"some day-light still remains after the sun is set1." As, therefore, (reasoned those good men,) the twilight of morning and evening is a light distinct and different from solar light; just so, the light of the first day was distinct and different from the solar light of the fourth day. And, this analogical conclusion, of two different primeval lights, drawn originally, and absolutely, by the early Latin and Greek Christians, from an ignorant persuasion, that the light of dawn and the light of noon proceed from two distinct causes; is implicitly accepted and perpetuated by Us, to the expulsion of the prescriptive rational interpretation of the Mosaic Church; even in this late hour of learning and of science! Bold, however, in his entire inscience of all these things, and hurried away by the popular fallacy, the Westminster Reviewer stoutly asserts: "no ingenuity, nor any perversion of Scriptural commentary, can reconcile the solar 66 system, or that of astronomy at large, to the Mosaic history-to say, that the great luminaries were not "created, but discovered only on the fourth day, having "been made before that, is to depart from the words of Scripture." These, his own misapprehensions, he dictatorially pronounces to be, "astronomical or optical incongruities, or irreconcilable points in the scrip"tural records of creation." I shall return this Critic a wholesome precept in his own words: " He who attempts to deal with this subject, must make himself rigidly and accurately master of it, before he undertakes the species of warfare which is here carried on." Ignotos fallit, notis est derisui. 1 "Consideremus, quia aliud est lumen diei, aliud lumen solis:—nam, "ante solem lucet quidem ;-ubi occiderit sol, manet adhuc aliquid "reliquiarum diei."-Hexaëmeron, Liv. iv. c. 3. 2 See after, vol. i. p. 234, note 2. P. 269. " the record is thus concluded by the historian." The British Reviewer, in adverting to the English text of the Record cited in the Comparative Estimate, asserts"Mr. P. retranslates (it is true) the whole chapter." This is one of those frequent reviewing averments, which shew the virtue of conscious power under a mask, to release from the obligations of veracity. In the second verse, I have indeed restored the authenticated primitive reading, in two words which ought never to have been displaced; but, in all the rest of the chapter, except where the grammatical construction needed to be rendered more accurate, I have adhered verbatim to our authorised version. Vol. ii. p. 6. end of chapter i. "We have just alluded (says the Westminster Reviewer,) to the injury which the cause of religion may "suffer from a fashion, of which other authors besides the 66 present have been guilty; namely, that of seeking for "physical proofs of scriptural records. We may instance the case of the Deluge, as a simpler one than that of "Creation. Whether there are any unquestionable physi"cal proofs of the Mosaic Deluge, or not, is a question far "from settled; but even should there be none, we cannot 66 66 see how that is to affect our belief in the record of the historian. It is a moral, and not a physical fact, which "is here meant to be inculcated; the destruction of a "sinful race." This Critic, who so liberally deals out charges of "folly," should have had the precaution to shew, how a Deluge could effect the destruction of a sinful race by moral operation only, and without constituting a physical fact. From neglecting that precaution, his proposition wears to the understanding as rich a livery of solemn nonsense, as any that have fallen under his lash. But, if the destroying Deluge was a physical fact, as all mankind will still continue to believe; then, we need not 66 66 question whether there are any physical proofs of its operation," notwithstanding the inefficacy of their testimony on the minds of the Reviewer and of M. de la Métherie1. P. 83. "how came all those varieties and disparities of "animals to be jumbled together?—their being jumbled together, is an unquestionable fact." 66 "We do comprehend clearly (says the Westminster "Reviewer,) that Mr. P. is totally unacquainted with the "real state in which the exuviæ, as he calls them, are "found; and that, mistaking the facts, his reasoning is as "unfounded as it is loose in the manner. The 'jumbling 'together' is so far from being an unquestionable fact,' "that nothing is more remarkable than the regularity "with which certain shell-fish are arranged in the strata." In order to give a complexion of error to my statement, the Reviewer here endeavours, by a stratagem more subtle than successful, to shift the ground of my argument, which is plainly laid in the general remains of terrestrial animals found within the earth, to the particular phenomenon of "certain shell-fish" lying in appropriate strata. But, when relics of elephant are consolidated with sea-shells in the heart of the limestone rock of Jura; when the remains of rhinoceros, hyæna, lion, human-skulls, &c., are associated and consolidated in the limestone rock of Kösritz; when elephant, rhinoceros, megatherium, and fresh-water shells, are commixed, at a depth of 50 feet, in the calcareous tufa of Thuringia; and, when similar phenomena are endless in the globe; the Reviewer must not expect to persuade us that these various subjects are not "jumbled “together," until he shall first have established his new 2 Ib. p. 402, and note. See vol. ii. p. 6, note 2. position, that the Deluge destroyed a sinful race by moral operation only; without the concurrence of any physical action, and therefore, without leaving the evidence of any physical monument. The successive and separate inhumations of certain sea-shells, is a different phenomenon; this is considered in p. 139-143 of the second volume of this work; but, even in this case, the "regularities of strata" are also regularities of " jumblings;" for, the shells in each stratum are jumbled together in manifest confusion, bearing irrefragable testimony to the ancient action of a violent disordering cause; which disordering cause asserts its effects, universally, in "the real state" in which the animal fossils of the earth" are found," with relation each to the other. I must not extend this Post-script any further; but, the observations which are conveyed in it, are those which appeared to be the most material for the occasion. Other cavils of the Westminster Reviewer have been anticipatively answered in this second edition, which he has abstained from noticing; others may, perhaps, hereafter incur attention, if this work should eventually proceed to a third edition. t. |