhine Northward and the Po Southward For though the Earth be a Globe yet it is not one so true and exact but were the Mountains taken off it I say it would still be rising or prominent in some places by the height of many Cubits over what it is in others At which rate when the Flood ascended fifteen Cubits above the Earth where it is highest which was the true height of the Flood most of the surface of the Earth might be four or five times as deep under water Thus when Switzerland suppose was drowned to the height of fifteen Cubits most of Europe might be drowned many times as high And indeed that the Earth was uneven as we have said and much higher in some places than in others cannot be doubted it being but a wise and most necessary piece of Providence that it should be so contrived For otherwise spacious plain Countries if habitable at all would have yielded but incommodious Dwellings I mean because they must have been perfectly level and so would have lacked devexities needful for Water-courses For Rivers we know never flow but in way of decurse or running downward off precipices steepnesses or declivities 3. This therefore we lay down as the Foundation of our Hypothesis that the highest parts of the Earth that is of the common surface of it were under Water but fifteen Cubits in depth which would drown the rest of its superficies very sadly and sufficiently And this I say we learn from Moses who knowing it himself by Inspiration to inform us of as much has committed it to writing in the Seventh Chapter of Genesis For there we read at the eighteenth Verse That the waters prevailed greatly upon the earth And at the nineteenth Verse that the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth And how greatly and exceedingly did they prevail upon the Earth That we have specified in the twentieth ver 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fifteen Cubits upward did the waters prevail What can
a New Hypothesis concerning it erected We have seen how it is built upon what Grounds it stands and with what reasons and considerations it is supported and establisht But as things that are new and any whit strange are commonly received with more than ordinary Notice so new Doctrines and strange Hypotheses are usually entertain'd with Disputes and Objections It will be necessary therefore to look out a little and to see what Objections are like to meet us in the way that we go and so to apply Answers to them respectively at least to the chief of them 2. But first I must premise that we have no reason to take this for an Objection I mean from the Theorist or others who take their measures from him that we expound a Text or two of Scripture so as none ever did and deserting the common received sense put an unusual Gloss upon them not to say 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a private interpretation This I say is not to be urged against us by the Theorist or by those that think fit to abide by his Hypothesis For himself exceeds us in the same thing We only take a few steps out of the beaten path of Expositors and that with open and professed diffidence whereas he has advanced in as untroden a way with a great deal of boldness 3. The First Objection may be raised from the Hills being covered So we read Gen. 7. 19. That all the high hills under the whole heaven were covered And verse 20. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail and the mountains were covered Whence it has been concluded That the Waters of the Flood prevailed to such an height that they covered the tops of the highest Hills under Heaven Fifteen Cubits upward But the Holy Text says no such thing It tells us indeed That the Waters prevailed fifteen Cubits upwards but this might be meant as to the Earth only upon which it had told us just before the Waters prevailed 〈◊〉 and prevailed exceedingly And truly when they came to be fifteen Cubits upward on the highest parts of the surface of the Earth whereby they might be four or five times as high above its general Superficies as we have observed this was really a great and exceeding prevalence But where it speaks of the high hills and mountains it says no more of them than 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and they were covered And so indeed they were and fifteen Cubits upward too that is on their sides For the Waters prevailing so high above the surface of the Earth whereon they were founded the bottoms of them must needs stand up so deep in those Waters But to affirm the Tops of them did so is perhaps to make the Comment out-run the Text they being not said to be covered And as the Original may bear this Interpretation so the Septuagint seems not to disallow it For that renders the Hebrew thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the water was lifted up fifteen Cubits upwards But it does not in the least express that it was lifted up so many Cubits above the tops of the high Hills and Mountains Nor will the Vulgar Latin dissent from it if rightly understood It says Quindecim cubitis altior fuit aqua super montes quos operuerat The Water was fifteen Cubits higher upon the Mountains which it had covered But then altior super montes may not signifie that it was higher upon the tops as was said before but only upon or about the sidâ—s of the Mountains And so I remember when Q. Curtius would express Peoples sitting about a Table he says They were super mensam And when he would express their sitting about a Banquet he says They were super vinum epulas According to which Water fifteen Cubits high super montes may be Water so high about the Mountains and so high indeed it had covered them And the truth is the Waters of the Flood never were nor could be fifteen Cubits above the Tops of the highest Mountains though we allow the Assertors of the Old Hypothesis to expound the Story of the Flood their own way To make this out We read Gen. 8. 4. That the ark rested upon the mountains of Ararat 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 says the Hebrew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 say the LXX it sat there That is as the Assertors of the Old Hypothesis will have it The bulk of the Ark pierced through the Waters and so the bottom of it stood upon the Mountain under it Nor could it rest or sit there otherwise because the Tops of the Mountains were not as yet above Water the Flood being at its height For when was it that the Ark thus rested Why in the Seventh Month on the seventeenth day of the Month. And then was the Deluge at the highest For it is said Chap. 7. 24. That the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days That is according to the Assertors of the Old Hypothesis they were increasing or kept as high as ever for so long time Which as the Iews used to reckon their Months making them all 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to consist of thirty days apiece will amount to five Months precisely So that count from the seventeenth day of the Second Month when the Flood began to come in to the sevâ—â—teenth day of the Seventh Month when the Ark sat upon the Mountains of Ararat and the hundred and fifty days will be expired just But then if the Ark rested upon those Mountains at that time and in that manner as is said it is most certain that the tops of the highest Hills could never be covered by Water fifteen Cubits upward For then if the bottom of the Ark had rested on the Mountains the whole Body of it must have been quite under Water and we know not how deep The reason is because there are Mountains in the World very much higher than those of Ararat For by those Mountains the Assertors of the common Hypothesis generally understand the Mountains of Armenia And the Vulgar says expresly That the Ark rested upon the Mountains of Armenia And the Septuagint sometime renders Ararat Armenia Yea the Chaldee Paraphrast uses the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as pointing at the Cordiaean Hills But that there are Mountains much higher than they is evident enough from most considerable Writers Sir Walter Raleigh declares that the Mountains of Ararat or any parts of them are not of equal stature to many other Mountains in the World And again That the Mountains of Gordiaei are the highest of the World the same is absolutely false Nor does he deliver this as his own judgment only but presently adds That the best Cosmographers with others that have seen the Mountains of Armenia find them far inferior and underset to divers other Mountains even in that part of the World and elsewhere And then he instanceth in Athos as one â—ar surmounting any Mountain that ever hath been seen in Armenia and cites Castaldus
