The abyss in strong commotion, or violent uproar, by a power divine, could shake the incumbent globe to pieces in a few minutes, and bury the whole ruins in the deep. To me, then, all the reasoning against the deluge, or for a partial flood, appear sad stuff. Were this one loch in Stanemore to pour out torrents of water, down every side, for five months, by a divine force on part of the abyss, as it might very easily by such means do, the inundation

would cover a great part of this land; and if from every loch of the kind on the summits of mountains, the waters in like manner, with the greatest violence, flowed from every side out of the abyss, and that exclusive of the heavy rains, an earthquake should open some parts of the ground to let more water out of the great collection, and the seas and oceans surpass their natural bounds, by the winds forcing them over the earth, then would a universal flood very soon prevail. There is water enough for the purpose, and as to the supernatural ascent of them, natural and supernatural are nothing at all different with respect to God. They are distinctions merely in our conceptions of things. Regularly to move the sun or earth; and to stop its motion for a day;—to make the waters that covered the whole earth at the creation, descend into the several receptacles prepared for them; and at the deluge, to make them ascend again to cover the whole earth, are the effect of one and the same Almighty Power; tho' we call one natural, and the other supernatural. The one is the effect of no greater power than the other. With respect to God, one is not more or less natural or supernatural than the other.

The means which drained off the waters of the deluge from the earth.
But how the waters of the deluge were drawn off at the end of the five months, is another question among the learned. The

ingenious Keile, who writ against the two ingenious Theorists, says the thing is not at all accountable in any natural way: the draining off, and drying of the earth, of such a huge column of waters could only be effected by the power of God: natural causes both in decrease and the increase of the waters must have been vastly disproportionate to the effects; and to miracles they must be ascribed. —This, I think, is as far from the truth, as the Theorists ascribing both increase and decrease to natural causes. God was the performer to be sure in the