ADDITIONAL NOTES. 



Noie (A), page 18.— THE following compendious view of 

 the system of J. Hutchinson, esq., as it respects Natural Philo- 

 sophy, is extracted from a Letter to a Bishop, concerning some ini' 

 portant Discoveries in Philosophy and Theology, by the right ho- 

 nourable Duncan Forbes, president of the court of session in Scot- 

 land. As this gentleman appears to have been favourable to tlie 

 Hutch insonian philosophy, and had doubtless devoted much atten- 

 tion to it, he may be supposed by som(^ to give a more satisfac- 

 tory account of it than that whidi is exhibited in the page above 

 referred to. 



'' The first thing that is met with in the books o{ Moses is ?.n 

 assertion tliat God created the heavens and the earth, which is 

 followed by a particular account of the order and manner of the 

 tbrmation of all that was created, till the work was perfected. 

 After wliich, God is said to have rested ; and our author asserts, 

 that it is also said, the perfect machine, then left to itself, carried 

 on all the operations in tliis system, by certain known laws of me- 

 chanism, explained by Moses, and tliroughout the Scriptures by 

 the other inspired penmen. 



*' The sum of what our author avers to be the doctrine of the 

 Scriptures, on tliis head, is, that, beside the difl'erently formed 

 particles, of which this earth, and tlie several metals, minerals, 

 and other solid substances in it, and in the other solid orbs, are 

 composed, God at first created all that subtile fluid which now is, 

 and from tlie creation has been, in tlie condition of fire, light, or 

 air, and goes under the name of the heavens. 



"The particles of this fluid (which our author calls atoms), 

 when they are single and uncompounded, are inconveivably mi- 

 nute, and su subtiic as to pervade the poix-s of all substances what- 