seen there in their days they were probably over-rul'd by History or Hearsay and so easily mis-led by such as went before them And indeed that the thing was utterly false we have great reason to conclude when if it were true it must either impeach Scripture which in the sense of all Men hitherto taught all-a-long that the Flood was fifteen Cubits above the tops of the highest Mountains and that in the height of this Flood the Ark rested on the top of Ararat or else clash with Geography which never allowed the Hills of Ararat to be by a great deal the highest or else sink the Ark quite under Water to make it rest upon those Hills 5. A Third Objection may be formed from the appearing of the tops of the Mountains upon the decrease of the Waters So it is recorded Gen. 8. 5. That the waters decreased continually until the tenth month and on the first day of the month were the tops of the mountains seen Now if the Mountains had not been quite under Water and so invisible for the time they were overwhelmed how could they be said to become visible again or to be seen upon the Floods going off In answer to this we may consider First That by the tops of the Mountains in Scripture are not always meant the higher but sometimes the inferior parts of them Thus it is prophesied Amos 1. 2. That the top of Carmel shall wither Where by top the sides or lower parts of that Hill may be intended chiefly For the withering of the meer top of it only would not 't is like have either caused or signified such a scarcity of feed as should have occasioned such affliction to Shepherds as is there foretold the principal part of an Hill for Pasture being usually towards the bottom of it So Exod. 19. 20. it is said That Moses went up to the top of mount Sinai But that he did not go up to the very top of that Mount we have great cause to believe for Two reasons First Because the LORD descended upon it in fire ver 18. in such a fire as was not only real but raging for it made the Mountain smoak as a furnace Yea it is said Exod. 24. 17. to be like devouring fire on the top of the mount And so devouring was it that it seiz'd most terribly upon the Mountain insomuch that it is said to have burnt with fire unto the midst of heaven Deut. 4. 11. But how then could Moses go up to the top of this Mountain Nor Secondly could he well do it by reason of its height and the great difficulty of its ascent For Iosephus assures us That it is the highest Hill beyond comparison of all that Country and long of its strange height and its steep inaccessible craggy Rocks is not only unfrequented by Men but not to be lookt up to it puts the eye to such pain And yet if Moses did not go up to the top of this Hill in strictness we know not how much below it he might present himself And in case he stood on any lower ridge or part of that Mount it is clear that by the tops of high Hills in Scripture may be meant but the lower parts of the same And therefore where we read 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Deut. 33. 15. from the top of the mountains the Arabic reads it from the roots of them And so by the tops of the Mountains being seen upon the drying up of the Flood will be meant no more than that some lower parts of them not far from the bottoms were made bare and expos'd to view again which before were hidden under Water or Secondly By the tops of the Mountains said to be seen on the first day of the tenth Month may be meant but the tops of some lower Mountains which were quite overwhelm'd with Water by its ascending fifteen Cubits upward upon the highest parts of the plain of the Earth If these two Considerations will not satisfie we must carry on the Enquiry a little farther and seek for a Third And truly some one or other must needs be found out For certain it is that the tops of the highest Mountains could not be said to be seen by reason of the Waters sinking down below them because as we have sufficiently proved they could not possibly be above them That is according to the common measures Men have taken of the Flood and the usual sense they have put upon the sacred Story of it Thirdly Therefore in way of answer to the Objection we consider that the tops of the Mountains may be said to be seen at the time mentioned upon account of their emergency out of darkness not out of the Waters Nor let it seem strange that at the time of the Flood there should be darkness over the whole face of the Earth For then there was a solution of the continuity of the Atmosphaere all the vapours almost contained in the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or comprehension of it turning into Clouds and resolving a great pace into Rains And as it is but reasonable to think it was dark then considering the state of the Atmosphaere so it was very requisite it should be so For when the Rains began to fall and that at such a rate as to threaten in good earnest to make that Deluge which Noah had foretold this must needs startle and alarm Men dreadfully Then had there been light in the World in any good degree what could have been expected but that People who dwelt nearest to that place where the Ark stood should have run directly to it and rudely assaulting and invading it have turned out Noah his Friends and all Creatures and have taken immediate possession of it themselves as the only probable means of their own preservation And therefore that the Earth was then wrapt up in nightsome darkness it being not only likely in respect of Nature but necessary in point of Providence we need not fear to conclude And as it was dark all the time that the Flood was coming in and waxing so the Air might well be very foggy and misty during the continuance and decrease of the same For the Atmosphaere being put into so great a disorder and even dissolution as it was it could not quickly resettle into its wonted clearness And then we must heedfully attend to that account of the Floods abatement and drying up which the HOLY GHOST has given us The waters returned from off the Earth continually says he Gen. 8. 3. Where the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 returned does often signifie in Scripture the returning of a thing into its Principles So Psal. 90. 3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 return ye sons of men As much as to say be resolved into Dust and Spirit the primigenial parts or constituent principles of your Nature And Gen. 3. 19. it is used in the like sense 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to dust shalt thou return And Psal. 146. 4. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
and so have put by the Primitive Earth by marring the Basis whereon it should have stood Yet when all is said I would have this Exception lookt upon as propounded in way of Quaery Whether the unsettledness of the Chaotic Waters would not have hindred the Production of the first Earth rather than as a positively assertory Objection as if it must necessarily have done it 4. And here I cannot but remark the exceeding precariousness of the Theorist's Hypothesis in reference to the Chaos and the Formation of the Earth out of it For that that Mass which consisted of and was then first dissolved into the simplest elementary Bodies in the World should cast forth one Body I mean Liquor which in its purest na-natural state could contain so much Oiliness in it That this Oily matter should rise just when it did so as to be sit to receive the Earthly Particles in their fall out of the Air whereas had they come down sooner they had been drowned in the Water That this Oiliness should be of just such a quantity as was sufficient for use just enough that is to mix with those Particles and to make them into a good Soil whereas if it had been more it would have overflowed them and made the Earth useless as a greazy clod if less it would not have imbib'd them but they must have lien loose above in a fine and dry powder that would have rendred the Earth barren as an heap of Dust. That the Waters also should be of a due Proportion just sufficient that is to make a temporary Deluge and then to retire into the Deep and make a durable Sea whereas had there been much less the Earth upon its Disruption could not have been drowned and had there been much more it must have been quite swallowed up for ever That all these things should be thus is altogether precarious and not to be admitted but upon better evidence than on their behalf is given in For here any one will be of the Theorist's Judgment as he has declared it That things of moment such as he treats of are not to stand upon weak and tottering dubious and conjectural Grounds but to be founded upon SOME CLEAR AND INVINCIBLE EVIDENCE But then he who talks at this rate ought when he writes of such momentous things to make them out very clearly and evidently Else by what he says more in the same paragraph he proclaims himself guilty of a rash attempt even of tampering where he ought not to meddle and of striving to enter at that Door where GOD and Nature have both agreed to shut him out For did they think good to let him in it should be by such a way as is certain he tells us and wherein he should walk with the aforesaid evidence on his side Now this I say being his declared Judgment the Phaenomena's above-mentioned should have been more fully explained and made out and also more throughly confirmed and made good 5. But besides those there is another behind which if lookt into will not only be found as Precarious as any of the rest but also Vnphilosophical And that is The descent of the Terrestrial Particles out of the Air which constituted the Praediluvian Earth For of those particles the Theory will have that Earth to be made Which were a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or kind of excrementitious Sediment that the Body of the Air threw out when it purified it self But that such a prodigious quantity of gross and feculent substance should then lodge in that part of the