hastily given, he would impute ideas to Moses which, from his writings, do not appear to have entered his mind, and which no part of his after-language will give support to, without straining it from its plain and obvious meaning.

Mr. Belsham will, doubtless, rest his proposition chiefly on the 3rd verse- "Let there be light, and there was light," compared with the 14th verse. But I need not tell Mr. Belsham that the word 71, in this place, does not necessarily mean light; that the same word was applied to the city of Ur, or rather Aur, of the Chaldees, because there they worshiped the Deity under the emblem of fire; that the Prophet Isaiah, xxvii. 11, xxxi. 9, and in other places, uses it for fire, and that here it might be, and, to do Moses philosophical justice, ought to be, so rendered; and by so rendering it, the systems of the Neptunists and Vulcanists of Geology would gain a grand step from sacred history towards the true knowledge of the structure of this globe, by shewing, from the writings of Moses, that the present organic structure of this earth was the produce of the united action of fire and water.

But, says Mr. Belsham, when Moses "adds, that God made a firmament in the midst of the waters, and thus divided the waters under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament, it is plain enough to a reader who has no hypothesis to support, that, in the author's idea, the firmament possesses solidity sufficient to sustain the weight of half the waters." And "this firmament" here spoken of, Mr. B. says, whether the word be used in Hebrew, Greek, Latin or English, signifies "the celestial hemisphere." And on this, I think, Mr. B. seems chiefly to rest his own hypothesis. As each of the other three languages are descending generations from the parent Hebrew in which Moses wrote, the examination of this language alone will be sufficient, I should think, to determine this subject.

Moses introduces the subject he was writing upon by stating what it was-the earth and its atmosphere. He then proceeds to inform his readers of the state in which the earth was, and then of the means by which

God first reduced it by volcanic fire out of confusion into order. He then very properly proceeds to shew how the stagnated atmosphere was set in motion, and the effect which it produced. And here, I think, lies Mr. Belsham's next great error.

Moses does expressly say, that the earth was not only a chaos on its surface, but that it was also hollow, and that in the midst of this chaos, he says, "Let there be a firmament." Mr. B. says, that in all these languages its meaning is the celestial hemisphere. Taylor, in his Concordance, observes on this word yp, that it is applied to beating upon, stamping upon, spreading dirt abroad. "To beat a mass of metal into a broad piece with a hammer; hence it is applied to God's spreading out or extending far and wide the surface of the earth when he created it." The word used by Moses, 'p, is not a substantive, and, therefore, is not a thing but a cause, an expansion; a cause which, acting upon the airs, will produce the effect intended, to set the dark, stagnated, damp vapours in motion, and, pressing from the midst of the waters to the internal shell of the earth, compress and harden it, and separate the internal waters from those which were external.

I know that Mr. Belsham, if he is not convinced by me, will call this cabalistic, and a mystery of a Hebrew root. As no argument is contained in outlandish names, they will carry no more weight with me, nor indeed so much, as Calvinistic, Methodistic, &c. I shall require something more; I shall require to know why Moses leaves his first subject to introduce one quite distinct from it? Why he ceases to treat on the earth and its atmosphere, to introduce the sun, moon and stars, and not only the atmospheres in which they revolve, but the vast immensity of what Mr. Belsham calls "celestial hemisphere"?

Mr. Belsham, indeed, intends further to support his proposition by Moses's account of the deluge, and it is but fair he should, if it will aid his assertion, saying, "that in the idea of Moses, the firmament possessed solidity sufficient to sustain the weight of half the waters: which interpretation is confirmed by the account which the same writer gives of the immense

15th and 16th verses, he will find, on his supposition, that the 16th verse is unnecessary tautology. I would thus render these three verses: "Be light" (Psa. lxxiv. 16, Prov.xv. 30) "through the expanse of the airs, to make distinct the day from the night, that these may be signs, and seasons, and days, and years, and be the instruments of light in the expanse of the airs. For God had made two illuminators; the greater illuminator to rule the day, and the besser illuminator to rule the night, with the stars."

Aad by so rendering them the whole order of creation to me appears perfectly natural and strictly philosophieal. The first period of creation is calling fire and light into action, raising volcanoes from the bed of the ocean, and, by their action on the air, setting the atmosphere in motion, and bursting through the denseness of chaos, making the first gloomy appearance of day and night.

The next great action of the Deity, in his progress of forming chaos into an inhabitable globe, was to set in motion, says Moses, the expansive powers of the airs within the hollow, chaotic globe, and this, says Moses, by hardening the crust of the globe, parated the internal waters from the external.

The third stage of creation was the bursting of this crust of the solid earth in various parts, and collecting into the basin of the sea and in the hollow of the earth, the waters which before covered the whole earth, rendering the upper lands visible. This was followed by the creation of vegetable matter.

In this state of the creation the earth must have been covered with immense forests, lakes and marshes, covered with grass and dense vapours wholly unfit for the existence of birds, beasts and man. To fit them for such existence appears to have been, in the philosophy of Moses, the fourth stage of the creation, by causing the solar rays to penetrate the dense vapours, strike the earth, and pierce its recesses, giving motion to all the powers of nature.

