Sacred Theory of the Earth: Book II: Chapter II

CHAPTER II

The great Change of the World since the Flood, from what it was in the first Ages. The Earth under its present form could not be Paradisiacal, nor any part of it.

THE Scheme of this World passeth away, saith an holy Author; The mode and form, both of the Natural and Civil World, changeth continually more or less, but most remarkably at certain Periods, when all Nature puts on another face; as it will do at the Conflagration, and hath done already from the time of the Deluge. We may imagine how different a prospect the first World would make from what we see now in the present state of things, if we consider only those generals by which we have describ’d it in the foregoing Chapter, and what their influence would be upon mankind and the rest of Nature. For every new state of Nature doth introduce a new Civil Order, and a new face and Oeconomy of Humane affairs: And I am apt to think that some two Planets, that are under the same state or Period, do not so much differ from one another, as the same Planet doth from it self, in different periods of its duration. We do not seem to inhabit the same World that our first fore-fathers did, nor scarce to be the same race of Men. Our life now is so short and vain, as if we came into the World only to see it and leave it; by that time we begin to understand our selves a little, and to know where we are, and how to act our part, we must leave the stage, and give place to others as meer Novices as we were our selves at our first entrance. And this short life is imploy’d, in a great measure, to preserve our selves from necessity, or diseases, or injuries of the Air, or other inconveniences; to make one man easie, ten must work and do drudgery; The Body takes up so much time, we have little leisure for Contemplation, or to cultivate the mind. The Earth doth not yield us food, but with much labour and industry, and what was her freewill offering before, or an easie liberality can scarce now be extorted from her. Neither are the Heavens more favourable, sometimes in one extream, sometimes in another; The Air often impure or infectious, and, for a great part of the

in that which path been the common standard of man's age ever since: As when some excellent fruit is transplanted into a worse Climate and Soil, it degenerates continually till it comes to such a degree of meanness as suits that Air and Soil, and then it stands. That the age of Man did not fall all on a sudden from the Ante-diluvian measure to the present, I impute it to the remaining Stamina of those first Ages, and the strength of that pristine constitution which could not wear off but by degrees. We see the Blacks do not quit their complexion immediately by removing into another Climate, but their posterity changeth by little and little, and after some generations they become altogether like the people of the Country where they are. Thus by the change of Nature that happened at the Flood, the unhappy influence of the Air and unequal Seasons weaken’d by degrees the innate strength of their bodies and the vigour of the parts, which would have been capable to have lasted several more hundreds of years, if the Heavens had continued their course as formerly, or the Earth its position. To conclude this particular, If any think that the Antediluvian longævity proceeded only from the Stamina, or the meer strength of their bodies, and would have been so under any constitution of the Heavens, let them resolve themselves these Questions; first, why these Stamina, or this strength