The Original differences of the Primitive Earth from the present or Post-diluvian. The three Characters of Paradise and the Golden Age found in the Primitive Earth. A particular Explication of each Character.
WE have hitherto only perplext the Argument and our selves, by showing how inexplicable the state of Paradise is according to the present order of things, and the present condition of the Earth. We must now therefore bring into view that Original and Ante-diluvian Earth where we pretend its seat was, and show it capable of all those priviledges which we have deny’d to the present; in vertue of which priviledges, and of the order of Nature establisht there, that Primitive Earth might be truly Paradisiacal, as in the Golden Age; and some Region of it peculiarly so, according to the Idea of the Christian Paradise. And this, I think, is all the knowledge and satisfaction that we can expect, or that Providence hath allow’d us in this Argument.
The Primigenial Earth, which in the first Book (Chap. 5) we rais’d from a Chaos, and set up in an habitable form, we must now survey again with more