TO discover how much Water would be requisite to make this Deluge, we must first suppose enough to cover the plain Surface of the Earth, the Fields and lower Grounds; then we must heap up so much more upon this, as will reach above the tops of the highest Mountains; so as drawing a Circle over the tops of the highest Mountains quite round the Earth, suppose from Pole to Pole, and another to meet it round the middle of the Earth, all that Space, or Capacity, contain’d within these Circles, is to be fill’d up with Water. This I confess will make a prodigious Mass of Water, and it looks frightfully to the Imagination; ’tis huge and great, but ’tis extravagantly so, as a great Monster: It doth not look like the Work of God or Nature: However let’s compute a little more particularly how much this will amount to, or how many Oceans of Water would be necessary to compose this great Ocean rowling in the Air, without Bounds or Banks. IF all the Mountains were pared off the Earth, and so the Surface of it lay even, or in an equal Convexity every where, with the Surface of the Sea, from this Surface of the Sea, let us suppose that the height of the Mountains may be a Mile and a half; or that we may not seem at all to favour our own Opinion or Calculation, let us take a Mile only for the perpendicular height of the Mountains. Let us on the other side suppose the Sea to cover half the Earth, as ’tis generally believ’d to do; and the common Depth of it, taking one Place with another, to be about a quarter of a Mile, or 250 Paces. I say, taking one Place with another, for though the middle Channel of the great Ocean be far deeper, we may observe, that there is commonly a Descent or Declivity from the Shore to the middle Part of the Channel, so that one comes by Degrees into the Depth of it; and those shory Parts are generally but some Fathoms deep. Besides, in Arms of the Sea, in Straits and among Islands, there is commonly no great Depth, and some Places are plain Shallows. So as upon a moderate Computation, one Place compar’d with another, we may take a quarter of a Mile, or about an hundred Fathoms, for the common Measure of the Depth of the Sea, if we were cast into a Channel of an equal Depth every where. This being suppos’d, there would need four Oceans to lie upon this Ocean, to raise it up to the top of the Mountains, or so high as the Waters of the Deluge rise; then four Oceans more to lie upon the Land, that the Water there might swell to the same height; which together make eight Oceans for the Proportion of the Water requir’d in the Deluge.