The Planet Jupiter was attracted out of his orbit by the enormous Comet which appeared in the year 1680. The Comet coming across the plane of his track, had a temporary influence upon him; and it is observable, he has not travelled by the same fixed stars since that period which he did before it; and no doubt but his usual motion was momentarily retarded, and the shape of his orbit altered. Now if Jupiter consists of land and water (and by the spots seen on his face it is more than probable) it is possible he might experience a revolution something similar to our flood; for that our flood was occasioned by the near approach of a Comet, is a most natural supposition, and in no wise militates against the scriptural doctrine of that event: it being as easy, and as consistent for the Almighty, to render justice by a secondary cause, as by an immediate interposition. Nor is his attribute of mercy arraigned by the promiscuous destruction the deluge occasioned; for it is evident, by reasoning from his works, that he governs the universe by “general, not by partial laws.” The vestiges of the Deluge are so remarkable, both on the surface and within the bowels of the Earth, that if examined without prejudice, they prove, I think, beyond a doubt, that awful revolution to have been the work of a Comet. Not that the moisture of its tail drowned the World, as was unphilosophically suggested by Whiston; but if the attraction of the Moon be capable of raising the water of the sea above its common level, what effects might not be supposed from the near approach of a body perhaps many thousand times larger than the Moon? If a tide by such an attraction was raised three or four miles above the level of the Sea, the Earth, by turning on its axis, would have that protuberance dragged over the land, and its surface would be plowed up into those inequalities we call mountains; for that mountains are not of eternal duration, is evident from their growing less, even in the memory of man. For every thing tends to a level. Rains falling on mountains wash down their asperities; this matter bemuds the rivers, and banks out the sea; rocks themselves yield up their fantastic forms to the effects of air, water, and heat; and land has been growing into the water ever since the Deluge. But why should all assemblages of mountains be arranged like little ridges of sand on the sea shore? Doubtless by having been produced by a superior tide, and left to dry by an unreturning sea. Almost all great ranges of mountains run North and South; the Andes of the Cordelleras; the mountains of the Moon in Africa; the Dophranes, Caucasus, Allegany, &c.—the Alps and Pyrenees excepted.