victed of so many blunders as the bishop,
alleges that the whole of the system of Teanarus, including the
elevation of Stromboli, and AEtna, has been formed since the catastrophe
of the principal Alps; and that the volcanoes of Auvergne and the
Vivarrus are of post-Adamic origin.[131] So the bishop's geology does
not contradict what he thinks the Bible says after all. On the contrary,
so far from geology contradicting a universal deluge, the best
geologists speak of every part of the earth having been repeatedly under
the sea, and they collect its fossils on the tops of the mountains.

But the bishop ought to know that hundreds of years ago, before geology
was born, some of the most learned bishops and theologians of his own
Church, as well as some of the chief scholars of the dissenters,
following the most learned of the Hebrew rabbis, did not believe that
the Bible taught that the deluge was universal. For instance, Bishop
Stillingfleet, in his great work, _Origines Sacra_, says: "I can not see
any urgent necessity from the Scriptures to assert that the flood did
spread over all the surface of the earth. That all mankind, those in the
ark excepted, were destroyed by it, is most certain, according to the
Scriptures. The flood was universal as to mankind, but from thence
follows no necessity at all of asserting the universality of it as to
the globe of the earth, unless it be sufficiently proved that the whole
earth was peopled before the flood; which I despair of ever seeing
proved." Matthew Poole says: "Where was the need of overwhelming those
regions of the earth in which there were no human beings? It would be
highly unreasonable to suppose that mankind had so increased before the
deluge as to have penetrated to all the corners of the earth. It is
indeed not probable that they had extended themselves beyond the limits
of Syria and Mesopotamia. Absurd it would be to affirm that the effects
of the punishment, inflicted upon men alone, applied to those places in
which there were no men. If, then, we should entertain the belief that
not so much as the hundredth part of the globe was overspread with
water, still the deluge would be universal; because the extirpation took
effect upon all the part of the globe then inhabited."

Nor does the language of the Bible necessarily convey the idea that the
whole surface of the globe was covered with water. Dathe, professor of
Hebrew (in his _Opuscala ad Crisin_, edited by Rosenmul