ou then render Moses's
description of the earth totally superfluous and unuseful to discover
the situation of Paradise. Lastly, it is hard to conceive that any
rivers, whether these or others, can have subsisted ever since the first
beginning of the world; whether you have regard to their water or their
channels. The channels of rivers are made by daily attrition; for if
they had been made as ditches and furrows are, by earth dug out and
heaped on each side, there would certainly have been seen everywhere
great banks of earth. But we plainly see that this is only fortuitous;
forasmuch as they often run through plains, and the river banks are no
more than level with the adjacent fields; besides, whence could there be
had water at the beginning of the world to fill these channels? If you
say, that on the third day, when the great bed of the ocean was made,
the smaller channels of the rivers were also: and as the greatest
part of the waters of the abyss fell into the gulf of the seas, so the
remaining part descended into these other channels, and therewith formed
the primitive rivers. Admitting this, yet the waters would not only be
as salt as those of the sea, but there would be no continual springs
to nourish these rivers; insomuch as when the first stream of water had
flown off, there being no fresh supplies of water to succeed it, these
rivers would have been immediately dried up; I say because there were
no perpetual springs; for whether springs proceed from rain, or from the
sea, they could neither way have rose in so short a time; not from rain,
for it had not as yet rained; neither was it possible, that in the short
space of one day, the waters of the abyss should run down from the most
inland places to the sea, and afterwards returning through ways that
were never yet open to them, should strain themselves through the bowels
of the earth, and ascend to the heads of their rivers. But of rivers we
have said enough; let us now proceed to the rest.

"We have, in the third place, a very strange account of a serpent that
talked with Eve, and enticed her to oppose God. I must confess, we have
not yet known that this beast could ever speak, or utter any sort
of voice, beside hissing. But what shall we think Eve knew of this
business? If she had taken it for a dumb animal, the very speech of it
would have so frightened her, that she would have fled from it. If,
on the other side, the serpent had from the beginning been capa