He begins by telling us, that before the deluge the earth had a very different form from that which it has at present; it was at first, he says, a fluid mass, compounded of matters of all kinds, and all sorts of figures, the heaviest descended towards the centre, and formed a hard and solid body; round which the waters collected, and the air, and all the liquors lighter than water, surmounted them. Between the orb of air and that of water, was an orb of oily matter, but as the air was still very impure, and contained a great quantity of small particles of terrestrial matter, they by degrees descended on the coat of oil, and formed a terrestrial orb blended with earth and oil; and this was the first habitable earth, and the first abode of man. This was an excellent soil, light, and calculated to yield to the tenderness of the first germs. The surface of the terrestrial globe was at first equal, uniform, without mountains, without seas, and without inequalities; but it remained only about sixteen centuries in this state, for the heat of the sun by degrees drying the crust, split it at first on the surface, soon after these cracks penetrated farther and increased so considerably by time, that at length they entirely opened the crust; in an instant the whole earth fell into pieces in the abyss of water it surrounded; and this was the cause of the deluge. But all these masses of earth, by falling into the abyss, dragged along with them a great quantity of air; these struck against each other, divided, and accumulated so irregularly, that great cavities filled with air were left between them. The waters by degrees opened these cavities, and in proportion as they filled them, the surface of the earth discovered itself in the highest parts; at length water alone remained in the lowest parts; that is to say, the vast vallies which contain the sea. Thus our ocean is a part of the ancient abyss, the rest is entered into the internal cavities with which the ocean communicates. The islands and sea rocks are the small fragments, and continents are the great masses of the old crust. As the rupture and the fall of this crust are made of a sudden, and with confusion, it was not surprising to find eminences, depths, plains, and inequalities of all kinds on the surface of the earth. FOOTNOTES: [128:A] Thomas Burnet. Telluris theoria sacra, orbis nostri originem & mutationes generales, quas aut jam subut, aut olim Subiturus est complectens. Londina, 1681. ARTICLE IV. FROM THE SYSTEM OF WOODWARD.