Chaos which was so light and volatile at the same time as to mount above other Bodies and also keep it self upon the wing and play in open places might justly be questioned For if such a vast deal of drossy stuff were mixed with the Aereal matter then whatever natural disposition through levity it might have to mount up that one would think should have so pinioned its Wings as to have kept it down at least from rising very high and have been so heavy a clog upon it as to have spoiled its playing in open places at least its playing up so far as the Moon Yet that the Theory allows it to have done so is evident For it supposeth them to have showred down not only from the middle Regions but from the whole capacity or extent of those vast spaces betwixt the Moon and us A supposition that is not only precarious but also seems I say to be somewhat Vnphilosophical For though upon the Theory's account it was necessary these Particles should fill such vast spaces that so the Air might be able to contain enough of them and also have room enough wherein to move and by motion to purge it self and cast them out yet how will the Phaenomenon fall in with a smooth Philosophic Explication For in short either the Bounds of the Chaos and the Sphaere of its gravity as I may call it did extend as high as the Moon or they did not If they did not how came these Particles there Especially in such plenty as to descend from thence in showers Yea how could they come down at all Let Philosophy make it out In case the Bounds of the Chaos and the Sphere of its gravity did reach so high as the Moon then why did not she come tumbling down with those Particles or rather sooner than they as being much heavier Let Philosophy give an account of that For I think we have proved she was then in our neighbourhood though it seems there might be more reason for that Doubt than we were at first aware of 6. And as this Assertion is not very consistent with Philosophy in it self so in the Consequence of it it is against Scripture That assures us That Light was the Product of the first day And as it was made then so it was made visible in these inferiour Regions But this could not be in case the Earth were formed according to The Theory the Air would have been so full of terrestrial Dregs For it then contained enough of such Dregs to compose an Earthly Orb of above one and twenty Thousand Miles in Perimeter and of a depth or thickness we know not how great And such unspeakable measures of Earth in the Air must needs fill it with darkness yea with such a spissitude and opacity as would utterly have spoiled the Pellucidness of it for a considerable height above the Chaos at least For the coarsest and heaviest of the floating Particles setling continually towards the Chaos and the nearer they approached it drawing still into a narrower compass by reason the spaces out of which they descended were much larger than those into which they gathered the mighty throng of them they being crowded together as close as their gravity could squeez them in their fall would have made a Ring of such darkness about the Chaos as would have been like to that which once plagued Egypt It would have been palpable
According to the Ancients who stretched it from one Tropic to the other it was about Seven and forty Degrees wide that is near Three thousand Miles But yield it to have been but half so broad and what Men could ever have marched over it For as under their feet there would have been vehemently hot and scalding Sands so the scorching fury of the glaring Sun would have beat intolerably upon their Heads And then what should have guided them through this burning Tract where was nothing of Path or Way-mark to be seen Suppose they had the Direction of Stars by night yet who or what should have led their Caravans by day And yet had they journied without sure conduct whither might they have wandred and to what length might they have spun out their rangeing Progress at the shortest too long and tedious to be born Especially if we consider that in those their Travels they could have met with no manner of shelter or refreshment No not so much as with a Grove or a Tree with a Lake or a River with one poor Fountain or Spring of Water or a single puff of fresh and cooling Air. And say the driest burningest part of this Zone had not been above Five hundred Miles over yet who durst have thought of venturing through it as not knowing its extent And who that had advanced a few Furlongs into it could have been able to have gone forward or to return alive None will be surprized at this that have a right Notion of the nature of this Region or of the excessive degree of its raging heat The Theory speaks it in these words which all circumstances weighed carry no Hyperbole in them It was a wall of fire indeed or a Region of flame which none could pass or subsist in no more than in a Furnace Now if Adam were seated at first in the Southern Hemisphere of the Earth as the Theory holds then how could he or any of his Off-spring have removed into this Northern one there being such a fiery Partition betwixt them Yet we are told of Providence's transplanting Adam into this Hemisphere after he had laid the Foundation of a World in the other But that Adam in any ordinary Providential way and no extraordinary one is mentioned should cross a wall of fire or a Region of flame we know not how many hundred Miles broad which none could pass or subsist in no more than in a Furnace may justly be concluded a thing impossible And then equally impossible it was that this Hemisphere of ours should ever be peopled by Adam or his Progeny before the Flood To say that GOD led Adam through this Mediterranean fiery Zone the Barrier betwixt the two Hemispheres which nothing could pass either way as soon as he had sinned and so very timely that it was not as yet grown hot and burning might be a useful suggestion in the case were it not perfectly forestalled and quite shut out by what was said before namely That Adam was not transplanted into this Hemisphere till he had laid the Foundation of a World in the other Which suppose to have been done in Twenty Years time as it could not well be done in less yet in that interval the fire would have been so kindled in the Torrid Zone as to have made it too hot a Climate for him to have gone through If in this our Land we have no Rain for eight or ten weeks together in a Summer we see how lamentably the Ground is scorched and how the surface of it is turned as it were into a meer Turf and yet all this while the Sun is not perpendicular to us by two or three thousand Miles But how inconceivably hot then must the middle circumference of the First Earth have been supposing it subject to his perpendicular Beams not only for ten weeks but twenty years together and no one Cloud to have overshadowed it and no drop of Rain to have fallen upon it all that while It is said to have been the Opinion of Athanasiâ—s and Ephrem Syrus That Paradise into which Adam was put lay beyond the Ocean and that he wading through it made towards the Country where he was formed and at length dying there was buried in Mount Calvary Upon what good grounds this conceit was built I know not but by no means can it escape the Censure of absurdity Yet the vast Ocean it self might as well be â—ordable to the first Father of Mankind as this glowing Zone passable And therefore the difficulty of getting through that Ocean was one thing that induced St. Austin to follow Lactantius and the Ancients generally in denying Antipodes For in their Judgment an immense Ocean begirt the Earth after the manner this Zone is supposed to have done and parted our Northern from the Southern Hemisphere For which reason the good Father deeming it impossible that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Inhabitants of that side of the Earth which is opposite to ours should ever spring from the same Stock with us and be of Adam's Race he fairly concluded that there were no such It is too absurd to say that any Men could out of this get into that part of the Earth by sailing over the huge Ocean as also it would be to say That Mankind was founded there of that first Man Adam And tâ—erefore by the way how could St. Austin if consistent with himself place Paradise in the Anti-hemisphere or Continent opposite to ours as the Theory understands he did when he thus expresly declareâ— it to be his Judgment That Mankind was not propagated there and could not be transported from hence thither 5. Again Had the Earth held such a Right Situation to the Sun it would have put by the Rains which helpt to raise the Flood I confess it is granted That at that time the rains fell forty days and forty nights together and that throughout the face of the whole Earth And this is but a certain truth and so a necessary concession But then it is more than the Hypothesis can bear which makes Rain impossible while the first Earth stood in any other place but the Frigid Zones And therefore to admit such general Rains is to desert or overthrow the Hypothesis and to suppose the Situation of the Earth changed before it was so So incompatible were Rains to the first order or constitution of Nature as fixed by the Theory that a Particular Hydrography was calculated by it to serve the prediluvian Age with Water But then the same System or Frame of Nature which rendred that World so impluvious all along would have done so at the time of the Flood likewise Yea in that critical juncture when Rains were most useful it would have taken most place and made them least plentiful For then the Earth it self would have been hottest and driest and the Subterraneous Abyss most exhausted Nor can these general Rains be pretended to come from the
