on of this kind.

The remarkable comet of 1680 was fresh in the memory of every one when
Whiston first began his cosmological studies; and the principal novelty
of his speculations consisted in attributing the deluge to the near
approach to the earth of one of these erratic bodies. Having ascribed an
increase of the waters to this source, he adopted Woodward's theory,
supposing all stratified deposits to have resulted from the "chaotic
sediment of the flood." Whiston was one of the first who ventured to
propose that the text of Genesis should be interpreted differently from
its ordinary acceptation, so that the doctrine of the earth having
existed long previous to the creation of man might no longer be regarded
as unorthodox. He had the art to throw an air of plausibility over the
most improbable parts of his theory, and seemed to be proceeding in the
most sober manner, and, by the aid of mathematical demonstration, to the
establishment of his various propositions. Locke pronounced a panegyric
on his theory, commending him for having explained so many wonderful and
before inexplicable things. His book, as well as Burnet's, was attacked
and refuted by Keill.[69] Like all who introduced purely hypothetical
causes to account for natural phenomena, Whiston retarded the progress
of truth, diverting men from the investigation of the laws of sublunary
nature, and inducing them to waste time in speculations on the power of
comets to drag the waters of the ocean over the land--on the
condensation of the vapors of their tails into water, and other matters
equally edifying.

_Hutchinson, 1724._--John Hutchinson, who had been employed by Woodward
in making his collection of fossils, published afterwards, in 1724, the
first part of his "Moses's Principia," wherein he ridiculed Woodward's
hypothesis. He and his numerous followers were accustomed to declaim
loudly against human learning; and they maintained that the Hebrew
Scriptures, when rightly translated, comprised a perfect system of
natural philosophy, for which reason they objected to the Newtonian
theory of gravitation.

_Celsius._--Andrea Celsius, the Swedish astronomer, published about this
time his remarks on the gradual diminution and sinking of the waters in
the Baltic, to which I shall have occasion to advert more particularly
in the sequel (ch. 29).

_Scheuchzer, 1708._--In Germany, in the mean time, Scheuchzer published
his "Complaint and Vindication of the Fishes"