On the Mosaic account of the Creation. 377 



both more violent and more numerous formerly than in the 

 present day, as is clearly perceptible from the many extinct 

 volcanic craters of Central France, and from the dislocations 

 of strata in various formations. 



But it will be at once apparent, that such outbursts of 

 volcanic matter would have been no more general formerly 

 than now, and they would have formed mere local pheno- 

 mena affecting a limited tract, as is shewn in the many local 

 disturbances in the strata of our own country.* While 

 insisting, therefore, that there have been but two great or 

 general supernatural revolutions which have extended over 

 the whole globe, it is by no means contrary to Scripture 

 doctrines to declare likewise, that local disturbances from 

 the operation of natural laws " have been numerous ;" and to 

 this extent therefore the declaration of Cuvier may be true, 

 although certainly not in the general sense in which he 

 made it. 



The views which Mr. Penn entertains of the formation of 

 coal, tend better than any thing else that can be urged, to 

 upset the period of this falsely called first revolution of the 

 Mosaic geologists, and I shall accordingly make use of this 

 author's own statements, in order the better to expose the 

 error into which he has incautiously betrayed himself. 



He tells us, " that Mr. D^Aubuisson entertains a philo- 

 sophical doubt, whether this substance ought to be classed 

 with intermediate, or with secondary formations ; and he 

 therefore leaves the point undecided. 55 



That Mr. Hatchett declares his opinions to be, " that coal 

 is a vegetable substance, consisting of vegetable accumula- 

 tions, mineralized under vast strata of the earth "f Now 

 since " all naturalists are agreed in this one point, that our 

 present continents were heretofore the bed of the sea ; 



* See " Murchison's Silurian System" passim. 

 1 Comp. Est. p. 382. 