was so at first It might then be Oval or oblong and its present Roundness may be owing to its Disruption I reply Admit the Earth was oblong before the Disruption and the falling in of its outward Orb could hardly reduce it into a Spherical Form but would rather have made it more oblong still For the Orb we speak of must in likelihood break and fall in first about the Aequator or Middle parts of it For there it was most heated and there it was most cracked and there it was most hollow underneath the Waters of the Abyss being much exhaled And these parts falling those whereabouts the Tropics are now might fall soon after them Whereas the Poles of this Orb being turned with a shorter or narrower Arch were much the stronger And then being remote from the Sun and continually wet were not disposed to break at all through driness and brittleness as the Regions about the Aequator were So that the Poles might remain whole and keep those very places almost which they held before For as for their sinking lower and coming much nearer together than they were it was not likely because that huge Circle of Ground which fell in about the Aequator and Tropics would have intercepted and hindred them For though the Poles were hollow they could not slip over the Earth which fell in betwixt them and clasp it in their cavities in regard they were not wide enough For the Orb being Oval was narrowest towards the Poles So that the falling in of the Earth must have rendred it rather more than less Oval While the Poles of it would have continued at their usual distance almost and the intermediate Regions by dropping into the Abyss would have been contracted into streighter Dimensions of Circumference 5. Or say the Disruption of the Earth would not have made it more Oval than it was yet surely it would not have made it less For as the Earth in all probability would have broke in first about the Aequator for the reasons alledged so those Fragments being nearer the inward Earth than the Polar parts would sooner have reached it in their fall than these could have done Especially considering these Polar parts according to what was said before must have fallen entire in two vast Caps as it were For so they would have contained such abundance of Air as must have rendred their descent very slow much slower than that of the Aequinoctial and Tropical Fragments Which being of quite another fashion that did not inclose the Air so much would have descended a great deal faster Insomuch that before the Polar Hemispheres let me call them could have got down to the interiour Earth all the ground that fell in about the Aequator and Tropics would have been settled there and fit to receive those mighty Hemispheres when they should have come and whelmed themselves whole upon it Or grant they should have broke by pitching upon that vast heap of Earth which fell down betwixt them yet there they must have laid in a confused posture where they flew in pieces and so would have helped to make the Earth oblong In a word suppose they did sink down as far proportionably towards the common Centre as the Aequinoctial and Tropical parts did yet if they sank no farther as indeed why should they all circumstances considered the Earth in case it were Oval at first must of necessity continue so CHAP. X. 1. That there were Mountains before the Flood proved in way of Exception to the Theory out of Scripture 2. And that they could not be made by the Falling in of the first Earth argued from the Mountains in the Moon 3. And from the Opinion of the Talmudists and others 4. How Mountains might arise in the very beginning 5. There must be Mountains in the first World because there were Metals in it 1. TWO Properties of the Prediluvian Earth we have done with its Continual Aequinox and its Oval Figure We must now proceed to its next Property or rather to the former Branch of it The exterior face of it was smooth and uniform without Mountains But neither can this be asserted without some violence to the Inspired Writings LORD thou hast been our refuge from one Generation to another Before the Mountains were brought forth and the Earth and the World were made Thou art GOD from everlasting So we read Psal. 90. 1 2. Where the scope of the Psalmist being to set forth GOD's Eternity and his early Providence over his People he declares of him That as he was always a Shelter and Protection to them from Age to Age so he existed before the Creation even before the Mountains were brought forth and the Earth and the World were made Where his ranking the Production of the Mountains with the Formation of the Earth and the World speaks them coaeval with the same And which is not unworthy of remark Moses says the Title of it composed this Psalm to whom the Rise of all things and the Order of their rising into being was better known than to any Man born Yet this Moses as he illustrates GOD's Eternity à parte ante by his Preexistence to the Universe so he measures his most timely care over his Church as much by the Moâ—ntains duration as by the duration of the Earth or World Thereby giving us to understand That the one is as good a Rule as the other as bearing the same date of Existence and issuing forth into being not by a far distant Succession but all together as fast as nature could permit And however some Mountains might be produced long after others yet that will make nothing against us if we do but suppose the Psalmist to speak of the Earliest This by the way does sufficiently confute the Peripatetiâ— error touching the Worlds Eternity For if GOD was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 before the Earth and habitable World 't is certain the World had a beginning and could not be from everlasting as hâ— was And the same Moses makes mention not only of lasting Hills but of ancient Mountains Deut. 33. 15. But had there been no Mountains till the Flood he would scarce have given them that Epithet as being but few ages older than himself I confess 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies the East as well as ancient And the Samaritan and Syriaâ— Pagnin and Montanus render 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Mountains of the East But not so well For Ephraim and half the Tribe of Manasseh Ioseph's Posterity mentioned ver 17. in whose Land the Blessings of these Mountains are here prophesied of by Moses were planted in that Division of Palestine called Samaria which being on this side of Iordan and upon the Mediterranean Sea lay towards the West and consequently its Mountains could not be called Mountains of the Cast. And as for the other Half of Manasseh though they were seated beyond Iordan yet I do not find that the Mountains in their allotment were known by the name
was built and the Ark prepared before the Flood But how cloud either be done without Iron Tools Some Barbarous people I have been told do strange Feats in way of Architecture by sharp stones But the Theory allows not so much as greater loose stones or rough Pâ—bbles in the primitive Earth So that if they had not Instruments of Iron the Men of that Age could never have compassed the Works aforesaid Yet all such Instruments are positively excluded by the Theory in these words Nor were there of old Instruments belonging to War or BVILDINGS Nor need we wonder there should not when there were no Materials whereof they could be made Nor could there be such Materials when the World afforded neither Mines nor Metals Nor could the World afford either of them when it was not possible the Earth should yield them And that it was not possible for the Earth to yield them the Theory again does implicitly affirm where it says that the first World was wholly artificial and that the furniture or provision of things which it had was not of such as were bred but of such as were made But the worst is still behind Tubal-Cain as Heaven assures us was an Instructer of every Artificer in Brass and Iron Gen. 4. 