28 CREATION OF ANIMALS. 



of laws, but a miraculous deviation from it, in 

 which their action was suspended, and in conse- 

 quence of which, perhaps, some were abrogated 

 and new ones enacted in their room. I may here 

 further observe, that probably, the whole body 

 of waters which before the creation of the firma- 

 ment or expanse, with the earthy atoms sus- 

 pended in it, formed the primeval chaos, were 

 now again its masters ; descending and ascend- 

 ing from every receptacle or storehouse to which 

 that powerful expansion had been the means 

 employed to guide them. Whatever waters were 

 suspended in the atmosphere, or could be formed 

 in it, whatever were contained in the ocean, or 

 the womb of our globe, now united their forces 

 and subdued and destroyed the primitive earth, 

 till they reduced it to the state, for the most 

 part, in which we now behold it. 



I am next to inquire what has been said in 

 scripture on the subject of subterranean animals. 

 In the second commandment we are forbidden to 

 " make any likeness of any thing that is in the 

 ivaters under the earth." These words, however, 

 may be merely used to indicate the animals that 

 inhabit the ocean, considering the waters under 

 the earth as forming a part of it. But there is 

 a passage in the Apocalypse, where the creatures 

 under the earth are distinguished from those in 

 the sea. " And every creature ivhich is in heaven 

 and on the earth, and under the earth, and such an 



