’TIS now more than five Thousand Years since our World was made, and tho’ it would be a great Pleasure to the Mind, to recollect and view at this Distance those first Scenes of Nature; what the Face of the Earth was, when fresh and new, and how Things differ’d from the State we now find them in, the Speculation is so remote, that it seems to be hopeless, and beyond the reach of human Wit. We are almost the last Posterity of the first Men, and fallen into the dying Age of the Worlds; by what Footsteps, or by what Guide can we trace back our Way to those first Ages, and the first Order of Things? And yet, methinks, it is reasonable to believe, that Divine Providence, which sees at once throughout all the Ages and Orders of the World, should not be willing to keep Mankind finally and fatally ignorant of that part of Nature, and of the Universe, which is properly their Task and Province to manage and understand. We are the Inhabitants of the Earth, the Lords and Masters of it; and we are endow’d with Reason and Understanding; doth it not then properly belong to us to examine and unfold the Works of God in this part of the Universe, which is fallen to our Lot, which is our Heritage and Habitation? And it will be found, it may be, upon a stricter Enquiry, that in the present Form and Constitution of the Earth, there are certain Marks and Indications of its first State; with which if we compare those Things that are recorded in Sacred History, concerning the first Chaos, Paradise, and an Universal Deluge, we may discover, by the help of those Lights, what the Earth was in its first Original, and what Changes have since succeeded in it. AND tho’ we shall give a full Account of the Origin of the Earth in this Treatise, yet that which we have propos’d particularly for the Title and Subject of it, is to give an Account of the primæval _Paradise_, and of the Universal _Deluge_, those being the two most important things that are explained by the Theory we propose. And I must beg leave in treating of these two, to change the Order, and treat first of the _Deluge_, and then of _Paradise:_ For though the State of Paradise doth precede that of the Flood in Sacred History, and in the Nature of the Thing, yet the Explication of both will be more sensible and more effectual, if we begin with the Deluge; there being more Observations and Effects, and those better known to us that may be referr’d to this, than to the other; and the Deluge being once truly explain’d, we shall from thence know the Form and Quality of the Ante-diluvian Earth. Let us then proceed to the Explication of that great and fatal Inundation, whose History is well known; and according to _Moses_, the best of Historians, in a few Words is this——