to the doctrine of the "eternal march of nature," maintained by his infidel antagonist. (See Introduction à la Physique terrestre, &c. Vol i. pp. 153. 267, and 268.) In De la Métherie's own Journal, the ready vehicle at that disastrous period of opinions hostile to Christianity, De Luc openly asserted his belief that Revelation, when divested of the erroneous commentaries by which it is sometimes obscured, is as satisfactorily demonstrated by geological monuments, as any ancient historical fact can be by the documents that relate to it. Journ. de Physique, tom. xl. p. 455.

But we are told that the formation of the mineral strata by chymical processes, according to the laws of affinity and aggregation, "favours the atomic or atheistical philosophy." Does De Luc, however, it may be asked, or do the naturalists mentioned by Mr. Granville Penn, while they recognize certain laws which regulated the arrangement of the elemental materials of the strata, hesitate to acknowledge that those laws were established by the Creator? The primary rocks exhibit the appearance of having been formed by crystallization in a liquid; and shall we say, when we see a salt crystallizing in a liquid, that it is in consequence of a direct act of the Divine will, and not by the effect of the affinities and the attraction of similar molecules, established by the Deity? The remark that " divine intelligence is questioned in proportion as secondary causes are supposed to execute functions which reason sees to pertain exclusively to a first cause," cannot be considered as applicable to the doctrine in question. How, again, is the hypothesis of the gradual process of precipitation and crystallization

according to the above stated laws, in necessary contradiction with the assertion, that "all material things seem to have been composed and variously associated in the first creation by the counsels of an intelligent agent?"—or how is that doctrine necessarily inconsistent with the belief, "that God endowed the particles of matter with such properties as most conduced to the end for which he formed them ?" The very passage quoted by Mr. Granville Penn against De Luc, may be considered as expressive of the general principle on which all the physical deductions of our author are grounded.

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"De Luc," he again remarks, (p. 53.) abstained with a very curious reservation from employing the word creation in physical enquiries:" I shall not say created, because in physics I ought not to employ expressions which are not understood among men.' Lettres sur l'Histoire de la Terre, &c. Vol. ii. p. 211. Mr. Penn then proceeds to animadvert upon that passage in a strain of misplaced levity, no less unbecoming the gravity of the subject, than the respect due to so venerable a character as De Luc1. The meaning of the latter, however, has been entirely

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An equally intemperate tone prevails in Vol. i. pp. 241, 242. 2d edit. Mr. Granville Penn accuses De Luc of an intention to carry, by force or stratagem, a point of system," and of having asserted, "with a hardihood totally unaccountable, that ancient interpreters, have for a long time remarked," that the Hebrew words signifying evening and morning, are used in the Book of Genesis to signify the beginning and end of a period of indefinite length. Mr. Granville Penn is here misled by a typographical error. In the Lettres sur l'Histoire Physique de la Terre, &c. p. 97, the words interprètes antiques had, by mistake, been substituted for interprètes critiques. See Errata at the end of that work.

misapprehended by Mr. Granville Penn, and may be gathered from another passage that occurs in the same volume 1; where our author states his opinion, in concurrence with some of the deepest thinkers, that "the notions of (what we term) non-existence, and the transition from non-existence to (what we understand by) existence, altogether surpass man's capacity, and that in all likelihood, it is impossible for him to receive them in his present state." For this reason alone he considered it unphilosophical to employ, in physical researches, a word to which no distinct sense can be annexed. "That there was," he says, "a first intelligent Cause; that from that Cause the universe took its origin; that through its operation, in a word, the heavens and the earth were created in the beginning, man could learn, even from revelation, only as facts; being wholly unable to comprehend the principles upon which those facts depend." Our author's phrase, therefore, "des expressions sur lesquelles on ne s'entend pas," simply conveys a belief that men cannot form to themselves any clear conceptions of the creative act, on account of the impenetrable obscurity with which that act is invested in the view of finite beings. It is evident that our author's observation so far from excluding, in reality implies, the idea of creation.

Regardless of the idiom of the French language, Mr. Granville Penn, in his animadversions upon De Luc, converts reflective verbs into personifications. He translates" se forma," "se formèrent," by formed

1 V. pp. 634. 636. See likewise "Précis de la Philosophie de Bacon," Vol. ii. p. 128.

itself, formed themselves (p. 20); throwing those words into italic characters, with the apparent purpose of insinuating that a Divine and superintending intelligence was altogether overlooked in the systems of the mineral geologists. But does De Luc "question the intelligence of the Deity," when at the commencement of the third Letter of this Collection he observes, that "nature herself confirms that grand command of the Almighty, in the first chapter of Genesis with which the Mosaic history begins, "Let there be light!" and when he elsewhere says, that there is nothing in nature that can explain the origin of it? See also Letter III. §§ 7, 12, 19; V. § 8. and Introd. In such passages as these, our author not only "presupposes a first intelligent Cause," but " propounds," and "proclaims it like Newton;" (Comp. Estim. pp. 120, 121.) and on inspecting his other publications it will be seen that De Luc "not only proclaims it once," but "recurs to it repeatedly and constantly, as a first principle never to be lost sight of." With what shadow of candour then, or consistent reasoning can it be maintained, that " nature and chymistry" constituted the "first principle" of the philosophy taught by De Luc, and that the "mineral geology" which he adopted, "considered as a science, can do as well without God, as Lucretius did?" The efficient cause of affinities and attractions determining physicochymical effects is always regarded by our author as independent of matter, inasmuch as he considers such affinities to be laws of motion impressed upon it by the Creator.

The general spirit, indeed, in which our author has attempted to explain and describe terrestrial

phenomena is, throughout the above work, entirely misapprehended and perverted by an erroneous interpretation, which confounds the determination of laws established by the Creator, with the supposed operations of a blind and fortuitous cause. To find a learned and estimable writer, like Mr. Granville Penn, labouring under such false and unworthy impressions in regard to De Luc, cannot but be felt as a subject of much regret; the more especially, as in other parts of his work, he seems duly sensible of the great merits of that philosopher 1.

It having been thus incumbent on the editor to advert to the " Comparative Estimate," he would here take occasion to observe further, that the mode of reasoning adopted by Mr. Granville Penn from the animal and vegetable, to the mineral kingdoms, with regard to first formations, appears not sufficiently close for the purposes of his argument.

"As the bone of the first man," says Mr. Penn, "and the wood of the first tree, whose solidity was essential, for giving shape, firmness, and support, to their respective systems, were not, and could not have been, formed by the gradual processes of ossification and lignification, of which they nevertheless must have exhibited the sensible phenomena or apparent indications; so, reason directs us to conclude, that primitive rock, whose solidity was equally essential for giving shape, firmness, and support to the mineral system of this globe, was not, and could not have been,

1 "He was eminently distinguished, and his memory is deservedly honoured in the department of physics; he was great also in showing the concord of many natural phenomena with the Mosaic record of the deluge." p. 208.