114 Analysis of Scientific Books. 



hibiting a cause capable of producing it ? Secondary causes 

 can only effect secondary productions. Created bone and 

 wood were not produced by secondary causes — " yet we know 

 that there are secondary causes which produce bone and wood, 

 but we know of no secondary cause that produces granite — and 

 the reason appears to be obvious ; for the animal creation 

 (from the perishable nature of the individuals that compose it) 

 was to subsist by succession to the first-formed individuals, 

 and therefore laws for securing that succession were necessary : 

 but the mineral creation was to subsist permanently in its first- 

 formed individuals, therefore no laws for their multiplication 

 were necessary. And from this consideration alone accrues a 

 very powerful moral evidence, that the first mineral formations 

 which are still permanent, were formed by no other mode than 

 that" (viz. creation) " which formed the first animals, which 

 have been succeeded by generation." 



The crystalline texture and hardness of granite rocks, whence 

 they derive their solidity and durability; their immense height, 

 to which is owing the accumulation of supplies for the rivers 

 which irrigate the globe, together with their lengthened and 

 inclined forms to determine the direction of those rivers, are 

 so many proofs of unchangeable arrangement which adapts 

 them " to the end for which they were formed" — and " how is 

 it possible," exclaims our author, " to contemplate all this, 

 without rendering immediately to God the things which are 

 God's?" 



Having shewn, in the first part of the work, that the chaotic 

 principle of the mineral geology is incapable of standing the 

 test of the reformed philosophy of Newton, our author proceeds, 

 in the second part, to examine by the same test the pretensions 

 of the Mosaical Geology to explain the mode of the first for- 

 mation and the revolutions of this earth. From the philosophy 

 of Newton we attain the highest probabilities in regard to this 

 subject, and the Mosaical geology professes to add the consum- 

 mation of absolute certainty. But certainty as to past events 

 can only be derived from competent and positive history. Now, 

 the history which professes to account for the mode of the first 

 formations and revolutions of the earth, is that " ' Revealed 

 History' which was imparted to man by God, (the only possible 

 voucher for the facts of creation), through the ministry of 

 Moses ;" the authority of which record the judgments of Bacon 

 and Newton unequivocally and entirely acknowledged, and the 

 former grounded the foundation of his new philosophy on its 

 statements. 



This sacred and inestimable record, which was revealed to mankind 

 above 3000 years ago, unfolds a detailed recital of the sensible mode by 

 which God " formed and set in order" the entire system of this terrestrial 

 globe; and likewise the history of a great universal revolution, which he 

 caused it to sustain by the operation of water, 1656 years after he had 

 created it.— This record comprises the Mosaical Geology. 



