hor, however innocent I may be in
giving nothing but what I have from nature.

The reason for saying so is this; I am blamed for having endeavoured
to trace back the operations of this world to a remote period, by the
examination of that which actually appears, contrary, as is alleged,
"to reason, and the tenor of the Mosaic history, thus leading to an
abyss, from which human reason recoils, etc." In a word, (says our
author), "to make use of his own expression, _We find no vestige of
a beginning._ Then this system of successive worlds must have been
eternal." Such is the logic by which, I suppose, I am to be accused of
atheism. Our author might have added, that I have also said--_we see
no prospect of an end_; but what has all this to do with the idea of
eternity? Are we, with our ideas of _time_, (or mere succession), to
measure that of eternity, which never succeeded any thing, and which
will never be succeeded? Are we thus to measure eternity, that boundless
thought, with those physical notions of ours which necessarily limit
both space and time? and, because we see not the beginning of created
things, Are we to conclude that those things which we see have always
been, or been without a cause? Our author would thus, inadvertently
indeed, lead himself into that gulf of irreligion and absurdity into
which, he alleges, I have _boldly plunged_.

In examining this present earth, we find that it must have had its
origin at the bottom of the sea, although our author seems willing to
deny that proposition. Farther, in examining the internal construction
of this stratified and sea-born mass, we find that it had been composed
of the moved materials of a former earth; and, from the most accurate
and extensive examination of those materials, which in many places are
indeed much disguised, we are led necessarily to conclude, that there
had been a world existing, and containing an animal, a vegetable, and a
mineral system. But, in thus tracing back the natural operations which
have succeeded each other, and mark to us the course of time past, we
come to a period in which we cannot see any farther. This, however,
is not the beginning of those operations which proceed in time and
according to the wise economy of this world; nor is it the establishing
of that, which, in the course of time, had no beginning; it is only the
limit of our retrospective view of those operations which have come to
pass in time, and have been conducted by