THE THEORY OF THE EARTH. BOOK I

Thus a new World appear'd, or the Earth put on its new form, and became divided into Sea and Land; and the Abysse, which from several Ages, even from the beginning of the World, had lain hid in the womb of the Earth, was brought to light and discover'd; the greatest part of it constituting our present Ocean, and the rest filling the lower cavities of the Earth: Upon the Land appear'd the Mountains and the Hills, and the Islands in the Sea, and the Rocks upon the shore. And so the Divine Providence, having prepar'd Nature for so great a change, at one stroke dissolv'd the frame of the old World, and made us a new one out of its ruines, which we now inhabit since the Deluge. All which things being thus explain'd, deduc'd, and stated, we now add and pronounce our Third and last Proposition; That the disruption of the Abysse, or dissolution of the primceval Earth and its fall into the Abysse, was the cause of the Universal Deluge, and of the destruction of the old World.