22. Yet the Theorist professeth and that in the second publication of his Hypothesis after he had time to consider well as for subterraneous things Metals and Minerals I believe they had none in the first Earth and the happier they no Gold nor Silver nor Courser Metalls But then how Tubal-Cain could learn his Trade himself and teach it unto others must be a Riddle too hard for Oedipus to untie Or else which is the very truth this Assertion of the Theory must be notoriously false and not only â—latly but loudly contradictory to the most express Word of the Infallible GOD. This alone should all that has been said besides fail is enough to blow up and finally to explode this New Hypothesis of the Earth's Formation I mean as it shews its great incongruity not only to Scripture but also to Philosophy For had the Earth been originally framed as that teacheth it was then grant there could have been a Metallic Region in that part of it under the Water yet that Metals or Matter for any one of them should ever have ascended through the Abyss into the upper Crust of the First Earth would have been utterly impossible And therefore that egregious Philosopher Des-Cartes makes this the reason why Metals are not found in all places of the Earth quia per aquas evehi non possunt because they cannot be carried or drawn up through the subterraneous Waters Princ. part 4. § 73. CHAP. XI 1. That there were open Seas before the Flood made evident from Scripture 2. Such Seas necessary then as Receptacles for Great Fishes 3. The Abyss being no fit place for them 4. A farther Confirmation of open Seas 5. An Objection against them answered 6. Another Objection answered 7. A Third answered 1. HE that from the Clifts about it or in sailing through it beholds and contemplates the Watry Ocean That views it so far as eyes and thoughts can reach in the stateliness of its Depth and wide Expansion That considers what vast and numberless Rivers it continually drinks up and yet is never the fuller for all these Accessions How far it extends its ceruleous Arms and how much it disgorges at Millions of Mouths and yet is never the emptier for all its profusions That sees its incessant and unwearied Motions and how it ebbs and flows with haughty and incontrollable Reciprocations That observes how it surges with every Wind and surlily swells upon every Storm and lifting up tumid scornful Waves foams as angry at its Disturbance That marks how it frets and rages in a Tempest and rolls it self up into liquid Mountains as if it thrâ—atned to mingle Floods with the Clouds or in a pang of Indignation to quâ—nch the Stars or wash down those Lights hanged out by Heaven He that gazeth on the spatious Seas or revolves such thoughts as these of it in his mind would be amazed to think that so immense an Element was once lockt up in a Vault under Ground and wonder where the Earth should have Cellerage to hold it He would scarce believe that so proud and strong and furious a Monster could be kept in Chains or was ever so tame as to be coop'd up contentedly in a subterraneous Cave He would hardly be perswaded that it could be made to hide its head in an hole beneath and to lie quiet and still in a nightsom Dungeon where for many Ages it never saw the Sun But how odd and uncoâ—th soever it may seem yet thus it was says this Hypothesis The same Primary Assertion of it that says The Exterior face of the first Earth was smooth and uniform without Mountains says also it was without a Sea All that prodigious Mass of Waters which Imagination as comprehensive as it is knows not well how to measure was once shut up in an invisible Cell and being clapt under Hatches lay incognito as long as the first World stood Not a Drop of it appeared all that while but what strained forth by evaporation or transpired through the Pores of the thick skin'd Earth when by the heat of the Sun it was put into a sweat As for the main Body of the Waters they lurked and hid themselves in a secret Groâ—â—o nor could they be brought to quit their latent Dwellings or to look forth of their close and dark Retirements till the Roof of their Lodgings fâ—ll in upon them and justled them out of their Mansions to make room for it self But against this there lies the usual Exception namely That it fights with the Holy Scripture For that informs us That when GOD made Adam he gave him Dominion over the fish of the Sea But according to this Assertion of the Theory Adam never saw the Sea nor one Fish in it all his life long though it lasted well nigh a thousand Years and so impossible it was that he should have or exercise such a Dominion And it is farther considerable That Adam's Dominion over the Sea was not only granted him by Patent from Heaven but moreover was part of GOD's Image which was stamped on him Whereinsoever the whole did consist this I say seems to have been part of the Impress For GOD said Let us make Man in our Image after our likeness and let him have dominion â—ver the fish of the sea Gen. 1. 26. And so to shut up the Sea within the Earth till the Flood is to deny to Men a part of that Empire wherewith their Maker was pleased to invest them and to deprive them of a piece of his glorious Image which he put upon them For none could share fully in the one or the other but they who lived after the general Deluge If it be said That Men
loss they would have been at for Pâ—ey how could they have seen to direct their Motions having no manner of Light at any time to guide them So that upon occasion they must have râ—n at tilt upon one another and being inclosed between two Earths would have been in danger of stranding themselves both above and below Secondly It would have been a place as close as it was dark And therefore what shift should they have made for Air I think I may say for Breath For as for Whales and other Fishes that have Lungs Pliny says It is fully resolved by all Writers that they breathe And his Opinion it is That all Water-creatures do the same after their manner In proof of which he offers several Arguments not to be despised As their Panting Yawning Hearing Smelling c. To which add their Dying upon being frozen up for any time Or if they be alive their greedy flying to any little hole made in the Ice whereat the Air enters But in the Abyss they could have had neither Air nor Breath and so for lack of the same must all have been smothered Lastly It would have been a place as Cold as it was dark and close For the same Cover of Earth of unknown thickness that would have hindred Light and Air from piercing into the Abyss must have kept out the Suns cherishing and benign Warmth too So that could they have struggled with and overcome the two first Inconveniences yet here they would have met with a Third insuperable Could they have lived without Light and Breath yet they could not have multiplied without the Influence of Heaven The want of that would have chil'd and quench'd the desires of Procreation in them and rendered them impotent that way Thus Winter we see is no season for Production of Fishes as being destitute of that quickning power and encouragement which the Presence of the Sun affords 4. Farther yet That there were Seas in the Beginning even on the Third Day we are taught Gen. 1. 10. GOD called the dry land Earth and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas And why should they not be such Seas as we have now For we have no more grounds to think or say That the Waters there mentioned were an invisible potential or proleptic Sea than we have to imagine or affirm that the dry Land there spoken of was an invisible potential or proleptic Earth And that there were open Seas then may be argued from the Waters we read of under the firmament Gen. 1. 6 7. And GOD said Let there be a firmament in the midst of the Waters and let it divide the waters from the waters And GOD made the firmament and divided THE WATERS WHICH WERE VNDER THE FIRMAMENT from the waters which were above the Firmament But had there been none but River-waters in the first World and not such an open and huge Collection of Waters as we now see the Firmament could not so properly have been said to divide the waters from the waters For then it must rather have been in the midst betwixt the Earth and the Waters and so must have divided the Earth from the Waters the Earth which was under the Firmament from the Waters above it For as for the River-waters they would have been too inconsiderable to have had the Partition made by the Firmament predicated of them in exclusion of the Earth or in preference to it It would have been as if the KING should have said Let a Wall be built betwixt the Thames and the Conduits of London to part them without taking any notice at all of the City which is infinitely more remarkable than the Conduits are But therefore the Theory presents us with a new Notion of the Firmament and makes it to be quite another thing than what it has always been said to be namely That Cortex or Outward Region of Earth spread and founded upon the Abyss And so the Waters of the Abyss under that Earth must be the Waters under the Firmament I cite but two Paragraphs to this purpose Any one at the first view might be able to guess that this exterior frame which GOD establisht upon the Abyss is to be understood by that Firmament which GOD is said to have establisht between the Waters below and above Gen. 1. 6. 7. And again As to the Firmament between the waters it was a remarkable Phaenomenon of the first Earth or rather the first habitable Orb it self which every way encompassed and shut up the Abyss and so divided the Waters above from those below But this truly is so far from giving any satisfaction that it will rather bring the whole Hypothesis to confusion I mean while thus it runs against Scripture again and that most directly and shamefully For the Firmamentum interaqueum Firmament that divided the Waters was so far from being a Frame or an Orb of Earth or the first habitable Earth that as the DIVINEST SPIRIT tells us it was that wherein the Fowls were to fly which yet were to fly above the Earth Gen. 1. 