416 THE THEORY OF THE FIRMAMENT. society, it often happens in the ordinary course of things, that the borders of two adjacent kingdoms are wasted with a perpetual succession of inroads and affrays, while the interior provinces of either kingdom enjoy continued and profound tranquillity. And none who bestows a proper attention on the subject will make an objection of religion. For it was only a heathen flourish to ascribe to a material heaven the quality of being impregnable to decay. The sacred Scriptures ascribe eternity and destructibility equally to heaven and earth, though they assign to them a different glory and an unequal reverence. For if it be recorded, that " the sun and moon bear faithful and eternal wit ness in heaven," it is also said that " generation* pass away, but the earth abideth for ever." And that both are transitory is a doctrine contained in the same oracle of God, namely, that "heaven and earth shall pass away, but the word of the Lord will not pass away." These things we have noted, not from any ambition of novelty in opinion, but because, not in ignorant conjecture, but instructed by examples, we foresee that these fantastical divorces, and distinctions of objects and of regions, beyond what truth admits, will prove a serious impedi ment to true philosophy and the contemplation of nature. W. G. G. THE THEORY OF THE FIRMAMENT. BUT as so many foiling inconveniences are found to spring up on all sides, it should be deemed satisfactory if any thing can be avouched less revolting. Let us, therefore, construct a scheme of the universe, according to that measure of history hitherto known to us, reserving for our future judgment all new lights, after history, and through history, our philosophy, by induction, may have reached a maturer age. But we will, in the out set, premise some points that have reference to the matter composing the heavenly bodies, whence their motion and formation may be better under stood ; afterwards setting forth our thoughts and ideas of that motion itself, the chief subject under discussion. Nature, then, in the separating of matter, seems to have drawn an impassable bar between the rare and dense, and to have assigned the globe of the earth to the order of the dense; but every thing, from the very surface of the earth, and its waters, to the utmost extremity of the firmament, to that of the rare or volatile, as it were, to twin classes of first principles, not indeed of equal but <jf suitable portions. Nor indeed does either the water clinging to the clouds, or the wind pent up
- n the earth, disarrange this natural and appro
priate position of things : but this difference, be tween rare or volatile, and dense or tangible, is entirely primordial or essential, and is what the system of the universe chiefly has recourse to. It proceeds from a state of things the most simple possible this is from the abundance and scarce ness of matter, in proportion to its extension. What belong to the order of subtile or volatile, as iaund here among us, (we are speaking of those bodies that arc simple and perfect, not of such as are compounded and imperfectly mixed,) are clearly those two bodies, air and flame. But these are to be propounded as bodies utterly heterogeneous, not, as is commonly supposed, that flame is nothing else than air set on fire. To these correspond, in the higher regions, the ethereal and sidereal nature, as, in the inferior, water and oil, and in the still deeper parts, mer cury and sulphur, and generally crude and fat bodies, or, in other words, bodies that have a repugnance to, and such as are susceptible of, flame; (for salts are of a compounded nature* consisting of crude and at the same time also of inflammable parts.) It is now to be seen by what compact these two great families of things, air and flame, shall have occupied by far the greater part of the universe, and what are those parts they hold in the system. In air nearest to the earth, flame lives but a momentary life, and utterly perishes. But after the air has begun to be more depurate from the effluvia? of the earth and well rarefied, the nature of flame through various* adventures explores its way, and tries to take its station in the air, and after a time acquires some duration, not from succession, as with us, but in identity;-)- which takes place for a time in some of the feebler comets, which are in a manner of an intermediate nature between a successive and a fixed flame ; the flamy nature, however, is not fixed or established, before its arrival at the body of the moon. There the flame lays down
- Per varies casus, per tot discrirnina rernm, Vire. ./En. iii
208. * Per varies casus tentat et experitur, may be trans* lated, after various adventurous efforts tries, or, adven turous through many casualties tries.
- Identitua outevis actio repetita.
