WE are now to enquire into the Original of the Earth, and in what Form it was built at first, that we may lay our Foundation for the following Theory deep and sure. It hath been the general Opinion and Content of the Learned of all Nations, that the Earth arose from a Chaos. This is attested by History, both Sacred and Profane; only _Aristotle_, whom so great a Part of the Christian World have made their Oracle or Idol, hath maintain’d the Eternity of the Earth, and the Eternity of Mankind; that the Earth and the World were from Everlasting, and in that very Form they are in now, with Men and Women and all living Creatures, Trees and Fruit, Metals and Minerals, and whatsoever is of natural Production. We say all these Things arose and had their first Existence or Production not six thousand Years ago: He saith, they have subsisted thus for ever, through an infinite Series of past Generations, and shall continue as long, without first or last: And if so, there was neither Chaos, nor any other Beginning to the Earth. This takes away the Subject of our Discourse, and therefore we must first remove this Stone out of the way, and prove that the Earth had an Original, and that from a Chaos, before we shew how it arose from a Chaos, and what was the first habitable Form that it settled into. WE are assur’d by Divine Authority, that the Earth and Mankind had a beginning: _Moses_ saith, _In the Beginning God made the Heavens and the Earth_. Speaking it as of a certain Period or Term, from whence he counts the Age of the World. And the same _Moses_ tells us, that _Adam_ was the first Man, and _Eve_ the first Woman, from whom sprung the Race of Mankind; and this within the Compass of Six Thousand Years. We are also assur’d from the Prophets, and our Christian Records, that the World shall have an End, and that by a general Conflagration, when all Mankind shall be destroyed, with the Form, and all the Furniture of the Earth. And as this proves the second Part of _Aristotle_’s Doctrine to be false immediately, so doth it the first, by a true Consequence; for what hath an End had a Beginning, what is not Immortal, was not Eternal: That which exists by the Strength of its own Nature at first, the same Nature will enable to exist for ever; and indeed what exists of it self, exists necessarily; and what exists necessarily, exists eternally.