A. M. 1656. A. C. 2349; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2256. A. C. 3155. GEN. CH. vi. 12. TO ix. 20. flood, was vastly superior to what the present earth per- | the antediluvians only multiplied as fast before, as it is haps is capable of sustaining, caused every place to be certain the Israelites did since the flood, the number of inhabited, and that none might escape the avenging mankind actually alive and existing at the deluge must hand, caused every place to be overflowed. And in- have been not only more than what the present earth deed, if we consider the longevity of the first inhabitants does contain, but prodigiously more than what the whole of the earth, and the pretty near equality of their ages number of mankind can be justly supposed, ever since (which seem to have been providentially designed for the deluge; nay indeed, with any degree of likelihood, the quick propagation of mankind) we shall soon per- ever since the first creation of the world. Upon which ceive, that, in the space of 1600 years, mankind would account, though this calculation must not at all be become so numerous, that the chief difficulty would be esteemed real, or to exhibit in any measure the just where we should find countries to receive them. For if, number of the posterity of Adam alive at the time of the in the space of about 266 years (as the sacred history deluge, yet it certainly shows us how vastly numerous acquaints us) the posterity of Jacob, by his sons only, (according to the regular method of human propagation) (without the consideration of Dinah his daughter) the offspring of one single person may be; how plentiamounted to 600,000 males above the age of twenty, all fully each quarter of the world must then have been able to bear arms, what increase may not be expected stocked with inhabitants; and that consequently, to from a race of patriarchs, living six, seven, eight, or nine destroy its inhabitants, the inundation must have fallen hundred years apiece, and some to the 500th year of their upon every quarter, and encompassed the whole globe. lives begetting sons and daughters. For, 1if we suppose the increase of the children of Israel to have been gradual, and proportionate through the whole 266 years, it will appear, that they doubled themselves every fourteen years at least; and if we should continue the like proportion through the entire 114 periods (which the space from the creation to the deluge admits) the product, or number of people on the face of the earth at the deluge, would at least be the 100th in a geometric double proportion, or series of numbers, two, four, eight, sixteen, &c., where every succeeding one is double to that before it: and to how an immense sum this proportion would arise, those who know any thing of the nature of geometric progressions, will soon perceive. So that had 'Whiston's Theory of the Earth, b. 3. c. 3. a The ingenious Dr Burnet (in his Theory of the Earth, b. 1.) has computed the multiplication of mankind in this method. "If we allow the first couple," says he, "at the end of 100 years, or of the first century, to have left ten pair of breeders (which is no hard supposition) there would arise from these, in 1500 years, a greater number than the earth was capable of containing, allowing every pair to multiply in the same decuple proportion, that the first pair did. But, because this would rise far beyond the capacity of the earth, let us suppose them to increase, in the following centuries, in a quintuple proportion only, or, if you will, only in a quadruple, and then the table of the multiplication of mankind, from the creation to the flood, would stand thus: Century 1-10 2-40 3-160 4-640 5-2560 6-10240 7-40960 8-163840 Century 9-655360 10-2621440 11-10485760 12-41943040 This product is excessively too high, if compared with the present number of men upon the face of the earth, which I think is commonly estimated to between three and four hundred millions; and yet this proportion of their increase seems to be low enough, if we take one proportion for all the centuries. For though in realty the same measure cannot run equally through all the ages, yet we have taken this as moderate and reasonable between the highest and the lowest; but if we had only taken a triple proportion, it would have been sufficient (all things considered) for our purpose.