ability. He endeavored to show, that this dissolution of the earth by the deluge was taught in the Scriptures, and his reasoning on that point is a fine example of the state of biblical interpretation in his day. "As there are other texts," says he, "which mention the dissolution of the earth, it may be proper to cite them. Ps. xlvi. 2. _God is our refuge; therefore will we not fear though the earth be removed_, [be changed, be quite altered, as it was at the deluge.] _God uttered his voice, the earth melted_, [flowed, dissolved to atoms.] Again, Job xxviii. 9. _He sent his hand_ [the expansion, his instrument, or the agent by which he worked] _against the rock, he overturned the mountains by the roots, he caused the rivers to burst forth from between the rocks_, [or broke open the fountains of the abyss.] _His eye_ [symbolically placed for light] _saw_ [passed through, or between] _every minute thing_, [every-atom, and so dissolved the whole.] _He_ [at last] _bound up the waters from weeping_, [i. e. from pressing through the shell of the earth, as tears make their way through the orb of the eye; or, as it is related, (Gen. viii. 2,) _He stopped the fountains of the abyss and the windows of heaven_,] _and brought out the light from its hiding-place_, [i. e., from the inward parts of the earth, from between every atom where it lay hid, and kept each atom separate from the other, and so the whole in a state of dissolution; his bringing out those parts of the light which caused the dissolution would of course permit the agents to act in their usual way, and so reform the earth."]--_Treatise on the Deluge_, p. 43, (London, 1761.) We can hardly believe at the present day, that a logical and scientific mind, like that of Catcott, could satisfy itself, by such a dreamy exegesis, that the Scriptures teach the earth's dissolution at the deluge; especially when they so distinctly describe the waters of the deluge, as first rising over the land, and then sinking back to their original position. Still more strange is it how Burnet could have thought it consistent with Scripture to suppose the earth, before the flood, "to have been covered with an orbicular crust, smooth, regular, and uniform, without mountains and without a sea," when the Bible so distinctly states, as the work of the third day, that _the waters under the heavens were gathered together unto one place, and the dry land appeared_; and that _God called the dry land earth, and the gathering together of the waters he called seas_; and further, that, by the deluge, _all the high hills were covered_. Yet these men doubtless supposed that, by the views which they advocated, they were defending the Holy Scriptures. Nay, their views were long regarded as exclusively the orthodox views, and opposition to them was considered, for one or two centuries, as virtual opposition to the Bible. Truly, this, in biblical interpretation, was straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel.