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CHAP. III.

PART II. that He was therefore obliged to wait the term of their operation? Or, was it that He first created secondary agents to retard an afterwork, which He did not intend to execute by secondary agencies, but by immediate acts of His own divine power? The supposi

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tions are all equally in opposition to reason and to the record. If then the after-work was not to be effected by secondary causes, but by God's own immediate causation, which is here granted; reason directs us to conclude, that no secondary causes were engaged to assist Him, by preparing an antecedent work; but that the truth is, as He Himself has pronounced: "I am the Lord, "who made all things; who stretched forth the "heavens ALONE, who spread abroad the earth

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BY MYSELF':—who spake, and it was done; "who commanded, and it was confirmed." Such also is the doctrine, which the historian here plainly designed to establish. And it is truly astonishing, that consequences thus inevitably and obviously resulting from the hypothesis, should not have exposed themselves to the apprehension of the learned and venerable Prelate.

Yet, we find the same visionary hypothesis heedlessly pursued by a much later writer. " To

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CHAP. III.

"the assemblage of these as yet inert elements, PART II. "Moses gives the name of abyss; profane "authors have called it chaos. All seem to "mean the same thing; the chemical laboratory of universal Nature, the general deposit of the embryos of all existing natural substances'." Rosenmuller remarks, with just reprobation, upon the preposterous inference of a chaos, from the language of Moses. "It is wonderful,” says he, "how so many interpreters could imagine, "that a chaos was described in the words "-tohu -tohu vabohu. This notion unques

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tionably took its origin from the fictions of the "Greek and Latin poets; which were trans"ferred, by those interpreters, to Moses. But, "to explain Moses by the poets, what is it, but "to transfuse water from a muddy-stream into "a clear and limpid fountain ?" He then recites all the fables of a chaos, from Berosus to Ovid, and concludes thus: "But since these

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things are so, it is not so surprising that

many interpreters, when they pass from the "works of the heathen philosophers and poets "to the exposition of Scripture, should ima

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gine that they recognize the same chaos in the "Mosaic history. Yet the Rabbins, who were

1 HOWARD, on the Structure of this Globe, p. 483.

PART II.

CHAP. III.

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"not prepossessed with these particular fictions, apprehended the power and meaning "of the original words far more correctly1."

The doctrine, of a chaotic mixture of elements or first principles of things, is not more abhorrent to the philosophy of NEWTON, who expressly reprobates it, than it is to the record of MOSES; if the latter be considered without any previous system, and if it be thoroughly and critically understood. The progress of tradition, through ages of darkness and ignorance, may have converted the simple sea, distinctly recorded by Moses, into a compound chaos, characterized by that darkness; but, to make the chaos, therefore, the rule for interpreting the sea, is to invert the order of rational argument, and to reason ab ignoto ad notum.

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CHAPTER IV.

CHAP. IV.

THE historian proceeds to his Second Article; PART II. in which, he relates the events that distinguished the second diurnal revolution of this globe.

"And GOD said, Let there be a FIRMAMENT "in the midst of the waters: and let it divide the waters from the waters.

"And GOD made the firmament, and divided "the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firma"ment.

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"And it was so: and GOD called the firma64 ment HEAVEN.

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"And the evening and the morning were the SECOND DAY."

The word 'p, which our version renders firmament, from the Latin firmamentum, is rendered by the Alexandrian interpreters στερέωμα, which word denotes a firm and permanent support. This support, was to sustain a part of the waters, which were now to be separated from the waters beneath.

PART II.

CHAP. IV.

This article implies; that there were waters above the aqueous surface of the globe, which were separable, though not yet actually separated, from it. It therefore relates; that the universally incumbent watery vapour, which had been continually in course of exhalation, during the preceding day, from the universal watery surface, was now raised to a high elevation above it, by the creation of the aerial atmosphere; so that the vaporous body formed a canopy above the globe, instead of enveloping it, like a cloak, in immediate contact with the water. Rosenmuller well applies, to this place, the remark of Pliny: "what can be more wonderful, than waters stationary in the sky!-quid esse mirabilius potest aquis in cælo stantibus! 1"

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The globe was thus disengaged from its incumbent vapour, but still, the effect of light was alone apparent; for, congregated clouds had succeeded to terrestrial mist, and continued to render the cause of that effect non-apparent, and therefore, optically non-existent: as we ourselves experience, during the prevalence of similar weather. It is this that the sacred historian describes, when he says; "for many days "neither sun nor stars appeared" — μNTE μητε ήλιου μητε αστρων επιφαινόντων επι πλείονας ημερας. Homer

I PLIN. Hist. Nat. 1. xxxi.

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Acts, xxvii. 20.

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