-These calculations, however, are founded on the Hebrew computation, which represents the patriarchs before the flood as having children at an age by much too early. All animals whose lives are of long duration appear not to arrive at puberty till an age of proportional length; something similar or at least analogous is observable in the vegetable kingdom; and And accordingly, if we take the circuit of the globe, and inquire of the inhabitants of every climate, we shall find, 2 that the fame of this deluge is gone through the earth, and that in every part of the known world there are certain records or traditions of it; that the Americans acknowledge, and speak of it in their continent; that the Chinese (who are the most distant people in Asia) have the tradition of it; that the several nations of Africa tell various stories concerning it; and that, in the European parts, the flood of Deucalion is the same with that of Noah, only related with some disguise. that we may trace the deluge quite round the globe, and (what is more remarkable still) every one of these people have a tale to tell, some one way, some another, concerning the restoration of mankind, which is a full proof that they thought all mankind were once destroyed in that deluge. с 'Burnet's Theory. So according to the computation of the Septuagint version and of of mankind before and after the flood. It was chiefly this conthe annals of Josephus, the same law regulated the generations sideration that influenced Eusebius to prefer the computation of the Septuagint version to that of the Hebrew text: and it is one the Hebrew chronology as it appears in the present text of the of the many cogent reasons which induced Dr Hales to reject Masorites. “Dividing human life," says this learned author, "into three periods, it appears from observation and experience, that the generative powers continue in full vigour during the second period. It is not probable, therefore, that the age of puberty among the antediluvians, who lived to 900 years and upwards, began sooner than at the age of 160 or 170 years, corresponding to 14 or 15 years at present." If, as is probable, there was likewise a longer period, in that age, between the births of children in the same family than is common in the present confully peopled before the deluge, there would be no danger of its tracted span of human life, though the earth might have been ing to the calculations of our author, and Dr Burnet from the being overstocked with inhabitants, as it must have been, accordpresent Hebrew genealogies.-Bishop Gleig's edition. Sir and it is the commencement of their present era or caliyug. Indian Antiquities, and Howard's Thoughts on the Structure of A. M. 1656. A. C. 2349; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2256. A. C. 3155. GEN. CH. vi. 12. TO ix. 20. Nay, instead of the surrounding globe, we need only | Noah might, after the deluge, have furnished himself turn aside the surface a little, and look into the bowels from other places, which this desolation had not reached; of the earth, and we shall find arguments enough for our and as for the birds, they, without much difficulty, might conviction. For the beds of shells which are often have flown to the next dry country, perching upon trees, found on the tops of the highest mountains, and the or the tops of mountains, by the way, to rest themselves petrified bones and teeth of fishes which are dug up if they were tired, because the waters did not prevail some hundreds of miles from the sea, are the clearest upon the earth all on a sudden, but swelled by degrees evidences in the world, that the waters have, some time to their determinate height. or other, overflowed the highest parts of the earth; nor can it, with any colour of reason, be asserted, that these subterraneous bodies are only the mimickry or mock productions of nature, for that they are real shells, the nicest examination both of the eye and microscope does evince, and that they are true bones, may be proved by burning them, which (as it does other bones) turns them first into a coal, and afterwards into a calx. 16 Now, if the swelling of these waters to a height, superior to that of the loftiest mountains, was only topical, we cannot but allow, that unless there was a miracle to keep them up on heaps, they would certainly flow all over the earth; because these mountains are certainly high enough to have made them fall every way, and join with the seas, which environ the earth. All liquid bodies, we know, are diffusive: their parts being in motion, These considerations bid fair for the universality of have no tie or connexion one with another, but glide, the deluge; but then, if we take in the testimony of and fall off any way, as gravity and the air press them; Scripture, this puts the matter past all doubt. For and therefore, when the waters began to arise at first, long when we read, that, by reason of the deluge, every before they could swell to the height of the hills, they living substance was destroyed, which was upon the face would diffuse themselves every way, and thereupon all of the ground, both man and cattle, and the creeping the valleys and plains, and the lower parts of the earth, things, and the fowl of the heaven;' that during the deluge, would be filled all the globe over, before they could "the waters exceedingly prevailed, and all the high rise to the tops of the mountains in any part of it. So hills that were under the whole heavens were covered;' vain and unphilosophical is the opinion of those, who, and that, when the deluge was over, God made a cove-to evade the difficulty of the question, would fain limit nant with Noah, that there should be no more a flood or restrain the deluge to a particular country, or counto destroy the earth, and to cut off all flesh;' we cannot tries. For if we admit it to be universal, say they, but conclude, that every creature under heaven, except where shall we find a sufficient quantity of water to what was preserved in the ark, was swept away in the cover the face of the earth, to the height that Moses general devastation. 