We cannot dispense with observing that Burnet, Woodward, Whiston, and most of these other authors, have committed an error which deserves to be cleared up; which is, to have looked upon the deluge as possible by the action of natural causes, whereas scripture presents it to us as produced by the immediate will of God; there is no natural cause which can produce on the whole surface of the earth, the quantity of water required to cover the highest mountains; and if even we could imagine a cause proportionate to this effect, it would still be impossible to find another cause capable of causing the water to disappear: allowing Whiston, that these waters proceeded from the tail of a comet, we deny that any could proceed from the great abyss, or that they all returned into it, since the great abyss, according to him, being surrounded on every side by the crust, or terrestrial orb, it is impossible that the attraction of the comet could cause any motion to the fluids it contained; much less, as he says, a violent flux and reflux; hence there could not be issued from, nor entered into, the great abyss, a single drop of water; and unless it is supposed that the waters which fell from the comet have been destroyed by a miracle, they would still be on the surface of the earth, covering the summits of the highest mountains. Nothing better characterises a miracle, than the impossibility of explaining the effect of it by natural causes. Our authors have made vain efforts to give a reason for the deluge; their physical efforts, and the secondary causes, which they made use of, prove the truth of the fact as reported in the scriptures, and demonstrate that it could only have been performed by the first cause, the will of the Almighty. Besides, it is certain that it was neither at one time, nor by the effect of the deluge, that the sea left dry these continents we inhabit: for it is certain by the testimony of holy writ, that the terrestrial paradise was in Asia, and that Asia was inhabited before the deluge; consequently the sea, at that time, did not cover this considerable part of the globe. The earth, before the deluge, was nearly as it is at present, and this enormous quantity of water, which divine justice caused to fall on the earth to punish guilty men, in fact, brought death on every creature; but it produced no change on the surface of the earth, it did not even destroy plants which grew upon it, since the dove brought an olive branch to the ark in her beak.