.

[48] Milton's opinion may be quoted against me here; and as received
ideas respecting angels, good and bad, the fall of man, and many other
such matters, are due quite as much to Milton as to any other authority,
his opinion must not be lightly disregarded. But though, when Milton's
Satan 'meets a vast vacuity' where his wings are of no further service
to him,

'All unawares
Flutt'ring his pennons vain, plumb down he drops
Ten thousand fathoms deep, and to this hour
Down had been falling, had not by ill chance
The strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud,
Instinct with fire and nitre, hurried him
As many miles aloft,'

yet this was written nearly a quarter of a century before Newton had
established the law of gravity. Moreover, there is no evidence to show
in what direction Satan fell; 'above is below and below above,' says
Richter, 'to one stripped of gravitating body;' and whether Satan was
under the influence of gravity or not, he would be practically exempt
from its action when in the midst of that 'dark, illimitable ocean' of
space,

'Without bound,
Without dimensions, where length, breadth, and height,
And time and place are lost.'

His lighting 'on Niphates' top,' and overleaping the gate of Paradise,
may be used as arguments either way. On the whole, I must (according to
my present lights) claim for Satan a freedom from all scientific
restraints. This freedom is exemplified by his showing all the kingdoms
of the world from an exceeding high mountain, thus affording the first
practical demonstration of the flat-earth theory, the maintenance of
which led to poor Mr. Hampden's incarceration.

[49] The _Sun_ itself claimed to have established the veracity of the
account in a manner strongly recalling a well-known argument used by
orthodox believers in the Bible account of the cosmogony. Either, say
these, Moses discovered how the world was made, or the facts were
revealed to him by some one who had made the discovery: but Moses could
not have made the discovery, knowing nothing of the higher departments
of science; therefore, the account came from the only Being who could
rationally be supposed to know anything about the beginning of the
world. 'Either,' said the _New York Sun_, speaking of a mathematical
problem discussed in the article, 'that problem was predicated by us or
some other person, who has thereby made the greatest of all modern
discoveries in math