ALL Antiquity, we know, hath spoke of these mundane Revolutions or Periods, that the World should be successively destroyed by Water and Fire; and I do not doubt, but that this Deluge of _Noah_’s, which _Moses_ describes, was the first and leading Instance of this kind; and accordingly we see that after this Period, and after the Flood, the Blessing for Multiplication, and for replenishing the Earth with Inhabitants, was as solemnly pronounc’d by God Almighty, as at the first Creation of Man, _Gen. 9. 1._ with _Gen. 1. 28._ These Considerations, I think, might be sufficient to give us Assurance from Divine Writ of the Universality of the Deluge; and yet _Moses_ affords us another Argument as demonstrative as any, when in the History of the Deluge, he saith, _Gen. 7. 19._ _The Waters exceedingly prevail’d upon the Earth, and all the high Hills that were under the whole Heavens were covered._ All the high Hills, he saith, _under the whole Heavens_, then quite round the Earth; and if the Mountains were covered quite round the Earth, sure the Plains could not scape. But to argue with them upon their own Grounds: Let us suppose only the _Asiatick_ and _Armenian_ Mountains covered with these Waters, this they cannot deny; then unless there was a Miracle to keep these Waters upon Heaps, they would flow throughout the Earth; for these Mountains are high enough to make them fall every way, and make them join with our Seas that environ the Continent. We cannot imagine Hills and Mountains of Water to have hung about _Judea_, as if they were congeal’d, or a Mass of Water to have stood upon the middle of the Earth like one great Drop, or a trembling Jelly, and all the Places about it dry and untouch’d. All liquid Bodies are diffusive; for their Parts being in Motion have no Tie or Connexion one with another, but glide and fall off any way, as Gravity and the Air presseth them; so the Surface of Water doth always conform into a Spherical Convexity with the rest of the Globe of the Earth, and every part of it falls as near to the Center as it can; wherefore when these Waters began to rise at first, long before they cou’d swell to the height of the Mountains, they would diffuse themselves every way, and thereupon all the Valleys and Plains, and lower Parts of the Earth would be filled throughout the whole Earth, before they cou’d rise to the Tops of the Mountains in any Part of it: And the Sea would be all raised to a considerable height before the Mountains could be covered. For let us suppose, as they do, that this Water fell not throughout the whole Earth, but in some particular Country, and there made first a great Lake; this Lake when it begun to swell would every way discharge it self by any Descents or Declivities of the Ground, and these Issues and Derivations being once made and supply’d with new Waters pushing them forwards, would continue their Course ’till they arrived at the Sea, just as other Rivers do; for these