contrary to reason and to scripture. The moon and fishes, said his opponents, were, according to him, to have existed before the separation of the waters from the earth. But, it was the third day on which God separated the waters from the earth. The second day, he created the sun and moon. For here that unformed and primitive light, which God created on the first day, by saying, "Let there be light, and there was light," is not to be confounded with the sun and moon, they being very expressly distinguished in the sacred text. On the fifth day he created fishes of all kinds, consequently shell fishes. Hence the moon and fishes were created afterwards. The exuvia left, were left by the second deluge. The general dissolution likewise, supposed by Le Cat, they declared to be in express terms contrary to Scripture, which says, "But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which, the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also, and the works that are therein, shall be burned up." * "Ignis naturaliter aget antè judicium in bonos et malos, qui vivi reperientur, eos in cinerem resolvendo: sed mali illius ignis actione cruciabuntur, boni verò omnis doloris erunt excepti," says, St. Thomas

D

• 2 Peter, chap. iii. v. 5.

St. Thomas Aquinas in his supplement. They declared it even to be positively against God's covenant: "And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth."* Again in Ecclesiastes," one generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth for ever."

Le Cat, who was a man of strong abilities, did not sit down quietly under this scriptural condemnation. On his adversaries he retorted, that the knowledge of the Hebrews was miserably circumscribed. "Can the account of the creation of the world as delivered in Genesis," says he, "be said to be clear, and easy to be understood?" St. Jerome, in his Letter to Paulina, says, no. The 102d psalm quoted against him, he insisted was in favour of his hypothesis: even the passage in Peter he contended to be for him.

"Several interpreters of the Scriptures," says he, "are of opinion, the light of the first day was a luminous body, out of whose substance the sun and stars might afterwards have been formed.

Genesis, chap ix.

Now

Now, if we suppose within the earth's vortex a heavenly body, whether luminous or not, it must inevitably have caused a flux and reflux. Hence it is probable this earth had been several times dissolved, confounded, and thrown into ruins. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth;" that is, God created a shapeless mass of matter, in which were contained all the materials of the heaven and the earth. "St. Augustin," says he, "whose faith was so orthodox, avers, it was difficult, if not almost impossible to conceive, and much more to explain, what the six days of the creation were. For his own part, and after a thorough examination, the Saint could only determine the creation to have been instantaneous; "Simul omnia facta sunt." Saint Gregory Nazianzen was also of the same opinion: "When Moses informs us," says this Bishop," that the world was created in the beginning, it merely signifies, that God created the plastic powers and forming causes, and that every thing existed on the first act of his, divine will." "The Scriptures," again says St. Jerome, "do not consist in the letter, but the meaning; for were we to keep to the letter, we might broach new tenets." "Can there be thus any thing," continues Le Cat," more formal, more express, than various texts of Scripture on the system of the D2

world;

world; and yet are they not all erroneous?"The earth is fixed to all eternity," says Ecclesiastes. "The Lord has made the earth immoveable," says the writer of the Chronicles. "Thou Lord hath founded the earth so that it cannot be moved," says the Psalmist. "The sun rises and sets," says the Ecclesiastes." It returns to the same point, and there it rises again; its circuit is towards the south, and it declines towards the west." Isaiah says, that "the sun went back ten degrees," and that this retrogradation prolonged the king's life. Finally, Joshua commanded the sun to suspend his course. Now, says Le Cat, what would become of all science, if the most positive literal text of the Old Tes tament, or the most explicit determination of the fathers, were to be the standards of natural philosophy? The earth, according to the Scriptures, is ftat, square, and supported by the waters. St. Basil, and St. Ambrose, with the whole fraternity of ancient fathers, rejected the antipodes, as a wild chimera, dangerous to religion. "Far be the thought from all Christians, however," concludes this ingenious naturalist," that a religion so true, so holy, so transcendent, should have any thing to fear from the progress and the improvement of the sciences!"

LET

LETTER VIII.

I WOULD here willingly release your attention from fanciful fictions; but the abundance of ingenuity which has been bestowed upon theories of creation, renders it impossible. We will for. a moment, therefore, glance at the system of a most brilliant and eloquent philosopher; one whose labours, indeed, have added lustre to science, but whose impetuosity of imagination hath generated error, as wild and unsubstantial as any of his predecessors

"The earth," says Buffon, "was originally in a state of liquefaction, the greatest part of the materials of which this globe is composed being vitrifications, or vitrifiable by fire. It assumed its figure when in a fluid state. The diameter of the earth is about three thousand leagues, and it is situated about thirty-three millions of leagues from the sun, round which it revolves. This annual revolution is the effect of two forces; the one may be considered as an impulse from right to left, or from left to right; the other