20. Yea in that very Verse it is said to be the Firmament of Heaven And by GOD himself is stiled Heaven GOD called the Firmament Heaven ver 8. Even that very Firmament which divided the Waters as we learn from the two foregoing Verses And therefore the waters under the Firmament in the seventh Verse are said in the ninth Verse to be the waters 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 under the Heavens I confess the Theorist twits us for understanding by the Firmament what we commonly do calling it an Vnphilosophic thing But I forbear to retort It is enough to shew that the advantage lies so much on our side and that the ingenious Philosopher is so utterly lost in his Notion And since to make the Earth before the Flood to be this Firmament is so impossible as being manifestly repugnant to the Truth of GOD what remains but that it should be that diaphanous Expansum stretched out betwixt us and the Clouds which as it is constituted of Air chiefly so it is the place wherein Fowls do fly according as Providence was pleased to appoint And to seal up this for a certain truth it is known that the Hebrews have no other word whereby to express Air but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Heaven or Firmament Only whereas this Aereous Expansion extends from hence to the cloudy Regions where are the Wates above the Firmament and therefore are called Waters above the Heavens we must note that there is another Firmament mention'd by Moses I mean that Expanse of indefinite vastness wherein the Celestial Lights are fixed for as we read Gen. 1. 17. GOD set them in the Firmament of Heaven But then this Aereous space we speak of being the true Firmament this proves there were open Seas at first Else as was said before this Firmament must have divided the Waters from the Earth whose
preterintentional and undesigned changes as we may call them is over-ruled by a power superior to her own and also joined with such Wisdom as orders her much better than she could do her self Lastly We may presume that this Person would certainly have all his Grounds to be watered That the one might be fruitful as well as the other and all of them recompence the impartial care with a general Fructification And here the Clouds are not at all defective but act their part in this necessary scene most unexceptionably For they spread out their melting dripping Wings even far and near and oblige the whole Earth where it needs not to say where it has no want with their most free and universal Disbursements And truly were it not for their Waters so copiously shed down on the Earth how miserable would the Condition of Mankind be But then when things are so well and happily ordered as that a blessing so needful is made so general and is every where so common and easie to be had what a bright beam of Conviction as to the Being of a DEITY darts forth and shines down from the blackest Clouds For who but the Great GOD could have stretcht out such Fountains in the Spatious Skies and for the needs of Men throughout the World have invented so adequate and incomparable Supplies Nor indeed are they Instruments of Common mercy only but vehicles oft times of Special secular Blessing and Prosperity to some Persons So it appears by Eliphaz's Advertisement who tells us That GOD giveth rain upon the earth and sâ—ndeth waters upon the fields to set up on high those that be low Iob 5. 10 11. Thus we have seen how beneficial Rain from the Clouds is as to the Earth In which respect when GOD pleases to send it 't is said to come for HIS Earth as above noted We have also seen how beneficial it is to Men in watering their Possessions and that in so singular a way as the wisest could never have projected a better In which regard it is said to come for mercy And so it does most signally not only as it fills Men with Temporal good things for the use of their Bodies but moreover as it is or may be a means of Spiritual Mercy to their Souls in ministring an Universal Argument to Mankind of the greatest Truth and most necessary to be believed of any in the World But then in the Third place to pursue and fill up the Holy Man's Distinction it is Vseful for Correction As GOD is infinitely Good in Himself so He alone is able to bring good out of evil That 's an Extract which none but the ALMIGHTY by a most Divine Chymistry peculiar to his MAJESTY is able to make And this he frequently does for those in whose pure Affections he dwells and rules All things work together for good to them that love GOD Rom. 8. 28. But then there is another piece of his Character as true That He will render recompence to his enemies and visit iniquities upon them that hate him And as he has numberless ways of doing this so he often effects it by changing things that are of necessary use into fatal influence Whereby he makes what is naâ—urally good for Men to be unto them judicially an occasion of falling Most evident is this in the Instance of Rain So needful is it that we cannot subsist without it Yet this very thing GOD turns when he pleases into an heavy Rod and by making it unseasonable or else excessive chasteneth his People sorely with it Yea he imploys it not only as a Rod to chastise his Servants but sometimes as a Sword to cut off his Adversaries and an Instrument of Vengeance to sweep away the ungodly in whole sholes or multitudes This was never so tragically apparent as in Noah's Flood when a great part of that generall destructive but deserved Blow which fell upon Mankind was given by this Weapon For by the Waters of Rain in conjunction with other Waters a period was put to the first sinful World by a very just though lamentable Catastrophe And when the Clouds and their Rains or the waters above the firmament were so very considerable in themselves and withal so very useful in way of Preservation to the Earth and in way of Mercy and Iudgment as reaching out GOD's favour and severity to the World Why should they not be worthy and highly worthy of Moses's notice in his Divine Cosmology The Holy Psalmist who we are sure spake by the same Spirit that Moses did looks upon the Clouds as mighty eminent and remarkable things For as he makes them to be GOD's Chariot Psal. 104. 3. So in another place he makes them notable Evidences of his Magnificence and Power His worship and strength is in the clouds 6. But against the Existence of open Seas at first it is farther objected thus Nor are the Waters gathered all into the same place for besides many salt Lakes and some gulfs of the Sea perhaps heretofore impervious the Caspian Sea which is of the same origin and antiquity with the great Ocean is far separate from it To take off which I answer That Moses does not say Let ALL the Waters be gathered into one place Though if he had the word ALL in Scripture is usually taken in a restrained sense to signifie but a Major part and so here it might have meant but the greater quantity of Waters To give Proof of this out of the Writings of Moses He tells us That ALL the servants of Pharaoh went up with Joseph to bury his Father Yet we cannot think that the Court was quite empty at that time and the King left wholly without Attendants And therefore ALL there must denote but a great many So he delivered it as a Law to Israel Three times in a year shall ALL thy males appear before the LORD thy GOD in the place which he shall chuse And yet we know that some of them at those times must be decrepit and some sick and some unclean and so unable to take such a Journey and unfit to make such an appearance And therefore by ALL here can be intended but many neither even as many as were capable of the performance or qualified for it And thus indeed ALL the Waters were gathered into one place That is the great quantity or main Body of them was so as they were incorporate and united in the Ocean Which whereever it diffuseth and insinuateth it self about the Earth is but one continued piece of Water and so fills one continued space with its huge moles I speak of a partial and sometimes a secret continuity for it is not always open visible and entire And that the Caspian Sea is a part of the great Sea and holds a secret commerce with it under ground as the dead Sea or Lake Asphaltites is presumed to do with the Mediterranean is clear from hence that it receives such
