We cannot dispense with observing that Burnet, Woodward, Whiston, and most of these other authors, have committed an error which deserves to be cleared up; which is, to have looked upon the deluge as possible by the action of natural causes, whereas scripture presents it to us as produced by the immediate will of God; there is no natural cause which can produce on the whole surface of the earth,
the quantity of water required to cover the highest mountains; and if even we could imagine a cause proportionate to this effect, it would still be impossible to find another cause capable of causing the water to disappear: allowing Whiston, that these waters proceeded from the tail of a comet, we deny that any could proceed from the great abyss, or that they all returned into it, since the great abyss, according to him, being surrounded on every side by the crust, or terrestrial orb, it is impossible that the attraction of the comet could cause any motion to the fluids it contained; much less, as he says, a violent flux and reflux; hence there could not be issued from, nor entered into, the great abyss, a single drop of water; and unless it is supposed that the waters which fell from the comet have been destroyed by a miracle, they would still be on the surface of the earth, covering the summits of the highest mountains. Nothing better characterises a miracle, than the impossibility of explaining the effect of it by natural causes. Our authors have made vain efforts to give a reason for the deluge; their physical efforts, and the secondary causes, which they made use of, prove the truth of the fact as reported in the scriptures,
and demonstrate that it could only have been performed by the first cause, the will of the Almighty.
Besides, it is certain that it was neither at one time, nor by the effect of the deluge, that the sea left dry these continents we inhabit: for it is certain by the testimony of holy writ, that the terrestrial paradise was in Asia, and that Asia was inhabited before the deluge; consequently the sea, at that time, did not cover this considerable part of the globe. The earth, before the deluge, was nearly as it is at present, and this enormous quantity of water, which divine justice caused to fall on the earth to punish guilty men, in fact, brought death on every creature; but it produced no change on the surface of the earth, it did not even destroy plants which grew upon it, since the dove brought an olive branch to the ark in her beak.
Why, therefore, imagine, as many of our naturalists have done, that this water totally changed the surface of the globe even to a depth of two thousand feet? Why do they desire it to be the deluge which has brought the shells on the earth which we meet with at 7 or 800 feet depth in rocks and marble? Why say, that
the hills and mountains were formed at that time? And how can we figure to ourselves, that it is possible for these waters to have brought masses and banks of shells 100 miles long? I see not how they can persist in this opinion, at least, without admitting a double miracle in the deluge; the first, for the augmentation of the waters; and the second, for the transportation of the shells; but as there is only the first which is related in the Bible, I do not see it necessary to make the second an article of our creed.
On the other hand, if the waters of the deluge had retired all at once, they would have carried so great a quantity of mud and other impurities, that the Earth would not have been capable of culture till many ages after this inundation; as is known, by the deluge which happened in Greece, where the overflowed country was totally forsaken, and could not receive any cultivation for more than three centuries.[151:A] We ought also to look on the universal deluge as a supernatural means of which the Almighty made use for the chastisement of mankind, and not as an effect of a natural cause. The universal deluge is a miracle both in its
cause and effects; we see clearly by the scripture that it was designed for the destruction of men and animals, and that it did not in any mode change the earth, since after the retreat of the waters, the mountains, and even the trees, were in their places, and the surface of the earth was proper to receive culture and produce vines and fruits. How could all the race of fish, which did not enter the ark, be preserved, if the earth had been dissolved in the water, or only if the waters had been sufficiently agitated to transport shells from India to Europe, &c.?
Nevertheless, this supposition, that it was the deluge which transported the shells of the sea into every climate, is the opinion, or rather the superstition, of naturalists. Woodward, Scheutzer, and some more, call these petrified shells the remains of the deluge; they look on them as the medals and monuments which God has left us of this terrible event, in order that it never should be effaced from the human race. In short, they have adopted this hypothesis with so much enthusiasm, that they appear only desirous to reconcile holy scripture with their opinion; and instead of making use of their observations, and deriving light therefrom,
they envelope themselves in the clouds of a physical theology, the obscurity of which is derogatory to the simplicity and dignity of religion, and only leaves the absurd to perceive a ridiculous mixture of human ideas and divine truths. To pretend to explain the universal Deluge, and its physical causes; to attempt to teach what passed in the time of that great revolution; to divine what were the effects of it; to add facts to those of Holy Writ, to draw consequences from such facts, is only a presumptuous attempt to measure the power of the Most High. The natural wonders which his benevolent hand performs in an uniform and regular manner, are incomprehensible; and by the strongest reason, these wonderful operations and miracles ought to hold us in awful wonder, and in silent adoration.