geological structure of the crust of the earth. He had
examined many parts of the British strata with minute attention; and his
systematic collection of specimens, bequeathed to the University of
Cambridge, and still preserved there as arranged by him, shows how far
he had advanced in ascertaining the order of superposition. From the
great number of facts collected by him, we might have expected his
theoretical views to be more sound and enlarged than those of his
contemporaries; but in his anxiety to accommodate all observed phenomena
to the scriptural account of the Creation and Deluge, he arrived at most
erroneous results. He conceived "the whole terrestrial globe to have
been taken to pieces and dissolved at the flood, and the strata to have
settled down from this promiscuous mass as any earthy sediment from a
fluid."[65] In corroboration of these views he insisted upon the fact,
that "marine bodies are lodged in the strata according to the order of
their gravity, the heavier shells in stone, the lighter in chalk, and so
of the rest."[66] Ray immediately exposed the unfounded nature of this
assertion, remarking truly that fossil bodies "are often mingled, heavy
with light, in the same stratum;" and he even went so far as to say,
that Woodward "must have invented the phenomena for the sake of
confirming his bold and strange hypothesis"[67]--a strong expression
from the pen of a contemporary.

_Burnet, 1690._--At the same time Burnet published his "Theory of the
Earth."[68] The title is most characteristic of the age,--"The Sacred
Theory of the Earth; containing an Account of the Original of the Earth,
and of all the general Changes which it hath already undergone, or is to
undergo, till the Consummation of all Things." Even Milton had scarcely
ventured in his poem to indulge his imagination so freely in painting
scenes of the Creation and Deluge, Paradise and Chaos. He explained why
the primeval earth enjoyed a perpetual spring before the flood! showed
how the crust of the globe was fissured by "the sun's rays," so that it
burst, and thus the diluvial waters were let loose from a supposed
central abyss. Not satisfied with these themes, he derived from the
books of the inspired writers, and even from heathen authorities,
prophetic views of the future revolutions of the globe, gave a most
terrific description of the general conflagration, and proved that a new
heaven and a new earth will rise out of a _second chaos_--af