this is that will be made good by casting in on the present Earth's side the sinking hollownesses and declivities of Valleys and the swelling protuberancies and gibbosities of Mountains neither of which the first Earth had Farther if People before the Flood were generally so long-liv'd and this their Longaevity proceeded from a perpetual Aequinox and settled benign temperature of the Air as the Theory holds then surely there would not have been that difference as to length of days amongst them as we find there was Thus Lamech's Age as appears in the Catalogue of long livers was short of Mathuselah's near two hundred years Whereas if the Cause of long life had been so uniform and steddy a thing and so generally and equally influential upon all as the supposed Aequinox the Effect would have answered it Longaevity it self would have been more regular and not have admitted of so much disparity Though the truth is such an Aequinox and such an Earth as we have heard of would rather help to shorten life we may think than draw it out to such a length For certain it is that they must shut all Winds and Storms and Clouds and Rains and Thunders and Lightnings out of the First World And what are these but Crises of Nature wherein those malignities and noxious qualities which are lodged in her and would corrupt her suffer a Solution and are discharged just as morbific humors in the Body first ferment and then are thrown off by proper Evacuations But when there could be no Storms or Thunders to put the Air into Motion and to purge and clarifie it that so it might continue pure and wholsome it being always calm and too quiescent like stagnant Water must needs putrifie and contract such foulness as would make it unhealthy and apt to cause grievous Diseases and Death Egypt is almost in the pretended state of the Primitive Earth Situate between the second and fifth Climates its longest day not above thirteen hours and an half has seldom any Rain but is watered by a River Yet how subject is Cairo to raging Plagues and where are greater or oftener Mortalities than there I have only this to add here If the Aequinox spoken of were the cause of a general Longaevity in the Prediluvian World then other Animals would have lived as long proportionably as Men. That is to say Lions Bears Wolves Dogs c. And these multiplying five or six times to say no more as fast as Men might have soon over-powered and destroyed them Also Rats Mice Fowls c. multiplying in that World all the year round and in far greater numbers than the Creatures aforesaid would have destroyed Mankind another way not by devouring them but the Fruits of the Earth which they were to live upon Especially when Men lived wholly on such Fruits without eating Flesh and had no such ways and instruments at first of killing those Vermin as now they have Nor did the Earth yield such plenty of Corn of its own accord as to satisfie all granivorous Creatures without preying upon Mens Corps For upon Man's sin the ground was cursed And upon that Malediction it afforded not Corn without Tillage For thence forward even Adam himself was to eat of it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in sorrow or labour all the days of his life nor could he have Bread butâ— at the price of his Sweat And if the first Men had no Bread-Corn but what their industry fetch'd out of the Earth how could they defend it against the swarms of devouring Creatures increasing always upon them by numerous Procreations Even barely to name all the sorts of them that would be hurtful upon the account we speak of and would unspeakably abound in a World that knows no season but Spring is so great a Task that I am willing to decline it Yet that other Creatures did live proportionably as long as Mankind the Theory owns where it makes the Longaevity of both at once a Third Phaenomenon of Paradise and the first Ages And which is veâ—â— considerable also it makes the first Earth the common Mother of all sorts of Animals which naturally bred them and brought them forth Whence it must follow that those Terrigenous Creatures strangely increasing by spontaneous Births would soon have filled the World even this way alone though they had not propagated their respective Kinds with such inconceiveable multitudes as would have easily spoiled the Earth and ruin'd Mankind Who as they were made in the beginning but in one Pair so they were capable comparatively but of a slow Multiplication And so Beasts Fowls Creeping Things Insects and all manner of deadly and pernicious Creatures would have poured in upon them in vast numbers and with incredible forces while they were unable to defend themselves against them CHAP. XIV 1. The Flood could not be caused by the Dissolution of the Earth and its falling into the Abyss 2. For it would have been inconsistent with the Description of Paradise 3. It would have destroy'd the Ark. 4. And have made the Earth of a Form different from what now it is of 5. It would also have reduced it to a miserable Barrenness 6. And have overturned the Buildings which outstood the Deluge 7. And have rendred the Covenant which GOD made with Noah vain and insignificant 1. LET us now go on to the next Vital or Primary Assertion of the Theory which is this The Disruption and Fall of the Earth into the Abyss which lay under it was that which made the Vniversal Deluge and the Destruction of the old World For the vehement and piercing heat of the Sun having parched and chapped the exterior Orb of Earth and so greatly weakned it and also having raised great store of Vapours out of the Deep within this Orb their force at length grew to be such that the Walls inclosing them being unable to hold them the whole Fabric brake being torn in pieces as it were with an Earthquake At which time the Fragments of that Orb of Earth of several sizes plunging into the Abyss in several Postures by their weight and greatness and violent descent caused such a rageing Tumult in the Waters and put them into so fierce Commotions and furious Agitations as made them boil and flow up above the tops of the new made Mountains and so caused the general Deluge But against this we Except also and say that the Flood could not be thus effected for several reasons 2. First Because it would be inconsistent with Moses's Description of Paradise What that Description is we have seen already and 't is done according to the proper Rules of Topography For first he marks it out by its Quality a Garden Then by its name Eden Then by its Situation Eastward Then by its Inhabitant Man Then by its Furniture every Tree pleasant to the sight and good for Food And lastly by a River to Water it which rising in it or running through or by it
be more clear or express They prevailed fifteen Cubits and no more Fifteen Cubits upward that is upon the Earth Upon which they are said to prevail greatly and to prevail exceedingly in the two foregoing Verses that is upon the highest parts of its common surface And thus our Supposition stands supported by Divine Authority as being founded upon Scripture That tells us as plainly as it can speak that the Waters prevailed but fifteen Cubits upon the Earth The cited Text as a certain Plumb-line shows them to have been no deeper where the Earth bosoms out and is most prominent And so it puts an useful key into our hands to help us to unlock the mystery of the Deluge and to free the Doctrine of it from great difficulties and inconveniencies which have run Men it seems upon irrational and unintelligible means and methods of explaining it 4. Before we lay down any other Arguments in confirmation of the Hypothesis let us try if the light of Scripture which shows the Depth of the Flood so plainly will not also discover to us more clearly than yet has been done what those Fountains of the great Deep were which at the time of the Flood were cleaved or broken up And truly this it seems to do very notably giving us to understand that they were but certain Caverns Such Caverns I mean as were contained in Rocks and Mountains And so the breaking up of the Fountains of Tehom Rabbah or the great Deep which the Theory insists so much upon was no more than the breaking up of such Caverns This is evident from Psal. 78. 15. Where it is said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He clave the Rocks the Rock Rephidim and the Rock in Cadesh and gave them drink 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Abyssis magnis in the great Deeps That is he gave them that for drink which was in those great Deeps till he fetcht it out of them And what great Deeps could they be but great deep Caverns in the Rocks and the better to evince that the breaking open of the Fountains of the great deep Gen. 7. 11. and the cleaving of those Rocks in the Wilderness Psal. 78. 15. were in effect but the same thing the same Hebrew words are used in both places But though these Caverns be called Deeps we must not take them for profound places that went down into the Earth below the common surface of it on the contrary they were situate above it And therefore the Waters issuing out of them came running down So we find in the next verse of the same Psalm 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He caused them to run down And Wisd. 11. 4. the Water is said to be given de petra altissima from a most high Rock And Gejerus upon that place in the 78 th Psalm does not only observe that GOD made the Waters to descend ex petra praeeminente out of a very high Rock but also notes the reason why he did so ut origo aquarum omnibus pateret that the source of the Waters might appear to all We cannot but remember likewise that this water is said 1 Cor. 10. 