the second, and the rapidity, as well of the population as of the advancement of the arts, of which we find such unaffected traces in the narrative of Moses; for it would be easy to prove that this long term of life more than quadrupled every effect that the same length of time would have produced among men whose lives would have been only of the present duration. But when the human race was renewed on continents which the sea could no more overwhelm, and had so multiplied, that men would by degrees crowd together on the same parts of the earth, it was a sublime dispensation of the wisdom of the Creator, thus to diminish the duration of human life, and thereby to shorten the reign of the passions of individuals. 51. In terminating here the physical explanation of the eleven first chapters of GENESIS, containing the history of the earth from the epoch when light was first added to the other elements which composed it, to the time of the calling of Abraham, I feel it proper to recapitulate the motives that have led me to the investigations of which these Letters contain the results. What can we determine with certainty respecting the origin and nature of man, without knowing his history? How can we know any thing of the history of man, except we know sufficiently the history of the planet he inhabits? How can we learn the history of this planet without studying the monuments of its revolutions, and all that natural philosophy can discover to us of their causes? Such are the questions that have induced me to devote near fifty years of my life to these studies, including the history of MAN himself; and as they have more and more strengthened my convictions of the truth of revealed religion, I have found the reward of my labours in an inward satisfaction, which the vicissitudes of my life, although not inconsiderable, have never been able to destroy. 52. By inviting us in the Scriptures to the study of nature, God has provided the means of recalling men to faith in revelation, when the lapse of time and the restlessness of the human passions and imagination might lead them to unbelief. That faith had been successively established among mankind by the miracles of which they had been the witnesses, and the knowledge of which they had transmitted to their successors; and in our time it will be maintained by proofs of the past existence of the earliest and most important of these miracles, which will gradually dispel the obscurities produced by the fabulous accounts of nature, which the pretended instructors of mankind have propagated. Men will then universally acknowledge a SUPREME LEGISLATOR, who has given them precepts and laws; and they will at length be convinced of what importance it is to their welfare to regard Him alone. APPENDIX: Containing Remarks on some Erroneous Representations relative to the Author, in a work entitled, " A Comparative Estimate of the Mineral and Mosaical Geologies." To the unfeigned piety and the soundness of religious sentiments, which distinguished the author of the preceding work through every part of his long and useful life, all those who have known him can bear a willing and decided testimony. It is therefore difficult not to feel something more than surprise, on finding this venerable Christian philosopher branded with apostasy, in a work entitled "A Comparative Estimate of the Mineral and Mosaical Geologies," because, from a supposed "dread of the sarcasms of the physical philosophers," he had concurred in opinion with De Saussure on a well established and fundamental point of geology. He is represented as " vacillating," and as having resorted to a "fatal system of compromise and concession," (Comp. Est. p. 83.) for having adopted the opinion of that enlightened naturalist, that the mass of our continents is composed of strata of different genera and species, successively formed by chymical precipitations at the bottom of a liquid; T 6 and he is accused of " surrendering the high and solid principle," maintained in the following passage of his earliest geological work:- neither natural history nor physical science lead us to believe that our globe has existed from all eternity; whenever, therefore, it acquired its first existence, the matter of which it was composed must, in all necessity, have been of some nature and under some first integrant form.' It will scarcely be credited that such a charge should seriously be brought against a man, whose extraordinary personal efforts on the continent, successfully persisted in for several years, to unmask the pretended friends, and oppose the avowed enemies of Christianity, excited the admiration and gratitude of every sincere lover of the truth. (See Correspondance entre le Dr. Teller et J. A. de Luc.-Lettres aux auteurs Juifs d'un Mémoire adressé au Dr. Teller.-Précis de la Philosophie de Bacon.-Lettres sur le Christianisme, &c.) Indeed the professed object of his Letters to Prof. Blumenbach necessarily protect De Luc from similar charges. It were well, then, if Mr. Granville Penn had made himself better acquainted with the works of an author whom he so unjustifiably assails. He would have known that the "Introduction à la Physique terrestre par les fluides expansibles," contains a direct refutation of those principles, which led FoURCROY to rank the "creation of the world among the pious fictions invented by the authors of certain religious chronicles." De Luc has, in that work, shown in a very 66 uncompromising" manner, that from a profound study of the phenomena, the most undeniable traces of a commencement may be deduced in immediate opposition |