36 And, indeed, unless this devastation was general, we can hardly conceive what necessity there was for any ark at all. Noah and his family might have retired into some neighbouring country, as Lot and his family saved themselves by withdrawing from Sodom, when that city was to be destroyed. This had been a much better expedient, and might have been done with much more ease, than the great preparations he was ordered to make, of a large vessel, with stalls and apartments for the reception of beasts and birds. Beasts might have possibly saved themselves by flight; but if they did not, 'Gen. vii. 23. Gen. vii. 19. 3 Gen. ix. 11. Burnet's Theory, b. 1. A learned author, who has lately undertaken an examination of revelation, has enforced this argument with a good deal of life and spirit. "Whereas Moses assures us," says he, "that the waters prevailed fifteen cubits above the highest mountains,' let the mountains themselves be appealed to for the truth of this assertion. Examine the highest eminences of the earth, and they all, with one accord, produce the spoils of the ocean, deposited upon them on that occasion, the shells and skeletons of seafish and sea-monsters of all kinds. The Alps, the Appenines, the Pyrenees, the Andes, and Atlas, and Ararat, every mountain of every region under heaven, from Japan to Mexico, all conspire, in one uniform, universal proof, that they all had the sea spread ever their highest summits. Search the earth, and you will find the moose-deer, natives of America, buried in Ireland; eleplants, natives of Asia and Africa, buried in the midst of Eng mentions? Some indeed have thought it the best and most compendious way, to call in the arm of omnipotence at once, and to affirm, That God created waters on purpose to make the deluge, and then annihilated them again, when the deluge was to cease. But our business is not here to inquire what God could work by his almighty power; but to account for this event, in the best manner we can, from natural causes. Moses, it is plain, has ascribed it to natural causes, the continued rains for forty days, and the disruption of the great abyss; and the manner of its gradual increase and decrease, wherein he has represented it, is far from agreeing with the instantaneous actions of creation and annihilation. 6 5 Others, instead of a creation, have supposed a transmutation of element, namely, either a condensation of the air, or a rarefaction of the waters; but neither of these expedients will do: for, besides that air is a body of a different species, and (as far as we know) cannot, by any compression or condensation, be changed into water, even upon the supposition that all the air in the atmosphere were in this manner condensed, it would not produce a bed of water over all the earth, above 32 feet deep; because it appears, by undoubted experiment, that a column of air from the earth to the top of the atmosphere, does not weigh more than 32 feet of water: much less would the spirit of rarefaction answer the purpose, because, if we suppose the waters but land: crocodiles, natives of the Nile, in the heart of Germany; shellfish never known in any but the American seas, together fifteen times rarer than they naturally are, (as we most with entire skeletons of whales, in divers countries; and what is more, trees and plants of various kinds, which are not known to grow in any region under heaven. All which are a perfect demonstration that Moses' account of the deluge is incontestably true."-Part 1. Dissertation 2. 5 Burnet's Theory, b. 1. c. 3. Kircher on the Ark of Noah, b. 2. c. 4. A. M. 1656. A. C. 2349; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2256. A. C. 3155. GEN. CH. vi. 12. TO ix. 20. certainly do, to make them reach the tops of the was occasioned by the dissolution of the primeval earth; highest mountains,) it will be difficult to conceive, how they could either drown man or beast, keep alive the fish, or support the heavy bulk of the ark. The truth is, Moses, in his account of the deluge, says not one word of the transmutation of elements: the forty days' rain, and the disruption of the abyss, are the only causes which he assigns; and these, very likely, will supply us with a sufficient quantity of water when other devices fail. 1A very sagacious naturalist, observing, that at certain times, there are extraordinary