386 APPENDIX. NOTES. 



year and ten days. It is evident, from the period that 

 intervened between the resting of the ark, and the subse- 

 quent emergence of the tops of the mountains more than 

 two months afterwards, 1 that the subsidence of the waters 

 at first was very gradual ; but, in proportion as their volume 

 diminished, it probably became more and more rapid. 



The tumult and violence of the descending waters, and 

 the effects produced by them, in the new mixture, as it 

 were, of the substances now forming the crust of our globe, 

 and the putting it into its present order always under 

 the direction and guidance of the Deity, who sitteth above 

 the water-flood, employing as his hands those physical 

 agents which rule in nature, to fulfil his purpose must 

 have been the reverse of those of the ascending ones : the 

 object now was not disruption, and dislocation, and de- 

 struction, but to form anew the earth and its heavens 

 which had been thus destroyed, and by the addition of a 

 vast body of fresh materials not entering into the compo- 

 sition of the old crust of the former, to render it materially 

 different from it ; and that when the attention of mankind 

 was directed to the study of God's works, and of those 

 remains of the former world, a proof might be supplied of 

 the existence of this sad catastrophe, confirmative of the 

 account given in Holy Scripture, and adding to the force 

 of the warning that universal corruption will be a prelude 

 to universal destruction. 



When we consider what an infinite host of animals of 

 every description must have perished in the diluvial waters, 

 as well as the incalculable magnitude of the mass of vege- 

 table substances that must have been severed by the vio- 

 lence of the conflicting waters from the earth's surface, or 

 uprooted afterwards in consequence of its being so tho- 







1 Genes, viii. 4, 5. 



