a d theorist having observed what a quantity of water must otherwise have been created, to fill a sphere extended fifteen cubits every way higher than the summit of the highest hills, represents the old world as having been arched over a vast abyss of waters enclosed around its centre, laid up here as in a store-house, contained as in a bag against the time when God called them forth to destroy the world that then was. God then, he says, broke up the fountains of this deep; caused the compass of the world set over it, i. e. the earth established upon these floods, to be broken down, and in huge fragments to fall into this vast cavern, whereby the waters forced out of it, were added to the rain of forty days, to drown the world. He adds in lively descriptions, that the face of the present earth, overspread with broken mountains, craggy precipices, ragged and mis-shapen rocks, looks apparently to be such a world of ruins; and shews us, that we live upon the remains of a thus fractured globe. He concludes, that if we admit his hypothesis, or such a disruption of the earth, we cannot expect to find rivers now, as they were before; the general source is, he says, changed, and their channels are all broken up. It is surprizing that this inge nious author did not reflect, that even his own hypothesis does not make it certain that the ruins he supposes occupied the face of the whole earth. Might not divers enormous fragments fall into the abyss represented by him, in many different parts of the world, and for J a Theory of the Earth, vol. i. c. 2. Theory, vol. i. b. li. c. 7. Ibid. 7. Psalm xxxiii. 7. e xxiv. 2. vast and extensive tracts of country together: and yet in other parts vast plains, and a well watered champaign, such as are found, and have been found in all ages in many countries, have remained not disfigured, as not having suffered, in these ruins? The disruption of the world was local, here and there in places, as the rocky precipices are found to be, which are scattered over, but do not every where cover, the whole face of the earth. And if Moses' Eden was in a tract of country, which did not break and fall in such disjointed fragments into the deep, its primitive situation might remain, and be well described by him in the postdilurian world. In like manner, 2. If we examine what is offered by others concerning the several strata in the bowels of the earth, occasioned, as they represent, by a universal deluge; we shall find nothing in their speculations, to prove that Moses might not be able to describe the local situation of the garden of Eden, by such boundaries as might really exist in the postdiluvian earth. Some writers speak of shells and exuvia of fishes, of teeth and bones of some animals, often found buried un der the surface; many times deep in the bowels of the present earth; and sometimes inclosed even within the mass of the most solid stones, or beds of minerals. They suppose that the earth at the universal deluge was so long soaked in the water which overflowed it, that the crustation or concretion of all its parts was absolutely loosened, and the whole orb liquidated into a universal fluor. In this, trees, animals, fishes, and all sorts of vegetables, not of a contexture, such as that water was a proper menstruum to dissolve, were variously tossed about and carried, until, when God was pleased to quiet the floods, and the agitations of the waters became a dead calm, things began regularly to subside. They suppose the earth to concrete again, and the bodies rolling here and there in the turbid and thick waters, to sink and lodge deeper or nearer the surface of the ac crescing earth, in proportion to their specific gravities. Then that the bed of earth, in which they became thus situated, hardening daily, suitably to the nature of its respective soil, some strata became in time a chalk; others vegetated or were concocted to stone; to ore of minerals in concretions of various sorts, such as might be formed according to the different nature of the parts of which they were compounded: that the undissolved bodies, which subsided, and rested where the surrounding matter answered their gravity and sustained them, became, as that hardened, inclosed in it; and are therefore, wherever the earth is ransacked down to the beds where they lic, found sometimes whole and entire, where no air has been introduced to loosen the contexture of their parts, or any menstruum has been generated, to corrode and dissolve them. And many times, where the shells or animals are dissolved and gone, such a print appears in the yielding and soft substance of the strata where they lay, as to exhibit even in what now are the hardest stones, impressions of various kinds, more perfect than the best matrices which the highest art of foundery could ever have made to cast their forms in. In this manner they suppose that the liquidated earth, being full of all that perished in it, has gradually become again a round lump, precipitated to the centre of the waters in which it was immerged. And they say, that after this subsidence, God raised the earth again above the waters by breaking the round orb, and elevating some parts into hills, making deep channels for rivers and seas, and thereby draining great tracts to be dry land for a new habitable world. They assign this to be the reason, why in some mountains, and sides of hills, the relics are found lying in lines perpendicular, and not, as in other parts of the earth, in horizontal strata. These mountains, they say, were raised up from their flat and recumbent situation, set as it were on edge, so as to have what originally was their horizontal surface now placed sloping or perpendicular to the horizon, and accordingly to have their whole contents' in a like situation. In this manner we are apt to think ourselves able, speculatively, to destroy and make a world. But, whether in fact these things were thus done, must be more than doubted by any one who attends to the history of Moses. If the earth within six generations of Adam was found to abound in such ore of metals, as could employ every artificer in brass and iron, of which we read Tubal-Cain was an early instructor; we cannot conceive that the whole globe had been, at the flood, of so loose and dissoluble a contexture, that forty days' rain, and the waters which came from the great deep, should altogether melt it away. And if, as an ingenious friend observed to me, in a conversation upon this subject, the dove which Noah sent out the second time from the ark, came to him in the evening, and, lo! in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt See Woodward's Theory. 1 Gen. iv. 22. off, so Noah knew that the waters were abated; some trees, at least, which were before the flood,: stood their ground, and therefore their ground was not absolutely washed away from them. Their summits or tops of boughs appeared as the flood decreased, for the dove to alight on, and to bear away the spoils of them./ 4 The world, such as it subsided during the increase of the flood, such it appeared again in the parts where the ark rested, rising by degrees out of the waters; the summits of trees upon the hills, from one of which Noah's dove plucked an olive leaf, emerged first; the tops of hills next became visible; the earth, and what was upon it, came gradually into sight, until the face of the ground was dry. The heathen poet seems to describe this great event more suitably to what the providence of God caused to be the fact, than our modern philosophers have done. Ovid tells us, that upon the abating of the flood, Flumina subsidunt, colles exire videntur, Surgit humus: crescunt loca decrescentibus undis: Postque diem--nudata cacumina silvæ Ostendunt, limumque tenent in fronde relictum, F OVID. MET. lib. 1. A The world was restored to the remnant of mankind; not a new world, created over again, upon a total dissolution of the former; but a globe, which, though the waters left every where sufficient marks of an inundation, was in no wise so entirely stripped of its trees, its herbs, and all its other garniture, that the sons of Noah could not know it to be the same, or could think it absolutely ane other earth.ader |