pressures on the surface of the sea, which force the waters outwards upon the shores to a great height, does very reasonably suppose, that the divine power might, at this time, by the instrumentality of some natural agent, to us at present unknown, so depress the surface of the ocean, as to force up the water of the abyss through certain channels and apertures, and so make them a partial and concurrent cause of the deluge. It cannot be denied, indeed, but that the divine providence might, at the time of the deluge, so order and dispose second causes, as to make them raise and impel the water to an height sufficient to overflow the earth; but then, because there must be another miracle required to suspend the waters upon the land, and to hinder them from running off again into the sea, our author seems to give the preference to another hypothesis, which, at the time of the deluge, supposes the centre of the earth to have been changed, and set nearer to the centre or middle of our continent, whereupon the Atlantic and Pacific oceans must needs press upon the subterraneous abyss, and so compel the water to run out at those wide mouths, and apertures, which the divine power had made in breaking up the fountains of the great deep. Thus the waters being poured out upon the face of the earth, and its declivity changed by the removal of the centre, they could not run down to the sea again, but must necessarily stagnate upon the earth, and overflow it, till upon its return to its old centre, they in like manner would retreat to their former receptacles. But the misfortune of this hypothesis is, that besides the multitude of miracles required in it, it makes the deluge topical, and confined to our continent only, whereas, according to the testimony of the Spirit of God in the Holy Scriptures, it was certainly universal. 2A very ingenious theorist seems to be of opinion himself, and labours to persuade others, that the a deluge 1 Ray's Physico-Theological Discourse concerning the Deluge. 2 Dr Burnet. a To have a more perfect idea of the author's scheme, we must remember, that he conceives the first earth, from the manner of its formation, to have been externally regular and uniform, of a smooth and even surface, without mountains, and without a sea; and that all the waters, belonging to it, were enclosed within an upper crust, which formed a stupendous vault around them. This vast collection of waters he takes to have been the great deep, or abyss of Moses, and that the disruption of it was the chief cause of the deluge. For he supposes, that the earth being, for some hundreds of years, exposed to the continual heat of the sun, which, by reason of the perpendicular position, which, as he imagines, the earth's axis then had to the plane of the ecliptic, was very intense, and not allayed by the diversity of seasons, which now keep our earth in an equality of temper; its exterior crust was, at length, very much dried, and when the heat had pierced the shell, and reached the waters beneath it, the dissolution of the earth by the fermentation of the enclosed waters; the fermentation of the waters by the continued intense heat of the sun; and the great heat of the sun, by the perpendicular position of the axis of the earth to the plane of the ecliptic. But allowing the position of the earth to be what he imagines, yet it seems difficult to conceive, how the heat of the sun should be so intense, as to cause great cracks in it, and so raise the waters in it into vapours; or how the waters, thus rarefied, should be of force sufficient to break through an arch of solid matter, lying upon them some hundred miles thick. It is much more probable, that if the action of the sun was so strong, the abyss (which the theorist makes the only storehouse of waters in the first earth) would have been almost quite exhausted, before the time of the deluge: nor can we believe that this account of things is any way consonant to the Mosaic history, which describes a gradual rise and abatement, a long continuance of the flood, and not such a sudden shock and convulsion of nature, as the theorist intends, in which, without the divine intervention, it was impossible for the ark to be saved. Another learned theorist endeavours to solve the whole matter, and supply a sufficiency of water from the trajection of a comet. For he supposes, “That, in its descent towards the sun, it pressed very violently upon the earth, and by that means, both raised a great tide in the sea, and forced up a vast quantity of subterraneous waters; that, as it passed by, it involved the earth in its atmosphere for a considerable time; and, as it went off, left a vast tract of its tail behind, which (together with the waters, pressed from the sea, and from the great abyss) was enough to cover the face of the whole earth, for the perpendicular height of three miles." But (to pass by smaller objections) that which seems to destroy his whole hypothesis is this- That it is far from being clear, whether the atmosphere of a comet be a watery substance or not. The observations of the most curious inquirers make it very probable, that the circle about Mr Whiston. 