CHAP. VI

The difficulty of conceiving how this Earth can be set on fire. With a general answer to that difficulty. Two suppos'd causes of the Conflagration, by the Sun's drawing nearer to the Earth, or the Earth's throwing out the central fire, examin'd and rejected.

WE have now made our way clear to the principal point, The Causes of the Conflagration: How the Heavens and the Earth will be set on fire, what materials are prepar'd, or what train of causes, for that purpose. The Ancients, who have kept us company pretty well thus far, here quite desert us. They deal more in Conclusions than Causes, as is usual in all Traditional Learning. And the Stoicks themselves, who inculcate so much the doctrine of the Conflagration, and make the strength of it such as to dissolve the Earth into a fiery Chaos, are yet very short and superficial in their explications, how this shall come to pass. The latent seeds of fire, they say, shall every where be let loose, and that Element will prevail over all the rest, and transform every thing into its own nature. But these are general things that give little satisfaction to inquisitive Persons. Neither do the modern Authors that treat of the same subject, relieve us in this particular: They are willing to suppose the Conflagration a supernatural effect, that so they may excuse themselves the trouble of enquiring after causes. 'Tis, no doubt, in a sort, supernatural: and so the Deluge was: yet Moses sets down the causes of the Deluge, the rains from above, and the disruption of the Abyss. So there must be treasures of fire provided against that day, by whose eruption this second Deluge will be brought upon the Earth.