THE THEORY OF THE EARTH. BOOK II

    for these things could not happen to them after they were hard and impenetrable, in the form of Stone or Marble. And if we can sosten Rocks and Stones, and run them down into their first Liquors, as these observations seem to do, we may easily believe that other Bodies also that compose the Earth, were once in a fluid Mass, which is that we call a Chaos.

We therefore watch'd the motions of that Chaos, and the several transformations of it, while it continued Fluid; and we found at length what its first Concretion would be, and how it setled into the form of an habitable Earth. But that form was very different from the present form of the Earth, which is not deducible from a Chaos, by any known laws of Nature, or by any wit of Man; as every one, that will have patience to examine it, may easily be satissied. That first Earth was of a smooth regular surface, as the Concretions of Liquors are, before they are disturb'd or broken; under that surface lay the Great Abysse, which was ready to swallow up the World that hung over it, and about it, whensoever God should give the command, and the Vault should break; And this constitution of the Primæval Earth gave occasion to the first Catastrophe of this World, when it perisht in a Deluge of Water. For that Vault did break, as we have shown at large, and by the dissolution and fall of it, the Great Deep was thrown out of its bed, forc'd upwards into the Air, and overflow'd in that impetuous Commotion the highest tops of the Fragments of the ruin'd Earth, which now we call its Mountains. And as this was the first great and fatal Period of Nature; so upon the issue of this, and the return of the Waters into their Chanels, the second face of Nature appear'd, or the present broken form of the Earth, as it is Terraqueous, Mountainous, and Cavernous. These things we have explain'd fully in the first Book, and have thereby setled two great Points, given a rational account of the Vniversal Deluge, And shown the Causes of the irregular form of the present or Post-diluvian Earth. This being done, we have appli'd our selves, in the