4. to follow the Israelites Which speaks it to have had a fall from an elevated Situation And indeed if it had not it could not so well have run along with their Camp perhaps to Cadesh where we next find them at a want for Water Though if the Rock in Rephidim did supply them all-a-long in their intermediate marches and stages we must needs conclude there were extraordinary accessions of Water into the great Deeps or Caverns of it out of which it flowed with so very plentiful and lasting Streams The least that can be imagined is That they were so framed as to draw abundance of Vapours into themselves which being dissolved in the Vaults within from thence gushed out in a continued Torrent Not unlike to the Waters in Tenariff which every day pour down from a most high mountain being generated I conceive of great store of Vapours which gather in some large hollownesses of the same and through secret passages ascend to its Top. For on it there stands a certain Tree continually covered with a Misty Cloud which every day melting at Noon discharges it self so copiously as to serve the whole Island on which there never yet fell a showre save that one which was forty days long I have set down the high situation of these Caverns or Fountains as forestalling an Objection that might thus be made If the great Deeps whose Waters help'd to raise the Flood were no other than Caverns the Waters they afforded would contribute nothing to that use for as soon as they had come out others would have run into their places immediately and so they had as good have kept in still But now these Caverns being of an eminent or raised site the Waters they yielded towards the Flood might help to swell it to its due pitch according as we have set it without any kind of danger or indeed possibility either of their own returning or of others running into their room In case it be urged that Caverns especially Caverns so high situate cannot properly be called great DEEPS I answer The HOLY GHOST has been pleased to give them that name and his authority is not to be disputed So we find him styling the Red Sea 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the great Deep as big a name as can be given to the vastest profoundest Ocean now and a bigger than was given to the whole Mass of Waters at first it being called but the Deep simply which yet for a Sea was neither Great nor Deep Though those Caverns which were opened at the Flood might well be as Deep as they were Great measuring their Depths from above downward towards the surface of the Earth And whereas the Psalmist speaks of the great DEEPS as of many and Moses of the great DEEP as but of one this does not argue but the same thing might be meant by both For as in Scripture a Plural word is sometimes but of a Singular signification thus the Ark is said to rest upon the Mountains of Ararat when it could rest but upon one single Mountain so a Singular word does sometimes carry the force of a Plural one with it thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Quail is put for the numberless multitude of them Exod. 16. 13. And therefore the different Numbers used by the Holy Writers in this Case need not set them at variance or imply that they intended different things And then tho' Moses speaks of the great Deep singularly as but of one yet he speaks of all the Fountains of that Deep as of many which makes the Expression somewhat more parallel to the Psalmist's great Deeps And then though the Psalmist puts the Substantive DEEPS in the Plural Number yet he puts GREAT the Adjective in the Singular and so goes as far to meet Moses as I may say as Moses comes to
meet him And lastly the Septuagint and Vulgar both do render the Psalmist's DEEPS in the Singular Number Deep as if it were no matter whether Number were used Should it be urged farther yet that no such Deeps or Caverns are found in the Earth now adays and therefore it may be questioned whether there ever were any or no It might be answered Though there are many of them yet they may be of no easie discovery as being inclosed with very thick Walls and shut up within vastest and highest Mountains or Rocks And truly so closely and strongly were they immur'd in the Prediluvian State that had not ALMIGHTY GOD broken them up by his own Power as he did those in Rephidim they might have continued entire and undiscerned to this very day Though when by Omnipotence these mighty Cisterns of Nature were let go and their Waters run out in a great measure no wonder at all that the sides of many of them should cave in making the Mountains or Rocks whereunto they belonged very rough and craggy and deformed things and scattering huge Stones and such heaps of Rubbish whereabouts they fell as might imitate the Ruines of a dissolved World and show not only the Scars of a broken-fac'd Earth but moreover as one would think the very Entrails of it strangely burst out and as it were torn and mangled all to pieces And as a little marvel it is again that the Crowns of several high Rocks and Hills sinking right down into the Caverns beneath them and being not able to fill them up should leave huge Pans on their Tops respectively While innumerable others yet that were broached and well nigh drawn off at the Flood have for many Ages stood dry and gaping and have been Dens for wild Beasts and sometimes Refuges and sometimes it may be Habitations for Men as being of very considerable Capacities Of this sort 't is like was that Cave in Engedi which was able to receive David and his Six hundred Men and for ought we know might have held as many more For these are said to remain in the sides of the Cave and were so well hidden that King Saul who was there at the same time perceived not one of them And that there were store of such Caves in Palestine into which in time of Invasion by Enemies c. the Inhabitants of the Country used to retire even by whole Villages or Towns at once is very well known Iosephus makes mention of some of these Caves in high Rocks and Mountains which being possessed by Robbers King Herod was fain to let down armed Souldiers an unspeakable depth into them in Chests with Iron Chains to fight the Wretches in those their Fastnesses Strabo likewise reports That towards Arabiae and Iturea there are steep Mountains famous for deep Caves one of which is able to receive Four thousand Men. Nor is it to be doubted but that in all rocky and mountainous Regions there are plenty of most capacious Caverns The Theory it self allows them to be more common in such places than elsewhere Should any go on to object That the Waters issuing out of these Caverns upon their Disruption would have made but a slender contribution towards raising the mighty Universal Deluge I answer First They contributed as much to that purpose as Divine Providence thought fit and necessary Secondly They increased the Waters which ran down the Mountains at the time of the Flood and so did service in hindring both Men and other Creatures from ascending those Mountains which might be the chief work they were designed to do Thirdly Scripture it self lays the main of the Flood upon the Rain-waters ascribing it mostly to them For so GOD declares Gen. 7. 4. Yet seven days and I will cause it to rain upon the Earth forty days and forty nights and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from of the face of the Earth Where the great Deluge which was to destroy the then Animal World is owned as proceeding from the forty days Rain Intimating that the Waters of it were to rise mainly from them and as for those flowing out of the Fountains of the Deep they were not to be of equal quantity or use And indeed had they been so they would have swelled the Flood to too high a pitch And therefore though they made but the least part of that fatal Deluge yet so long as they did what was proper and needful and what the great GOD intended they should do that was sufficient If Lastly it be objected How could Waters come into these Caverns I answer By a very natural and easie way even the same way that Springs do now rise and flow out of Rocks and Mountains For great Mountains having great Caverns in them upon the account of their Origination as being heaved up by the force of that flatuous fermentive moisture turn'd into vapours wherewith the Earth at first abounded how easily would those Caverns be filled with vapours by the influence of the Sun and then those vapours condensed into Water by the coldness of those Caverns For what were the great Mountainous Caverns but as it were the Heads of vast Stills as much disposed by Nature to condense Vapours as the other are by Art Yea as cold Water or wet Cloths are applied to the Heads of artificial Stills to help forward their work So huge quantities of Snow which outwardly and continually cover the higher parts of some Mountains might have the like effect on Caverns within Now these Vapours being thus changed into Waters the Particles of that would certainly be too gross to sink down into the Earth again through the little Pores by which they ascended or were drawn up out of it So that unless it could find ways whereby to run forth and discharge it self at places in the nature of Springs there it was bound to stay till Providence should release it from its close imprisonment which it did miraculously at the time of the Flood by breaking up the Caverns or great Deeps that contain'd it and suffering a very great deal of it to run out So that still the great Deep Caverns of the Mountains may very well pass for the Fountains of Moses 's Tehom Rabbah And that which helps to encourage not to say and confirm the Notion is That no one of the several things which have been understood to be that great Deep can fill up the Character of it so fairly and at the same time answer the ends and uses of it in respect of the Deluge so fully as these Caverns Not the Open Sea for as it could not properly be broke open as being open already so the Waters of that were by no means sufficient to make such a Flood as Noah's has been all-a-long reputed Or in case they had been sufficient yet being drawn out of the Sea to drown the Earth what Waters should have filled the Sea again Or if it stood empty what should