494 PHILOSOPHICAL TKANSACTION8. [aNNO 16Q2-3. 



adds another hypothesis. That the Divine Power might at that time so depress 

 the surface of the ocean, as to force the waters of the abyss through the fore- 

 mentioned channels, &c. An hypothesis Uke the former of these you will find 

 at the end of a treatise, de Potentia Restitutiva, or of springs, published by 

 Dr. Hook, Anno 1678, p. 50. Where, by the removal of the centre toward 

 the Antipodes, he explains the appearance of several islands in our seas, by the 

 recess of the water ; which formerly were not observed, &c. In the next place 

 our author, speaking of the effects of the deluge, has a particular chapter on 

 formed stones, sea-shells, and the like bodies found at distances from the 

 shore, and brings the arguments at large on both sides, for and against their 

 being originally shells, bones, &c. He adds the draughts of some of the most 

 different kinds of these bodies, and leaving the matter undetermined, he pro- 

 ceeds to give some account of the changes that have happened to the earth since 

 the general deluge ; as, the breaking off of some islands formerly joined to the 

 continent, some places gained from the sea, others covered by it. Other 

 changes happening to the earth by the sinking of mountains, changes by earth- 

 quakes, where he touches upon that lately happening in Jamaica, and that in 

 England in September last, and as to earthquakes in England, that they have 

 been very short, and finif hed at one explosion ; an argument that the cavities 

 wherein the inflamed matter is contained are here very narrow. Other changes 

 have been caused in the earth by extraordinary floods, from long and continual 

 rains ; others by boisterous winds, and the like ; which with some remarks, that 

 the earth does not proceed so fast towards the levelling and general inunda- 

 tion, as the force of these causes seem to require, concludes this second dis- 

 course. 



The third discourse being more theological, and less related to the design of 

 these tracts, I shall be the more brief in the account of it, and shall only ob- 

 serve, that our author, in order to prove his assertion of a general dissolution 

 by fire, besides scripture proofs, and the opinions of the priinitive fathers, 

 brings several from the ancient philosophers, whose opinions were, that the 

 dissolution of the world should be by water and fire, alternately at certain 

 periods, the gods themselves not being free from these catastrophes. Coming 

 in the next place to the question. Whether there be any thing in nature that 

 may probably cause or argue a future dissolution ? He grants to the peripatetics, 

 that supposing the ordinary concourse of God with second causes, the world 

 might endure for ever, there being no such decay in nature as might argue the 

 contrary. Proceeding to particulars, he examines the four probable causes of 

 such a dissolution ; first, as to the possibility of the water, in process of time, 

 overflowing the earth ; from the steeple of Cxaich, in the Peak of Derbyshire, 



