PRINTED FOR C. AND J. RIVINGTON, AND WATERLOO-PLACE, PALL-MALL. 1826. 632. 22 in the Mosaic account of the Creation, and of the promulgation of the Law upon Mount Sinai CHAPTER II. The Hebrew feast of the new moon-The computation of the Day from Evening to Morning-The division of time into Weeks. CHAPTER III. The Curse, pronounced upon the Earth for the sake of man immediately after the Fall, had no reference to the Noachic Deluge CHAPTER IV. On the Rain, which fell for the space of forty days and forty nights a 1 15 21 33 has in some parts of that work * exposed those Icarian flights, and brought them to the test of that sacred volume, from which Geology derives the only historical account of the Creation and the Deluge, the two great Epochas on which the superstructure of Geology should be raised, every unprejudiced mind must testify with pleasure. Tried by the standard of Bacon and Newton, he has endeavoured to shew how ill the Mineral Geology can bear the ordeal. The sentiment of the Poet, "Felix, qui potuit rérum cognoscere causas †,” is well known, and, as far as it goes, undoubtedly worthy of attention. But the Christian Philosopher must rise a step higher than the Heathen. He must not rest satisfied with barely attributing such and such effects to what are denominated natural causes. He is not to be found amongst those, who speculate on the Particularly in the First volume: for it will be made to appear in the following pages, that the Author of the Comparative Estimate has not escaped the imputation of having promulgated, in his Second volume, some incorrect interpretations of Scripture, and of having grounded upon them unwarrantable conclusions. Virgil. Georg. lib. ii. 1. 490. mere laws of matter, and who arrive at false conclusions respecting the mode of first formations, but it is his distinguished privilege to be one, who "looks through Nature up to Nature's God *." Concluding from visible effects to an invisible, "First, common and intelligent cause." At a time, when the Roman Catholic, or, more properly speaking, the Popish Priesthood, who pervert the text of Scripture in subserviency to their own purposes, and withhold the Bible from the poor, who are consequently rendered incapable of detecting the multifarious errors of their Church, are zealously intruding their opinions on the public notice; and when the most learned of the advocates of Papacy, speaking of our Clergy as a body, hazards the question, "Do not the English Clergy sign the Thirty-nine Articles with a sigh or a smile ?"—at a time, when the Secretary of a "Christian Evidence Society," who, it is not perhaps generally known, was about seven years ago a Clergyman of the |