QUESTION 1. 241 consult the writings of Moses, the Jewish prophet, andPeter the christian apostle, we shall find that they supposed the great Creator to have laid up stores and magazines of ruin and de- struction within the bowels of this earth, which he foresaw would be inhabited by a criminal race of beings : And he fore- ordained to break open his dreadful treasures of flood and fire at proper seasons, to drown and to burn the world together with the inhabitants thereof. When all flesh had corrupted its way before God, as Moses speaks, he appointed to destroy man whom he had created : He opened the windows or flood-gates of heaven, poured down rain incessantly upon the earthforforty days andforty nights; and the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and all in whose nostrils were the breath of life upon the dry land died, except eight persons Gen. vii. 11-24. And the christian writer tells us, that the world, which at that time was oveí,flowed with water, perished ; but that the havens and the earth which are now, by the same divine word and providence are kept in store, reserved untofire against the day of ,judgment and perditionof ungodly men. Then the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the heavens shall be dissolved with a great noise, and the earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up ; 2 Pet. iii. 6, 7, 10. Now the great God, who appointed such prodigious quan- tities both of water and fire to be reserved in the bowels of the earth, and among the clouds of heaven, for such a foreseen day of general destruction, when the sins of the inhabitants should come to their full measure, did also doubtless prepare his mate- rials, and appoint the dayswhen all the lesser storms and hurri- canes, earthquakes and floods, lightnings and thunders, and convulsions of nature, should break out and answer those par- ticular seasons, when he intended to manifest his terrors to mankind, and to shewhis wrath in their wretchedness and de- struction : And he treasured up his magazines of wind, and flood, and fire in the air and earth for these purposes. Is this ahabitation which God has made for the residence of pure and holy beings ? Is this such a peaceful place as a kind Creator would have formed and built for innocent creatures ? Or does he manage these several scenes of our globe, as though those who dwell upon it maintained their primitive purity and his ori- ginal favour ? It is absurd to imagine such a conduct of aGod so wise, so righteous and so merciful. Il. Let us take a survey of the herbs and plants and trees,, and all the vegetable beings which grow out of this earth, toge- ther with the brute animals which are found on the surface of it, and we shall find more reasons to conclude that man, the chid inhabitant, is by no means such acreature, so innocent, and so much a favourite of heaven, as he must needs be when he came VOL. Iv. Q
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=