have been the second causes employed at the creation, in
separating the land from the waters, and in gathering the waters
together into one place. He mentions, like Hooke, the earthquake of
1646, which had violently shaken the Andes for some hundreds of leagues,
and made many alterations therein. In assigning a cause for the general
deluge, he preferred a change in the earth's centre of gravity to the
introduction of earthquakes. Some unknown cause, he said, might have
forced the subterranean waters outwards, as was, perhaps, indicated by
"the breaking up of the fountains of the great deep."

Ray was one of the first of our writers who enlarged upon the effects of
running water upon the land, and of the encroachment of the sea upon the
shores. So important did he consider the agency of these causes, that he
saw in them an indication of the tendency of our system to its final
dissolution; and he wondered why the earth did not proceed more rapidly
towards a general submersion beneath the sea, when so much matter was
carried down by rivers, or undermined in the sea-cliffs. We perceive
clearly from his writings, that the gradual decline of our system, and
its future consummation by fire, was held to be as necessary an article
of faith by the orthodox, as was the recent origin of our planet. His
discourses, like those of Hooke, are highly interesting, as attesting
the familiar association in the minds of philosophers, in the age of
Newton, of questions in physics and divinity. Ray gave an unequivocal
proof of the sincerity of his mind, by sacrificing his preferment in the
church, rather than take an oath against the Covenanters, which he could
not reconcile with his conscience. His reputation, moreover, in the
scientific world placed him high above the temptation of courting
popularity, by pandering to the physico-theological taste of his age. It
is, therefore, curious to meet with so many citations from the
Christian fathers and prophets in his essays on physical science--to
find him in one page proceeding, by the strict rules of induction, to
explain the former changes of the globe, and in the next gravely
entertaining the question, whether the sun and stars, and the whole
heavens, shall be annihilated, together with the earth, at the era of
the grand conflagration.

_Woodward, 1695._--Among the contemporaries of Hooke and Ray, Woodward,
a professor of medicine, had acquired the most extensive information
respecting the