Ch. III.] 



HUTCHINSON.— CELSIUS.— SCI1EUCIIZEE. 



49 





. 









-' 



of these erratic bodies. Havin 



Woodward 



posing* all stratified deposits to have resulted from the 

 ' chaotic sediment of the flood.' Whiston was one of the 

 first who ventured to propose that the text of Genesis should 

 be interpreted differently from its ordinary acceptation, so 

 that the doctrine of the earth having existed long previous to 

 the creation of man might no loiiger be regarded as unortho- 

 dox. He had the art to throw an air of plausibility over the 

 most improbable parts of his theory, and seemed to be pro- 

 ceeding in the most sober manner, and, by the aid of mathe- 

 matical demonstration, to the establishment of his various 

 propositions. Locke pronounced a panegyric on his theory, 

 commending him for having explained so many wonderful 

 and before inexplicable things. His book, as well as Bur- 

 net's, was attacked and refuted by Keill.* Like all who 

 introduced purely .hypothetical causes to account for natural 

 phenomena, Whiston retarded the progress of truth, divert- 

 ing men from the investigation of the laws of sublunary 

 nature, and inducing them to waste time in speculations on 

 the power of comets to drag the waters of the ocean over the 

 land — on the condensation of the vapours of their tails into 

 water, and other matters equally edifying. 



Hutchinson, 1724. — John Hutchinson, who had been em- 

 ployed by Woodward in making his collection of fossils, 

 published afterwards, in 1724, the first part of his ' Moses's 

 Principia,' wherein he ridiculed Woodward's hypothesis. He 

 and his numerous followers were accustomed to declaim 



human 



maintained 



Hebrew Scriptures, when rightly translated, compris 



m 



objected to the Newtonian theory of gravitation. 



Celsius. — Andrea Celsius, the Swedish astronomer, published 

 about this time his remarks on the gradual diminution and 

 sinking of the waters in the Baltic, to which I shall have oc- 

 casion to advert more particularly in the sequel (Ch. XXXI.) . 

 Scheuchzer, 1708.— In Germany, in the meantime, 



>m 



VOL. I. 



* An Examination of Dr. Burnet's Theory, &c. 2d ed. 1734 



E 



