17© STUDIES OP NATURE. 



*' in immortal vigor * ; He who alfo, v/ith power 

 *' uncontrolable, conftrains the whole to obey his 

 '' willi and that with a promptitude which far 



" furpafles 



* Socrates had made a particular ftudy of Nature ; and al- 

 though his judgment, refpeéling the duration and prefervation 

 of her works, may be contrary to that of our philofophy, which 

 confiders the Globe of the Earth, efpecially, as in a progreffive 

 Hate of ruin, it is in perfect harmony with that of the Holy 

 Scriptures, which give us pofitive afllirances that GOD upholds 

 it, and with our own experience on the fubjeét, as I have al- 

 ready fliewn. We have little I'cafon to undervalue the phyficai 

 knowledge of the i'î^ncients, except in fo far as it was reduced to 

 fyitcm. We ought to recollect that they had made mofi: of the 

 difcoveries which the Moderns boaft as all their own. The Tuf- 

 can Philofophers underftood the art of conjuring down the 

 thunder. Good King Numa made experiments on this fubje<5l. 

 Tullus Hfjlilius took a fancy to imitate, but fell a viftim to his 

 attempt, fiom want of underflanding how to conduct the expe- 

 riments in a proper manner. (Confult Plutarch.) Pbilolausy 

 the Pythagorean, advanced long before Copernicus, that the Sun 

 was the centre of the World ; and before Cbrijlopher Columbus, 

 that our Earth confifted of two Continents, that on which we 

 are placed, and the one oppofite to it. Several Philofophers of 

 Antitjuity maintained, that comets were ftars which purfued a 

 regular courfe. Pliny himfelf fays, that they all move in a nor- 

 therly direélion, which is generally true. It is not yet, how-^ 

 ever, two hundred years, fmce comets were believed, in Eu- 

 rope, to be vapors which caught fire in the intermediate re- 

 gions of the air. The general belief, about that period, like- 

 wife, was, that the Sea furnifhed a fupply of water to the foun- 

 tains and rivers, by a procefs of filtration through the pores of 

 the Earth, though it is faid in a hundred paflages of Scripture^ 



that 



