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Show 38 UURNET.-WIIISTON. vial waters were let loose from a supposed central ahys_s. Not satisfied with these themes, he derived from the books of the inspired writers, and even from heathen authorities, prophetic views of the future revolutions of the globe, gave a most terrific description of the general conflagration, and proved that a new heaven and a new earth will rise out of a second cltaos-after which will follow the blessed millennium. The reader should be informed, that according to the opinion of many respectable writers of that age, there was good scriptural ground for presuming that the garden bestowed upon our first parents was not on the earth itself, but above the clouds, in the middle region between our planet and the moon. Burnet approaches with becoming gravity the discussion of so important a topic. He was willing to concede that the geographical position of Paradise was not in Mesopotamia, yet he maintained that it was upon the earth, and in the southern hemisphere, near the equinoctial line. Butler selected this conceit as a fair mark for his satire, when, amonO'st the numerous accomplishments of Hudibras, he says- 0 He knew the seat of Paradise, Could tell in what degree it lies ; And as he was disposed, could provo it Below the moon, or else abovo it. Y ct th,e same monarch~ w~o is said never to have slept without Butlers poem under ~1s p1llow, was so great an admirer and patron of Burnet's book, that he ordered it to be translated from the Latin into English. 'l'he style of the " Sacred The01f' was eloquent, and displayed powers of invention of no ordmary stamp. It was, in fact, a fine historical romance, as Buffon afterwards declared; but it was treated as a work of profoun~ sci~nce in .the time o~ its author, and was panegyrized by Addison m a Latm ode, while Steele praised it in the " Spec• tator ' ''an d. W ar t on, m· hI' s '' Essay on Pope," discovered that Bu:net umted the faculty of judgment with powers of imaginatiOn. ~~other production of the same school, and equally charact~ ristic of the times, was that of Whiston, entitled, '' A New 'lheory of the Earth, wherein the Creation of the "\Vorld in six D.ays, the "?niversal Deluge, and the General Conflagration as laid down 111 the H o1 Y Sc n·p t ures, arc shewn to be perfec' tly WHISTON .-IIUTCiliNSON, 39 agreeable to Reason and Philosophy." He was at first a follower of Burnet, but his faith in the infallibility of that writer was shaken by the declared opinion of Newton, that there was every presumption in astronomy against any former change in the inclination of the earth's axis. This was a leading dogma in Burnet's system, though not original, for it was borrowed from an Italian, Alessandro degli Alessandri, who had suggested it in the beginning of the fifteenth century, to account for the former occupation of the present continents by the sea. La Place has since strengthened the arguments of Newton, against the probability of any former revolution of this kind. The remarkable comet of 1680 was fresh in the memory of every one, when Whiston first began his cosmological studies, and the principal novelty of his speculations consisted in attributing the deluge to the near approach to the earth of one of these erratic bodies. Having ascribed an increase of the waters to th.is source, he adopted Wood ward's theory, supposing all stratified deposits to have resulted from the " chaotic sediment of the flood." Whiston was one of the first who ventured to propose that the text of Genesis should be interpreted differently from its ordinary acceptation, so that the doctrine of the earth having existed long previous to the creation of man might no longer be regarded as unorthodox. He had the art to throw an air of plausibility over the most improbable parts of his theory, and seemed to be proceeding in the most sober manner, and by the aid of mathematical demonstration, to the establishment of his various propositions. Locke pronounced a panegyric on his theory, commending him for having explained so many wonderful and before inexplicable things. His book, as well as Burnet's, was attacked and refuted by KeilP'. Like all who introduced purely hypothetical causes to account for natural phenomena, he retarded the progress of truth, diverting men from the investigation of the laws of sublunary nature, and inducing them to waste time in speculations on the power of comets to drag the waters of the ocean over the land-on the condensation of the vapours of their tails into water, and other matters equally edifying. John Hutchinson, who had been employed by Woodward "' An Examination of Dr. Burnet's Theory, &c. 2d edition, 1734. |