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Ch. IV.] 



PLAYFAIR'S ILLUSTRATIONS OF BUTTON. 



79 



like the institutions of men, carry in themselves the elements 

 of their own destruction. He has not permitted in His 

 works any symptom of infancy or of old age, or any sign by 

 which we may estimate either their future or their past dura- 

 tion. He may put an end, as He no doubt gave a beginning, 

 to the present system, at some determinate period of time ; 

 but we may rest assured that this great catastrophe will not 

 be brought about by the laws now existing, and that it is 

 not indicated by anything which we perceive. 5 * 



The party feeling excited against the Huttonian doctrines, 

 and the open disregard of candour and temper in the con- 

 troversy, will hardly be credited by the reader, unless he 

 recalls to his recollection that the mind of the English pub- 

 lic was at that time in a state of feverish excitement. A 

 class of writers in France had been labouring industriously 

 for many years, to diminish the influence of the clergy, by 

 sapping the foundations of the Christian faith ; and their 

 success, and the consequences of the Revolution, had alarmed 

 the most resolute minds, while the imagination of the more 

 timid was continually haunted by dread of innovation, as by 

 the phantom of some fearful dream. 



Voltaire. — Voltaire had used the modern discoveries in 

 physics as one of the numerous weapons of attack and ridi- 

 cule directed by him against the Scriptures. He found that 

 the most popular systems of geology were accommodated to 

 the sacred writings, and that much ingenuity had been 

 employed to make every fact coincide exactly with the Mosaic 

 account of the creation and deluge. It was, therefore, with 

 no friendly feelings that he contemplated the cultivators of 

 geology in general, regarding the science as one which had 

 been successfully enlisted by theologians as an ally in their 

 cause.f He knew that the majority of those who were 



philosophers put themselves without 

 ceremony in the place of God, and 

 think to create a universe with a word/ 



Playfair's Works, vol. iv. p. 55. 

 f In allusion to the theories of Bur- 

 net, Woodward, and other physico-theo- 

 logical writers, he declared that they —Dissertation envoyee a l'Academie de 



were as fond of changes of scene on the 

 face of the globe, as were the populace 

 at a play. ' Every one of them destroys 

 and renovates the earth after his own 

 fashion, as Descartes framed it : for 



Boulogne, sur les Changemens arrives 

 dans notre Globe.— Unfortunately, this 

 and similar ridicule directed against 

 the cosmogonists was too well deserved. 



