S. 22.
They who to salve this would make the deluge particular, proceed upon
a principle that I can no way grant, &c.
But according to the Scripture, the deluge was so gentle as to leave uncrushed the green leaves on the olive tree. If then it was universal, and if (as with the longevity of the antediluvians it must have been) the earth was fully peopled, is it not strange that no buildings remain in the since then uninhabited parts—in America for instance? That no human skeletons are found may be solved from the circumstance of the large proportion of phosphoric acid in human bones. But cities and traces of civilization?—I do not know what to think, unless we might be allowed to consider Noah a 'homo repraesentativus', or the last and nearest of a series taken for the whole.