Had Mr. Belsham only attacked the periods of time Moses allots to this work of creation, I would not have disputed it with him: I would have agreed,

that whatever Omnipotence could do was not the question, but what Omnipotence had done; that a day was with the Deity as a thousand years, and a thousand years but as a day; that all nature bore the evident marks of the progressive work of creation, and that the periods of Moses are evidently to be taken as successive actions of time, and not as six actual days.

But when Mr. Belsham attacks the philosophy of Moses, and imputes to him gross ignorance of the works of creation, he must excuse me for requiring evidence to support his assertions, and his attempt to destroy that respect which some of the wisest and best of men have had for the philosophical as well as the theological writings of Moses. Mr. Belsham has not proved that Moses supposes the firmament to be solid; he has only shewn that he himself draws such a conclusion from, I think, very inconclusive premises. Nor does Mr. Belsham's produced evidence prove that Moses thought that either sun or moon were fixed in the solid firmament, or, indeed, that Moses considered the firmament to be a solid arch, or even solid. These, and all these, are his own conclusions formed from equally distant premises; for how can expansion, an active and ever-moving principle, have any thing to do with a solid arch or with solidity? And, however unphilosophical Mr. Belsham may think it is to suppose that light may exist in the absence of the sun, I believe that there are very few students of nature but will determine, that light and fire are both wholly distinct from the sun; and that the sun itself, with all its glorious effulgence, is but the means of giving motion to light and fire, by calling all their energies into action. But though it does, and is the grand instrument the Creator has appointed for this purpose, it is not the sole instrument; every thing which blazes, from the dim taper to the conflagration of a burning mountain, produces in its degree, according to its flame, the same effect. Therefore, though the efforts of learned men may be, as Mr. B. says they have been," preposterous in the extreme" in attempting to reconcile the Mosaical cosmogony to philosophical

truth, I am, notwithstanding, still willing to add my unlearned attempts, and to meet the laugh, and will promise Mr. Belsham not to be indignant, though I might be sorry, should he unite in it.

SIR,

THO. A. TEULON.

April 2, 1822. NE of your correspondents (p. tion" of "the pious father," credo quia impossibile est. This ground for belief, especially in a Trinity, I find to have been a favourite resource of the pious and learned Sir Thomas Browne, his "firm footing" and his "solid rock," as appears in Religio Medici, Sect ix.

He begins by remarking: "As for those wingy mysteries in divinity and airy subtleties in religion which have unhinged the brains of better heads, they never stretched the pia mater of mine." Nor, indeed, was there any danger of such an accident, for he immediately complains that " there be not impossibilities enough in religion for an active faith," adding, "I love to lose myself in a mystery, to pursue my reason to an altitudo! Tis my solitary recreation to pose my apprehension with those involved ænigmas and riddles of the Trinity.” And now, lest while pursuing such rather hazardous recreations he might forget "to keep the road in divinity," and to "follow the great wheel of the church, as he had resolved," (Sect. vi.,) he proceeds to "answer all the objections of Satan and rebellious reason with that odd resolution, learned of Tertullian, it is true, because it is impossible.'

As the Deity, according to Trinitarians, (excepting a comparatively few learned Eclectics,) could be born, it was quite consistent that he should be subject to the other great law of humanity. Thus orthodox Christians, both the learned and the unlearned, have not scrupled, or rather have been eager to represent the salvation of the world, as depending on that moment, "When God, the mighty maker, died For man, the creature's sin."

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Dr. Young, in his Night Thoughts, adoringly celebrates the crucifixion as "extended Deity for human weal;" while, as lately as 1806, in the concluding couplet of an epitaph, more pious than poetical, a departed Christian is made to console his mourning survivors with this representation of his celestial occupations :

"Electing love I loud proclaim,

And worship God, on Calvary slain." the churchyard in Horsleydown, may These lines any person, who passes read, as I have often done, on a gravestone in memory of "Mr. James Smith."

SIR,

M

R. L. C.

Pontale, April 4, 1822. ANY of your readers are, I dare say, well acquainted with that Mr. Anthony A. Wood," published at curious autobiography, "The Life of Oxford in 1772. I have met with two or three passages which bring us, as it were, behind the scenes, and assist For instance, those who cannot satisfy to settle questions of some importance. the Church of England be Calvinistic themselves whether the doctrine of or Arminian, or, as my Lord of Winchester, via Lincoln, contends, between both, may receive some assistance in their inquiry from the following record, which also contains a most extraordinary reading of John iii. 16:

"An. Dom. 1673, Jan. Richards, Chaplain of All Souls, preached at St. Marie's, God so loved the world that he gave himself up, &c. Dr. Barlow, ViceChancellour, [Bishop of Lincoln in 1675,] called him in question for it, because he insisted much on the Arminian points." (P. 249.)

The following paragraph will serve to exhibit the pleasant manner in which that nursing father of the Church of England, Charles II., her

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most religious king," amused himself with his supremacy; on the death of Archbishop Sheldon :

"1677, Nov. 26. Divers would be asking the King, who should be Arch

mouths, he would tell them, Tom Bai