THEOftY OF THE EARTH. 39 



op the mountains for the purpose of allowing the 

 waters, which had produced the deluge, to run 

 off; and selected those places in which there was 

 the greatest quantity of rocks, without which the 

 mountains could not have supported themselves. 

 A fourth * created the earth from the atmosphere 

 of one comet, and deluged it by the tail of ano- 

 ther : The heat which it retained from its origin, 

 was what, in his opinion, excited the whole of the 

 living beings upon it to sin ; for which they were 

 all drowned, excepting the fishes, whose passions 

 were apparently less vehement. 



It is evident, that, even while confined with- 

 in the limits prescribed by the Book of Genesis, 

 naturalists might still have a pretty wide range : 

 they soon found themselves, however, in too nar- 

 row bounds ; and when they had succeeded in 

 converting the six days of creation into so many 

 indefinite periods, the lapse of ages no longer 

 forming an obstacle to their views, their systems 

 took a flight proportioned to the periods which 

 they could then dispose of at pleasure. 



Even the great Leibnitz amused himself, like 

 Descartes, by conceiving the earth to be an extin- 

 guished sunf , a vitrified globe, upon which the 

 vapours falling down again, after it had cooled, 



* Whiston, New Theory of the Earth. Lond. 1708. 

 t Leibnitz, Protogaea. Act. Lips. 1683 ; Gott. 1749. 



