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our solar system, including the earth, and moons, with the several satellites, 
broke from the Sun 6 Mibstance , and were scattered over the vast inane. 
Being driven with an impulsive force they would have receded for ever, 
had not God endowed the sun with an attractive power, which, operating as 
the planets lost something of their direct motion, produced those circum- 
girations which they iioav possess. 
As the fluid Earth was impelled forward, it rolled round and round, and 
then obtained its oblate, or spheroid figure, producing the vicissitudes of night 
and day: and as our globe was once a part of the sun, it still continues at its 
center to be an uniform mass of melted matter, in its state of primeval 
fusion. 
But its surface is very differently composed. 
Having been in the beginning heated to a degree equal to, if not greater, 
than what comets are found to sustain, most things were in a state of vapour, 
which subsiding, in proportion as the substance cooled, formed, according to 
their several densities, earth, water, air; the heavier parts sinking, and the 
lighter still remaining suspended. 
By degrees things took their proper stations. 
The waters covering the earth, formed for themselves beds, and moun¬ 
tains rose.* 
And the Earth was then, by the Almighty Fiat, to bring forth grass, and 
the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit, each after his own 
kind...next living creatures, cattle, birds, fishes, insects...and lastly, the 
paragon of creation, Man. 
Next Love Divine, with brooding wings unfurl’d, 
Call d from the rude abyss the living world . 
Darwin. 
1 shall now present my readers with the opinion of the celebrated Dr. 
Whiston, who supposes « the earth to have been originally not the spark 
of a sun, but actually a comet-, and considers the history of the creation, as 
given us in Scripture, to have its commencement just when it was, by the 
being Six days emplojidTn CrlnUoj! “Thun 2 ““"“r ° f ALMIGHTr 
its perfection. ’ thlS slow Progress of the Earth towards 
