on the de

36. Many books have been written in re- Remarks lation to this affair, and while fome contend luge. for the overflowing of the whole earth to a very great height of waters and fome

for a partial deluge only others will not allow there was any at all. The divine authority of Mofes they difregard. For my part, I believe the flood was univerfal, and that all the high hills and mountains under the whole heaven, were covered. The caufe was forty days heavy rain, and such an agitation of the abyfs, by the finger of God, as not only broke up the great deep, to pour out water at many places, but forced it out of fuch bottomlefs lochs as this I am speaking of on the mountains top, and from va→ rious fwallows in many places. This removes every objection from the cafe of the deluge, and gives water enough in the space of 150 days, or five months of 30 days each, to over-top the highest mountains by 15 cubits, the height defigned. The abyfs in strong commotion, or violent uproar, by a power divine, could shake the incumbent globe to pieces in a few minutes, and bury the whole ruins in the deep. To me, then, all the reasoning against the deluge, or for a partial flood, appear fad ftuff. Were this one loch in Stanemore to pour out torrents of water, down every fide, for five months, by a di vine force on part of the abyss, as it might very easily by fuch means do, the inundation would

The means

which

would cover a great part of this land; and if from every loch of the kind on the fummits of mountains, the waters in like manner, with the greatest violence, flowed from every fide out of the abyfs, and that exclufive of the heavy rains, an earthquake fhould open fome parts of the ground to let more water out of the great collection, and the feas and oceans furpass their natural bounds, by the winds forcing them over the earth, then would a universal flood very foon -prevail. There is water enough for the purpose, and as to the fupernatural afcent of them, natural and fupernatural are nothing at all different with refpect to God. They are distinctions merely in our conceptions of things. Regularly to move the fun or earth; and to flop its motion for a day;-to make the waters that covered the whole earth at the creation, descend into the feveral receptacles prepared for them; and at the deluge, to make them afcend again to cover the whole earth, are the effect of one and the fame Almighty Power; tho' we call one natural, and the other fupernatural. The one is the effect of no greater power than the other. With refpect to God, one is not more or lefs natural or fupernatural than the other.

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But how the waters of the deluge were drained off drawn off at the end of the five months, is the waters another question among the learned. The

of the de

Juge from

the earth.

inge

ingenious Keile, who writ against the two ingenious Theorists, fays the thing is not at all accountable in any natural way: the drain ing off, and drying of the earth, of such a huge column of waters could only be effected by the power of God: natural caufes both in decreafe and the increase of the waters must have been vaftly difproportionate to the effects; and to miracles they must be ascribed.

-This, I think, is as far from the truth, as the Theorists afcribing both increase and decreafe to natural caufes. God was the per former to be sure in the flood and the going off, but he made ufe of natural causes in both, that is, of the things he had in the be ginning created. The natural caufes he is the author of were at hand, and with them he could do the work. The fun evaporated; the winds dried; and the waters no longer forced upwards from the abyfs, fubfided into the many fwallows or fwallow-holes, that are ftill to be feen in many places, on mountains and in vallies; those on the mountains being neceffary to abforb that vaft column of waters which rose 15 cubits above the highest hills.

A fwallow is fuch another opening in the ground as Eldine Hole in Derbyshire (16), and

in

(16.) Eldine-Hole in Derbyshire is a mile fouth of Mamtorr, and 4 miles east of Buxton. It is a per

in travelling from the Peak to the northern extremity of Northumberland, I have seen many fuch holes in the earth, both on the hills and in the vales. I have likewife met with them in other countries. By these swallows, a vast quantity of the waters to be fure went down to the great receptacle; all that was not exhaled, or licked up by the winds; or, except what might be left to encrease the former feas of the antediluvian world into those vaft oceans which now encompaffes the globe, and partly to form thofe vast lakes that are in feveral parts of the World. These things eafily account for the removal of that vaft mafs of waters which covered the earth, and was in a mighty column above the highest hills. Every difficulty difappears before evaporation, the drying winds, the fwallows, and perhaps, the turning feas into oceans: but the three first things now named

pendicular gulph or chafm, which I tried to fathom more than once, and found it by my line, and by the measure of found (at the rate of 16 feet one twelfth in one fecond the meafure Dr. Halley allows near the earth for the defcent of heavy bodies), to be 1266 feet, or 422 yards down to the water; but how deep the water is cannot be known. I fuppofe it reaches to the abyfs. This chafm is forty yards long above ground, and ten over at its broadeft part: but from the day there is a floping defcent of forty yards to the mouth of the horrible pit, and this is only four yards long and one and a half broad. Two villains who were executed at Derby not long ago, conteffed at the gallows, that they threw a poor traveller into this dreadful gulph, after they had robbed him.

named were fufficient, and the gentlemen who have reasoned fo ingenioufly against one another about the removal of the waters, might have faved themselves a deal of trouble, if they had reduced the operation to three fimple things, under the direction of the First Caufe. The fwallows efpecially must do great work in the cafe, if we take into their number not only very many open gulphs or chafms, the depth of which no line or found can reach; but likewife the communications of very many parts of the fea, and of many great unfathomable lochs, with the abys Thefe abforbers could easily receive what had before come out of them. The fun by evaporation, with the wind, might take away what was raifed. There is nothing hard then in conceiving how the waters of the deluge were brought away.

But as to the lake I have mentioned, into which a rapid flood poured from the bowels of the mountain, what became of this water the reader may inquire? To be fure, as it did not run off in any ftreams, nor make the lake rife in the leaft degree, there must have been a communication in fome parts of its bottom, between the water of it and the abyfs. As the loch on the top of the mountain I have defcribed had no feeders, yet emitted ftreams, and therefore must be supported by the abyss; fo this lake, with fo powerful a feeder, not running over, or emit

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