3 Keil's Examination of Burnet's Theory. Keil's Answer to Whiston's Theory; and Nicholls's Conference, vol. 1. they began to be rarefied, and raised into vapours; which rarefaction made them require more space than they needed before, and finding themselves pent in by an exterior earth, they pressed with violence against the arch to make it yield to their dilatation: and as the repeated action of the sun gave force to these enclosed vapours more and more, so, on the other hand, it weakened more and more the arch of the earth, that was to resist them, sucking out the moisture that was the cement of its parts, and parching and chapping it in sundry places; so that, there being then no winter to close up its parts, it every day grew more and more disposed to a dissolution, till at length, when God's appointed time was come, the whole fabric broke; the frame of earth was torn in pieces, as by an earthquake; and those great portions or fragments, into which it was parted, fell down into the abyss, some in one posture, some in another. Thus the earth put on a new form, and became divided into sea, and land; the greatest part of the abyss constituting our present ocean, and the rest filling up the cavities of the earth. Mountains and hills appeared on the land, islands in the sea, and rocks upon the shore, so that, at one shock, providence dissolved the old world, and made a new one out of its ruin. Universal History, b. 1. c. 1. where this extract out of Burnet's Theory is made. See the A. M. 1656. A. C. 2349; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2256. A, C. 3155. GEN. CH. vi. 12. TO ix. 20 the body of a comet is nothing but the curling or wind- hiatus, or apertures, passing between it and the ocean, ing round of the smoke, rising at first to a determinate a is evident from the Caspian and other seas, which reheight, from all parts of the comet, and then making off ceive into themselves many great rivers, and having no to that part of it which is opposite to the sun; and if visible outlets, must be supposed to discharge the water this opinion be true, the earth, by passing through the they receive, by subterraneous passages into this recepatmosphere of a comet, ran a greater risk of a confla- tacle, and by its intervention, into the ocean again. gration, than a deluge. The Mediterranean in particular, besides the many rivers that run into it, has two great currents of the sea, one at the straits of Gibraltar, and the other at the Propontis, which bring in such vast tides of water, that, many ages ago, it must have endangered the whole 5 These are the several expedients which the wit of men have devised, to furnish a sufficient quantity of water, in order to effect a deluge, but all incompetent for the work. Let us now turn to the sacred records, and see what the two general causes assigned therein, the open-world, had it not emptied itself, by certain secret pasing of the windows of heaven,' and 'the breaking up of the fountains of the great deep,' are able to supply us with, upon this occasion, 1. By the opening of the windows of heaven,' must be understood the causing the waters which were suspended in the clouds, to fall upon the earth, not in ordinary showers, but in floods, or (as the Septuagint translate it) in cataracts, which travellers may have the truest notion of, who have seen those prodigious falls of water, so frequent in the Indies, and where the clouds many times do not break into drops, but fall, with a terrible violence, in a torrent. How far these treasures of waters in the air might contribute to the general inundation, we may, in some measure, compute from what we have observed in a thunder-cloud, which in the space of less than two hours, has sometimes poured down such a vast quantity of water, as besides what sunk into the dry and thirsty ground and filled all the ditches and ponds, has caused a considerable flood in the rivers, and set all the meadows on float. Now, had this cloud (which for ought we know moved forty miles forward in its falling) stood still, and emptied all its water upon the same spot of ground, what a sudden and incredible deluge would it have made in the place? What then must we suppose the event to have been, when the floodgates of heaven were all opened, and on every part of the globe, the clouds were incessantly pouring out water with such violence, and in such abundance, for forty days together? It is impossible for us indeed to have any adequate conception of the thing, though the vast inundations which are made every year in Egypt, only by the rains which fall in Ethiopia, and the like annual overflowings of the great river Oroonoque in America, whereby many islands and plains, at other times inhabited, are laid twenty feet under water, between May and September, may give us a faint emblem, and be of some use to cure our infidelity in this respect. 