bodies, unfortunately extended to the heads of men and animals; it augmented their passions; it deprived man of his innocence, and the brute creation of part of their intelligence; all creatures, excepting fish, who inhabited a colder element, felt the effects of this heat, became criminal and merited death. It therefore came, and this universal death happened on Wednesday the 28th of November, by a terrible deluge of forty days and forty nights, and was caused by the tail of another comet which encountered the earth in returning from its perihelion.
The tail of a comet is the lightest part of its atmosphere; it is a transparent mist, a subtile vapour, which the heat of the sun exhales from the body of the comet: this vapour composed of extremely rarefied aqueous and aerial particles, follows the comet when it descends to its perihelion, and precedes when it re-ascends, so that it is always situate opposite to the sun, as if it sought to be in the shade, and avoid the too great heat of that luminary. The column which this vapour forms is often of an immense length, and the more a comet approaches the sun, the longer and more extended is its tail, and as many comets descend below the annual orb of the earth, it is not
surprising that the earth is sometimes found surrounded with the vapour of this tail; this is precisely what happened at the time of the deluge. In two hours the tail of a comet will evacuate a quantity of water equal to what is contained in the whole ocean. In short, this tail was what Moses calls the cataracts of Heaven, "and the cataracts of Heaven were opened." The terrestrial globe meeting with the tail of a comet, must, in going its course through this vapour, appropriate to itself a part of the matter which it contains; all which, coming within the sphere of the earth's attraction, must fall on it, and fall in the form of rain, since this tail is partly composed of aqueous vapours. Thus rain may come down in such abundance as to produce an universal deluge the waters of which might easily surmount the tops of the highest mountains. Nevertheless, our author, cautious of not going directly against the letter of holy writ, does not say that this rain was the sole cause of the universal deluge, but takes the water from every place he can find it. The great abyss as we see contains a considerable quantity. The earth, at the approach of the comet, would prove the force of its attraction; and the waters
contained in the great abyss would be agitated by so violent a kind of flux and reflux, that the superficial crust would not resist, but split in several places, and the internal waters be dispersed over the surface, "And the fountains of the abyss were opened."
But what became of these waters, which the tail of the comet and great abyss furnished so liberally? our author is not the least embarrassed thereon. As soon as the earth, continuing its course, removed from the comet, the effects of its attraction, the flux and reflux in the great abyss ceased of course, and immediately the upper waters precipitated back with violence by the same roads as they had been forced upon the surface. The great abyss absorbed all the superfluous waters, and was of a sufficient capacity not only to receive its own waters, but also all those which the tail of the comet had left, because during its agitation, and the rupture of its crust, it had enlarged the space by driving out on all sides the earth that surrounded it. It was at this time also the figure of the earth, which till then was spherical, became elliptic. This effect was occasioned by the centrifugal force caused by its diurnal motion, and by the attraction of the
comet, for the earth, in passing through the tail of the comet, found itself so placed that it presented the parts of the equator to that planet; and the power of the attraction of the comet, concurring with the centrifugal force of the earth, caused the parts of the equator to be elevated, and that with the more facility as the crust was broken and divided in an infinity of places, and because the flux and reflux of the abyss drove against the equator more violently than elsewhere.
Here then is Mr. Whiston's history of the creation; the causes of the universal deluge; the length of the life of the first men; and the figure of the Earth; all which seem to have cost our author little or no labour; but Noah's ark appears to have greatly disquieted him. In the midst of so terrible a disorder occasioned by the conjunction of the tail of a comet with the waters of the great abyss, in the terrible moments wherein not only the elements of the earth were confused, but when new elements still concurred to augment the chaos, how can it be imagined that the ark floated quietly with its numerous cargo on the top of the waves? Here our author makes great efforts to arrive at and give a physical reason for the preservation
of the ark, but which has always appeared to me insufficient, poorly imagined, and but little orthodoxical: I will not here relate it, but only observe how hard it is for a man who has explained objects so great and wonderful, without having recourse to a supernatural power, to be stopt by one particular circumstance; our author, however, chose rather to risk drowning with the ark, than to attribute to the immediate bounty of the Almighty the preservation of this precious vessel.
I shall only make one remark on this system, of which I have made a faithful abridgement: which is, whenever we are rash enough to attempt to explain theological truths by physical reasons, or interpret purely by human views, the divine text of holy writ, or that we endeavour to reason on the will of the Most High, and on the execution of his decrees, we consequently shall involve ourselves in the darkness and chaos of obscurity and confusion, like the author of this system, which, in defiance of its absurdities, has been received with great applause. He neither doubts the truth of the deluge, nor the authenticity of the sacred writ; but as he was less employed with it than with physic and astronomy, he has taken passages of
the scripture for physical facts, and the results of astronomical observations; and has so strangely blended the divine knowledge with human science as to give birth to the most extraordinary system that possibly ever was or will be conceived.