I had from a man of veracity then on the fpot, who was an eye-witness of these things, and expected himself every minute to descend to the bowels of the earth, which heaved and swelled like a rolling fea. Now to me the electrical stroke does not appear fufficient to produce these things. things. The power of electricity, to be fure, is vaft and amazing. It may caufe great tremors and undulations. of the earth, and bring down all the buildings of a great city: but as to fplitting the earth to great depths, and forcing up torrents of water, where there was no fign of the fluid element before, I queftion much if the vehemence of the elemental electric fire does this. Befide, when mountains and cities fink into the earth, and the deepest lakes are now seen to fill all the place where they once ftood, as has been the cafe in many countries, whence could these mighty waters come, but from the abyss?The great lake Oroquantur in Pegu, was once a vast city. In Jamaica, there is a large deep lake where once a mountain ftood.-In an earthquake in China, in the province of Sanci, deluges of water burst out of the earth, Feb. 7, 1556, and inundated the country for 180 miles. Many more instances of this kind I might produce, exclusive of Sodom, the ground of which was inundated by an irruption of waters from beneath, (which now forms the Dead fea) after the

city

city was deftroyed by fire from above; that the land which had been defiled with the unnatural lufts of the inhabitants might be no more inhabited, but remain a lasting monument of the divine vengeance on fuch crimes, to the end of the world: and the ufe I would make of those I have mentioned, is to fhew, that these mighty waters were from the furious concuffion of the abyss that caused the earthquakes. Electricity, I think, can never make feas and vaft lakes to be where there were none before. Locherne, in the county of Fermanagh, in the province of Ulfter in Ireland, is thirty three miles long, and fourteen broad, and as the old Irith chronicle informs us, was once a place where large and populous towns appeared, till for the great iniquity of the inhabitants, the people and their fair habitations were deftroyed in an earthquake, and mighty waters from the earth covered the place, and formed this lake. Could the electrical firoke produce this fea that was not to be found there before the deftruction? Is it not more reasonable to fuppofe, that fuch vaft waters have been forced by a fupernatural commotion from the great abyfs, in the earthquake that destroyed the towns which once flood in this place?

To this then, (till I am better informed), I must ascribe such earthquakes as produce great rivers and lakes: and where no waters appear, I believe the earthquakes are caused

by

by the immediate finger of God; either operating on the abyss, tho' not so as to make the water break out on the earth; or by directing the electrical violence or ftroke; or otherwise acting on the ruined cities and fhattered places.

pre

causes, and

only at the

being not

head of nature, but in

every part It of it.

33. For my part, I think it is a grievous A reflexion mistake in our philofophical enquiries, to af- on fecond fign so much to second caufes as the learned the Deity's do. The government of the universe is given to matter and motion, and under tence of extolling original contrivance, the execution of all is left to dead fubftance. is just and reasonable (even Newton and Maclaurin fay) to fuppofe that the whole chain of caufes, or the feveral feries of them, fhould center in him, as their fource and fountain ; and the whole system appear depending upon him, the only independent caufe. Now to me this this fuppofition does not appear either just or reasonable. I think the noble phænomena of nature ought to be ascribed to the immediate operation of the Deity. Without looking for a fubtile elaftic medium, to produce gravity, which medium Sir Ifaac confeffes he had no proof of; nor is there in reality fuch a thing in the universe; I imagine the divine Newton would have done better, if, after establishing the true system of nature, by demonftrating the law of gravity, he had faid this gravity was the conftant and undeniable evidence of the immediate in

4

fluence

fluence of the Deity in the material universe. A feries of material caufes betwixt Deity and Effect, is, in truth, concealing him from the knowledge of mortals for ever. In the moral government of the world, fecond caufes do, because free-agents act a part; but, in the material univerfe to apply them, to me feems improper, as matter and motion only, that is, mechanifm, come in competition with the Deity. Moft certainly he conftantly interpofes. The Divine Power is perpetually put forth throughout all nature. Every particle of matter, muft neceffarily, by its nature, for ever go wrong, without the continued act of Deity. His everlafting interpofition only can caufe a body moving in a circle to change the direction of its motion in every point. Nor is it poffible for fubtile matter, the fuppofed caule of gravity, to know to impel bodies to a center, with quadruple force at half the distance.

And as in gravity, and in the cobefion of the parts of matter, the Deity is, and acts in the motion of the celeftial bodies, and in the refiftance the leaft particles make to any force that would feparate them; fo is his immediate power (I think for myself) exerted not only in earthquakes and tides, but in the circulations of the blood, lymph, and chyle, in mufcular motion, and in various other phænomena that might be named. Books I know have been written, and ingenious

books

books they are, to fhew the causes of these things, and trace the ways they are performed by the materials themselves: but these explications never satisfied me. I had ར as many questions to afk, after reading thefe books, as I had before I looked into them, and could find no operator but infinite power conducted by infinite wisdom.

dical mo

of the

fea, owing

to immaterial power.

As to the force of the moon, in raifing The periotides, and, that spring tides are produced by tions of the the fum of the actions of the two luminaries, waters when the moon it in Syzygy, there is a deal of fine mathematical reasoning to prove it, which the reader may find in Dr. Halley's abftract of Sir Ifaac Newton's theory of the tides; and in Dr. Rutherforth's fyftem of natural philofophy: but nevertheless, the concomitance of water and luminary, or the revolutions of ocean and moon answering one another fo exactly, that the flow always hap→ pens when the moon hangs over the ocean, and the spring tides when it is nearer the earth, which is fuppofed to be in the new and full moon ;-this does not prove to me, that the periodical flux and reflux of the fea is derived from mechanifm. As we have two ebbs and two flows in twenty-four hours, and the moon comes but once in that time to our meridian, how can the fecond ebb and flow be afcribed to it? and when, beneath the horizon, in the oppofite hemifphere, the moon croffes the meridian again, is it credible, that

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