2. The other cause which the Scripture makes mention of, is the breaking up of the fountains of the great deep,' whereby those waters, which were contained in vast quantities in the bowels of the earth, were forced out, and thrown upon the surface of it. That there is a mighty collection of waters inclosed in the bowels of the earth, which constitutes a large globe in the interior or central part of it; and that the waters of this globe communicate with that of the ocean, by means of certain sages, into some great cavity underneath. And for this reason, some have imagined, "that the earth altogether is one great animal, whose abyss supplies the place of the heart in the body of the earth, to furnish all its aqueducts with a sufficiency of water, and whose subterraneous passages are like the veins of the body, which receive water out of the sea, as the veins do blood out of the liver, and in a continued circulation, return it to the heart again. 96 However this be, it is certainly more than probable, (because a matter of divine revelation,) that there is an immense body of water inclosed in the centre of the earth, to which the Psalmist plainly alludes, when he tells us, that God founded the earth upon the seas, and established it upon the floods;' that he stretched out the earth above the waters;' that he gathered up the waters as in a bag, (so the best translations have it,) and laid up the deep as in a storehouse.' Nay, there is a passage or two in the Proverbs of Solomon, (where Wisdom declares her antiquity, and pre-existence to all the works of the earth,) which sets before our eyes, as it were, the very form and figure of this abyss: 10. When he prepared the heavens, I was there; when he set a compass upon the face of the deep, and strengthened the fountains of the abyss.' Here is mention made of the abyss, and the fountains of the abyss; nor is there any question to be made, but that the fountains of the abyss here are the same with those which Moses mentions, and which, as he tells us, were broken up at the deluge. And what is more observable in this text, the word which we render compass, properly signifies a circle, or circumference, or an orb, or sphere: so that, according to the testimony of Wisdom, who was then present, there was 5 Nicholls's Conference, vol. 1. Stillingfleet's Sacred Origins. 7 Ps. xxiv. ii. SPs. cxxxvi. 6. "Ps. xxxiii. 7. 10 Prov. viii. 27, 28.; Sir Walter Raleigh's History. a The Caspian sea is reckoned in length to be above 120 German leagues, and in breadth, from east to west, about 90 of the same leagues. There is no visible way for the water to run out: and yet it receives into its bosom near 100 large rivers, and particularly the great river Wolga, which of itself is like a sea for largeness, and supposed to empty so much water into it in a year's time, as might suffice to cover the whole earth; and yet it is never increased nor diminished, nor is observed to ebb or flow, which makes it evident, that it must necessarily have a subterraneous communication with other parts of the world. And accordingly, Father Avril, a modern traveller, tells us, that near the coast of Xylam there is in this sea a mighty whirlpool, which sucks in every thing that comes near it, and consequently has a cavity in the earth into which it descends.-See Moll's Geography at the end of Persia in Asia, p. 67; Stillingfleet's Sacred Origins, b. 3. c. 4.; and Bedford's Scripture Chronology, c. 12. A. M. 1656. A. C. 2349; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2256. A. C. 3155. GEN. CH. vi. 12. TO ix. 20. in the beginning a sphere, orb, or arch, set round the abyss, by the means of which, the fountains thereof were strengthened; for we cannot conceive, how they could have been strengthened any other way, than by having a strong cover or arch made over them. If such then be the form of this abyss, that it seems to be a vast mass or body of water lying together in the womb of the earth, it will be no hard matter to compute what a plentiful supply might have been expected from thence, in order to effect an universal deluge. For, if the circumference of the earth (even according to the lowest computation) be 21,000 miles, the diameter of it (according to that circumference) 7000 miles; and consequently from the superficies to the centre, 3500 miles; and if (according to the best account) a the highest mountain in the world (taking its altitude from the plain it stands upon) does not exceed four perpendicular miles in height; then we cannot but conclude, that in this abyss there would be infinitely more water than enough, when drawn out upon the surface of the earth, to drown the earth to a far greater height than Moses relates. In a word, since it is agreed on all hands, that in the time of the chaos, the waters did cover the earth, insomuch that nothing of it could be seen, till God was pleased to make a separation: why should it be thought so strange a thing, that, upon a proper occasion, they should be able to cover the earth again; especially when the waters above the firmament came down to join those below, as they did at the beginning? 