The work was written with much power, and attracted universal attention. It was translated into various languages, and called forth a multitude of supporters and opponents in all parts of Europe. Strong men rose against it, especially in England, and among them a few dignitaries of the Church; but the Church generally hailed the work with joy. Addison praised it in a Latin ode, and for nearly a century it exercised a strong influence upon European feeling, and aided to plant more deeply than ever the theological opinion that the earth as now existing is merely a ruin; whereas, before sin brought on the Flood, it was beautiful in its "egg-shaped form," and free from every imperfection. A few years later came another writer of the highest standing--William Whiston, professor at Cambridge, who in 1696 published his New Theory of the Earth. Unlike Burnet, he endeavoured to avail himself of the Newtonian idea, and brought in, to aid the geological catastrophe caused by human sin, a comet, which broke open "the fountains of the great deep." But, far more important than either of these champions, there arose in the eighteenth century, to aid in the subjection of science to theology, three men of extraordinary power--John Wesley, Adam Clarke, and Richard Watson. All three were men of striking intellectual gifts, lofty character, and noble purpose, and the first-named one of the greatest men in English history; yet we find them in geology hopelessly fettered by the mere letter of Scripture, and by a temporary phase in theology. As in regard to witchcraft and the doctrine of comets, so in regard to geology, this theological view drew Wesley into enormous error.(143) The great doctrine which Wesley, Watson, Clarke, and their compeers, following St. Augustine, Bede, Peter Lombard, and a long line of the greatest minds in the universal Church, thought it especially necessary to uphold against geologists was, that death entered the world by sin--by the first transgression of Adam and Eve. The extent to which the supposed necessity of upholding this doctrine carried Wesley seems now almost beyond belief. Basing his theology on the declaration that the Almighty after creation found the earth and all created things "very good," he declares, in his sermon on the Cause and Cure of Earthquakes, that no one who believes the Scriptures can deny that "sin is the moral cause of earthquakes, whatever their natural cause may be." Again, he declares that earthquakes are the "effect of that curse which was brought upon the earth by the original transgression." Bringing into connection with Genesis the declaration of St. Paul that "the whole creation groaneth and travaileth together in pain until now," he finds additional scriptural proof that the earthquakes were the result of Adam's fall. He declares, in his sermon on God's Approbation of His Works, that "before the sin of Adam there were no agitations within