ow mixed the account of the Garden of Eden in Genesis
with heathen legends of the golden age, and concluded that before the
flood there was over the whole earth perpetual spring, disturbed by no
rain more severe than the falling of the dew.

In addition to his other grounds for denying the earlier existence of
the sea, he assigned the reason that, if there had been a sea before
the Deluge, sinners would have learned to build ships, and so, when the
Deluge set in, could have saved themselves.

The work was written with much power, and attracted universal attention.
It was translated into various languages, and called forth a multitude
of supporters and opponents in all parts of Europe. Strong men rose
against it, especially in England, and among them a few dignitaries of
the Church; but the Church generally hailed the work with joy. Addison
praised it in a Latin ode, and for nearly a century it exercised a
strong influence upon European feeling, and aided to plant more deeply
than ever the theological opinion that the earth as now existing
is merely a ruin; whereas, before sin brought on the Flood, it was
beautiful in its "egg-shaped form," and free from every imperfection.

A few years later came another writer of the highest standing--William
Whiston, professor at Cambridge, who in 1696 published his New Theory
of the Earth. Unlike Burnet, he endeavoured to avail himself of the
Newtonian idea, and brought in, to aid the geological catastrophe caused
by human sin, a comet, which broke open "the fountains of the great
deep."

But, far more important than either of these champions, there arose in
the eighteenth century, to aid in the subjection of science to theology,
three men of extraordinary power--John Wesley, Adam Clarke, and Richard
Watson. All three were men of striking intellectual gifts, lofty
character, and noble purpose, and the first-named one of the greatest
men in English history; yet we find them in geology hopelessly fettered
by the mere letter of Scripture, and by a temporary phase in theology.
As in regard to witchcraft and the doctrine of comets, so in regard to
geology, this theological view drew Wesley into enormous error.(143)
The great doctrine which Wesley, Watson, Clarke, and their compeers,
following St. Augustine, Bede, Peter Lombard, and a long line of the
greatest minds in the universal Church, thought it especially necessary
to uphold against geologists was, that death entered the world by