It is plain that the three forementioned hypotheses have much in common with each other. They all agree in this point, that during the deluge the earth changed its form, as well externally as internally; but these speculators have not considered that the earth before
the deluge was inhabited by the same species of men and animals, and must necessarily have been nearly such as it is at present. The sacred writings teach us, that before the deluge there were rivers, seas, mountains, and forests. That these rivers and mountains were, for the most part, retained in the same situations; the Tigris and Euphrates were the rivers of the ancient paradise; that the mountain of Armenia, on which the ark rested, was one of the highest mountains in the world at the deluge, as it is at present: that the same plants and animals which exist now, existed then; for we read of the serpent, of the raven, of the crow, and of the dove, which brought the olive branch into the ark. Although Tournefort asserts there are no olive trees for more than 400 miles from Mount Ararat, and passes some absurd jokes thereon[138:A], it is nevertheless certain there were olives in this neighbourhood at the time of the deluge, since holy writ assures us of it in the most express terms; but it is by no means astonishing that in the space of 4000 years the olive trees should have been destroyed in those quarters, and multiplied in others;
it is therefore contrary to scripture and reason, that those authors have supposed the earth was quite different from its present state before the deluge; and this contradiction between their hypothesis and the sacred text, as well as physical truths, must cause their systems to be rejected, if even they should agree with some phenomena. Burnet gives neither observations, nor any real facts, for the support of his system. Woodward has only given us an essay, in which he promised much more than he could perform: his book is a project, the execution of which has not been seen. He has made use of two general observations; the first, that the earth is every where composed of matters which formerly were in a state of fluidity, transported by the waters, and deposited in horizontal strata. The second, that there are abundance of marine productions in most parts of the bowels of the earth. To give a reason for these facts, he has recourse to the universal deluge, or rather it appears that he gives them as proofs of the deluge; but, like Burnet, he falls into evident contradictions, for it is not to be supposed with them that there were no mountains prior to the deluge, since it is expressly
stated, that the waters rose fifteen cubits above the tops of the highest mountains. On the other hand, it is not said that these waters destroyed or dissolved these mountains; but, on the contrary, these mountains remained in their places, and the ark rested on that which the water first deserted. Besides how can it be imagined that, during the short duration of the deluge, the waters were able to dissolve the mountains and the whole body of the earth? Is it not an absurdity to suppose that in forty days all marble, rocks, stones, and minerals, were dissolved by water? Is it not a manifest contradiction to admit this total dissolution, and at the same time maintain that shells, bones, and marine productions were preserved entire, and resisted that which had dissolved the most solid substances? I shall not therefore hesitate to say, that Woodward, with excellent facts and observations, has formed but a poor and inconsistent system.
Whiston, who came last, greatly enriched the other two, and notwithstanding he gave a vast scope to his imagination has not fallen into contradiction; he speaks of matters not very credible, but they are neither absolutely nor evidently impossible. As we are ignorant of
the centre of the earth, he thought he might suppose it was a solid matter, surrounded with a ring of heavy fluid, and afterwards with a ring of water, on which the external crust was sustained; in the latter the different parts of this crust were more or less sunk, in proportion to their relative weights, which produced mountains and inequalities on the surface of the earth. Here, however, this astronomer has committed a mechanical blunder; he did not recollect that the earth, according to this hypothesis, must be an uniform arch, and that consequently it could not be borne on the water it contains, and much less sunk therein. I do not know that there are any other physical errors; but he has made a great number of errors, both in metaphysics and theology. On the whole it cannot be denied absolutely that the earth meeting with the tail of a comet might not be inundated, especially allowing the author that the tail of a comet may contain aqueous vapours; nor can it be denied as an absolute impossibility that the tail of a comet, in returning from its perihelium, might not burn the earth, if we suppose, with Mr. Whiston, that the comet passed very near the sun; it is the same with the rest of the system. But
though his ideas are not absolutely impossibilities, there is so little probability to each thing, when taken separately, that the result upon the whole taken together puts it beyond credibility.
The three systems we have spoken of are not the only works which have been composed on the theory of the earth; a Memoir of M. Bourguet appeared in 1729, printed at Amsterdam, with his "Philosophical Letters on the Formation of Salts, &c." in which he gives a specimen of the system he meditated, but which was prevented completion by the death of the author. It is but justice to admit, that no person was more industrious in making observations or collecting facts. To him we owe that great and beautiful observation, the correspondence between the angles of mountains. He presents every thing which he had collected in great order; but with all those advantages, it appears that he has succeeded no better than the rest in making a physical and reasonable history of the changes which had happened to the globe, and that he was very wide from having found the real cause of those effects which he relates. To be convinced of this we need only cast our eyes on the
propositions which he deduces from the phenomena, and which ought to serve for the basis of his theory. He says, that the whole globe took its form at one time, and not successively; that its form and disposition prove that it has been in a state of fluidity; that the present state of the earth is very different from that in which it was for many ages after its first formation; that the matter of the globe was at the beginning less dense than since it altered its appearance; that the condensation of its solid parts diminished by degrees with its velocity, so that after having made a number of revolutions on its axis, and round the sun, it found itself on a sudden in a state of dissolution, which destroyed its first structure. This happened about the vernal equinox. That the sea-shells introduced themselves into the dissolved matters; that after this dissolution the earth took the form it now has, and that the fire which directly infused itself therein consumed it by degrees, and it will be one day destroyed by a terrible explosion, accompanied with a general conflagration, which will augment the atmosphere of the globe, and diminish its diameter, and that then the earth, instead of beds of sand or earth, will have only strata
of calcined metal and mountains composed of amalgamas of different metals.