like the institutions of men, carry in themselves the elements of their own destruction. He has not permitted in His works any symptom of infancy or of old age, or any sign by which we may estimate either their future or their past duration. He may put an end, as He no doubt gave a beginning, to the present system, at some determinate period of time; but we may rest assured that this great catastrophe will not be brought about by the laws now existing, and that it is not indicated by anything which we perceive.'*

The party feeling excited against the Huttonian doctrines, and the open disregard of candour and temper in the controversy, will hardly be credited by the reader, unless he recalls to his recollection that the mind of the English public was at that time in a state of feverish excitement. A class of writers in France had been labouring industriously for many years, to diminish the influence of the clergy, by sapping the foundations of the Christian faith; and their success, and the consequences of the Revolution, had alarmed the most resolute minds, while the imagination of the more timid was continually haunted by dread of innovation, as by the phantom of some fearful dream.

Voltaire.-Voltaire had used the modern discoveries in physics as one of the numerous weapons of attack and ridicule directed by him against the Scriptures. He found that the most popular systems of geology were accommodated to the sacred writings, and that much ingenuity had been employed to make every fact coincide exactly with the Mosaic account of the creation and deluge. It was, therefore, with no friendly feelings that he contemplated the cultivators of geology in general, regarding the science as one which had been successfully enlisted by theologians as an ally in their cause.† He knew that the

Playfair's Works, vol. iv. p. 55.

In allusion to the theories of Burnet, Woodward, and other physico-theological writers, he declared that they were as fond of changes of scene on the face of the globe, as were the populace at a play. Every one of them destroys and renovates the earth after his own fashion, as Descartes framed it for

majority of those who were

philosophers put themselves without ceremony in the place of God, and think to create a universe with a word.' -Dissertation envoyée à l'Academie de Boulogne, sur les Changemens arrivés dans notre Globe. -Unfortunately, this and similar ridicule directed against the cosmogonists was too well deserved.

aware of the abundance of fossil shells in the interior of continents, were still persuaded that they were proofs of the universal deluge; and as the readiest way of shaking this article of faith, he endeavoured to inculcate scepticism as to the real nature of such shells, and to recall from contempt the exploded dogma of the sixteenth century, that they were sports of nature. He also pretended that vegetable impressions were not those of real plants. Yet he was perfectly convinced that the shells had really belonged to living testacea, as may be seen in his essay On the Formation of Mountains.' He would sometimes, in defiance of all consistency, shift his ground when addressing the vulgar; and, admitting the true nature of the shells collected in the Alps and other places, pretend that they were Eastern species, which had fallen from the hats of pilgrims coming from Syria. The numerous essays written by him on geological subjects were all calculated to strengthen prejudices, partly because he was ignorant of the real state of the science, and partly from his bad faith. On the other hand, they who knew that his attacks were directed by a desire to invalidate Scripture, and who were unacquainted with the true merits of the question, might well deem the old diluvian hypothesis incontrovertible, if Voltaire could adduce no better argument against it than to deny the true nature of organic remains.

It is only by careful attention to impediments originating in extrinsic causes, that we can explain the slow and reluctant adoption of the simplest truths in geology. First, we find many able naturalists adducing the fossil remains of marine animals as proofs of an event related in Scripture. The evidence is deemed conclusive by the multitude for a

* See the chapter on Des Pierres figurés.'

In that essay he lays it down, 'that all naturalists are now agreed that deposits of shells in the midst of the continents are monuments of the continued occupation of these districts by the ocean.' In another place also, when speaking of the fossil shells of Touraine, he admits their true origin.

As an instance of his desire to throw doubt indiscriminately on all geological data, we may recall the passage where he says, that the bones of a reindeer and hippopotamus discovered near Étampes did not prove, as some would have it, that Lapland and the Nile were once on a tour from Paris to Orleans, but merely that a lover of curiosities once preserved them in his cabinet.'

century or more; for it favours opinions which they entertained before, and they are gratified by supposing them confirmed by fresh and unexpected proofs. Many, who see through the fallacy, have no wish to undeceive those who are influenced by it, approving the effect of the delusion, and conniving at it as a pious fraud; until, finally, an opposite party, who are hostile to the sacred writings, labour to explode the erroneous opinion, by substituting for it another dogma which they know to be equally unsound.