3 Seneca, treating of that fatal day (as he calls it) when the deluge shall come, (for he supposed that the world was to be destroyed alternately, first by water, and after that by fire,) and questioning how it might be effected, whether by the force of the ocean overflowing the earth, by perpetual rains without intermission, by the swelling of rivers, and opening of new fountains, or (what he rather supposes) by a general concourse and combination of all these causes, concludes his inquiry at last with these remarkable words, "There are vast lakes," says he, "which we do not see, much of the sea which lies hidden and concealed, and many rivers which glide in secret; so that there may be causes of a deluge on all sides, when some waters flow under the earth, others flow round about it, and being long pent| up, may overwhelm it. And as our bodies sometimes dissolve into sweat, so the earth shall melt, and, without the help of other causes, shall find in itself what shall drown it. There being in all places, both openly and secretly, both from above and from beneath, an eruption of waters ready to overflow and destroy it.' Patrick's Commentary. 2 See b. 1., c. 1. p. 6. a If we measure mountains from the plain on which they stand, But whatever solutions we may gather, either from sacred or profane authors, it seems necessary, after all, to call in the divine power to our assistance. + For though the waters which covered the earth at the creation might be sufficient to cover it again; yet how this could be effected by mere natural means, cannot be conceived. Though the waters, suspended in the clouds, might fall in great torrents for some time, yet, when once their store was exhausted, (as at this rate it could not last long,) nothing but an almighty voice could have commanded a fresh supply of forty days' continuance from those other planetary spaces where he had settled their abode; and though the subterraneous stores did certainly contain a fund sufficient to complete the deluge, yet there wanted on this occasion an almighty hand, either to break down the arch which enclosed the abyss, or by some secret passages to force the waters out of it upon the surface of the earth; and so stopping the reflux, suspend them for such a determinate time, at such an elevation. There needed some almighty hand, I say, to do this: and accordingly we may observe, that though Moses makes mention of two natural causes that might be conducive to the work, yet he introduces God as superintending their causes, and assuming indeed the whole performance to himself: forbehold 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 on the earth shall die.' Thus, with the help and concurrence of God, we have found a sufficient quantity of water for the destruction of the old world let us now consider the make and capacity of the vessel wherein the several animals that were to replenish the new were to be preserved. 5 Could we but imagine, that by some strange revolution the whole art of shipping should come to be lost in this part of the world, and that there happened to remain such a short account of one of our largest ships (the Royal Anne, for instance) as that it was so many feet long, broad, and deep; could contain in it some hundreds of men, with other living creatures, and provisions for them all during several months; and that the strength of it was such, that it was not broken in pieces all the time that the great storm endured; would it not be very pleasant for any one to conclude from hence, that this ship, according to the description of it, was nothing but an oblong square, without any more contrivance than a common chest made by the most ignorant joiner? And yet such are some men's inferences when they talk of this noble structure. Moses indeed makes mention of little else but the dimensions of the ark, its stories, and capacity to hold the things to be placed in it; but it does not therefore follow, but that it might have the convexity of a keel, (as many large flat-bottomed vessels have,) as well as a prow, to make it cut the waters more easily. The design Universal History, b. 1. c. 1. 5 Bibliotheca Biblica; Occasional Annotations, 13. Illimanni, 24,250, or between four and five miles above the level of the sea. The highest mountains in the world yet discovered, are in the Himalayan range, between Hindostan and Thibet, in Asia; the highest peak of which is 29,000 feet, or between five and six miles above the level of the sea. In the same range there are the Dhawalaghiri, 28,104 feet, Swetachar, 25,261 feet, and various others above 20,000 feet.-ED. |