We have seen what his resolution was. Look now at one or two of his sermons. Take first the sermon on God's Approbation of His Works. In that discourse, referring to the primeval earth, he speaks as follows: "The _whole surface_ of it was beautiful in a high degree. The _universal face_ was clothed with living green. And every part was _fertile_ as well as beautiful. It was no where deformed by rough or ragged rocks: it did not shock the view with horrid precipices, huge chasms, or dreary caverns: with deep, impassable morasses, or deserts of barren sands. We have not any authority to say, with some learned and ingenious authors, that there were no _mountains_ on the original earth, no unevennesses on its surface, yet it is highly probable that they rose and fell, by almost insensible degrees. "There were no agitations within the bowels of the globe: no violent convulsions: no concussions of the earth: no earthquakes: but all was unmoved as the pillars of heaven. There were then no such things as eruptions of fire: there were no volcanoes, or burning mountains. Neither Vesuvius, Etna, nor Hecla, if they had any being, then poured out smoke and flame, but were covered with a verdant mantle, from the top to the bottom. "It is probable there was no external sea in the paradisiacal earth: none, until the great deep burst the barriers which were originally appointed for it; indeed there was not then that need of the ocean for _navigation_ which there is now. For either every country produced whatever was requisite either for the necessity or comfort of its inhabitants; or man being then (as he will be again at the resurrection) equal to the angels, was able to convey himself, at his pleasure, to any given distance. "There were no putrid lakes, no turbid or stagnating waters. The element of _air_ was then always serene, and always friendly to man. It contained no frightful meteors, no unwholesome vapors, no poisonous exhalations. There were no tempests, but only cool and gentle breezes, fanning both man and beast, and wafting the fragrant odors on their silent wings. "The sun, the fountain of _fire_, 'Of this great world both eye and soul,' was situated at the most exact distance from the earth, so as to yield a sufficient quantity of heat, (neither too little nor too much) to _every part of it_. God had not yet 'Bid his angels turn askance this oblique globe.' There was, therefore, then no country that groaned under 'The rage of Arctos, and eternal frost.' There was no violent winter, or sultry summer; no extreme either of heat or cold. No soil was burned up by the solar heat: none uninhabitable through the want of it. "There were then no impetuous currents of air, no tempestuous winds, no furious hail, no torrents of rain, no rolling thunders or forky lightnings. _One perennial spring was perpetually smiling over the whole surface of the earth._" Speaking of vegetable productions, he says,