The heretical Vulcanists were soon after openly assailed in England, by imputations of the most illiberal kind. We cannot estimate the malevolence of such a persecution, by the pain which similar insinuations might now inflict; for although charges of infidelity and atheism must always be odious, they were injurious in the extreme at that moment of political excitement; and it was better, perhaps, for a man's good reception in society, that his moral character should have been traduced, than that he should become a mark for these poisoned weapons.

who

I shall pass over the works of numerous divines, may be excused for sensitiveness on points which then excited so much uneasiness in the public mind; and shall say nothing of the amiable poet Cowper,* who could hardly be expected to have enquired into the merit of doctrines in physics. But in the foremost ranks of the intolerant are found several laymen who had high claims to scientific reputation. Among these appears Williams, a mineral surveyor of Edinburgh, who published a Natural History of the Mineral Kingdom,' in 1789; a work of great merit for that day, and of practical utility, as containing the best account of the coal strata. In his preface he misrepresents Hutton's theory altogether, and charges him with considering all rocks to be lavas of different colours and structure; and also with 'warping everything to support the eternity of the world.' He descants on the pernicious influence of such

sceptical notions, as leading to downright infidelity and atheism, and as being nothing less than to depose the Almighty Creator of the universe from his office.'*

Kirwan-De Luc.-Kirwan, president of the Royal Academy of Dublin, a chemist and mineralogist of some merit, but who possessed much greater authority in the scientific world than he was entitled by his talents to enjoy, said, in the introduction to his Geological Essays, 1799,''that sound geology graduated into religion, and was required to dispel certain systems of atheism or infidelity, of which they had had recent experience.' He was an uncompromising defender of the aqueous theory of all rocks, and was scarcely surpassed by Burnet and Whiston, in his desire to adduce the Mosaic writings in confirmation of his opinions.

6

De Luc, in the preliminary discourse to his Treatise on Geology says, 'the weapons have been changed by which revealed religion is attacked; it is now assailed by geology, and the knowledge of this science has become essential to theologians.' He imputes the failure of former geological systems to their having been anti-Mosaical, and directed against a sublime tradition.' These and similar imputations, reiterated in the works of De Luc, seem to have been taken for granted by some modern writers: it is therefore necessary to state, in justice to the numerous geologists of different nations, whose works have been considered, that none of them were guilty of endeavouring, by arguments drawn from physics, to invalidate scriptural tenets. On the contrary, the majority of those who were fortunate enough 'to discover the true causes of things,' rarely deserved another part of the poet's panegyric, Atque metus omnes subjecit pedibus.' The caution, and even timid reserve, of many eminent Italian authors of the earlier period is very apparent; and there can hardly be a doubt, that they subscribed to certain dogmas, and particularly to the first diluvian theory, out of deference to popular prejudices, rather than from conviction. If they were guilty of dissimulation, feel regret, but must not blame their want of moral courage, reserving rather our condemnation for the intole

we may

London, 1809.

rance of the times, and that inquisitorial power which forced Galileo to abjure, and the two Jesuits to disclaim the theory of Newton.*

6

Hutton answered Kirwan's attacks with great warmth, and with the indignation justly excited by unmerited reproach. 'He had always displayed,' says Playfair, the utmost disposition to admire the beneficent design manifested in the structure of the world; and he contemplated with delight those parts of his theory which made the greatest additions to our knowledge of final causes.' We may say with equal truth, that in no scientific works in our language can more eloquent passages be found, concerning the fitness, harmony, and grandeur of all parts of the creation, than in those of Playfair. They are evidently the unaffected expressions of a mind, which contemplated the study of nature, as best calculated to elevate our conceptions of the attributes of the First Cause. At any other time the force and elegance of Playfair's style must have insured popularity to the Huttonian doctrines; but by a singular coincidence, Neptunianism and orthodoxy were now associated in the same creed; and: the tide of prejudice ran so strong, that the majority were carried far away into the chaotic fluid, and other cosmological inventions of Werner. These fictions the Saxon professor had borrowed with little modification, and without any improvement, from his predecessors. They had not the smallest foundation either in Scripture or in common sense, and were probably approved of by many as being so ideal

In a most able article, by Mr. Drinkwater, on the Life of Galileo,' published in the Library of Useful Knowledge,' it is stated that both Galileo's work, and the book of Copernieus Nisi corrigatur' (for, with the omission of certain passages, it was sanctioned), were still to be seen on the forbidden list of the Index at Rome in 1828. I was, however, assured in the same year, by Professor Scarpellini, at Rome, that Pius VII., a pontiff distinguished for his love of science, had procured a repeal of the edicts against Galileo and the Copernican system. He had assembled the

Congregation; and the late Cardinal Toriozzi, assessor of the Sacred Office, proposed that they should wipe off this scandal from the church.' The repeal was carried, with the dissentient voice of one Dominican only. Long before that time the Newtonian theory had been taught in the Sapienza, and all Catholic universities in Europe (with the exception, I am told, of Salamanca); but it was always required of professors, in deference to the decrees of the church, to use the term hypothesis, instead of theory. They now speak of the Copernican theory.