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BT. 15

.#97

gift

Tappan Prest. Arson.

3-22-1933

PREFACE.

E here present the candid Reader with a new Edition of the Writings of that truly learned and ufeful Author: John Hutchinson, Efq; We doubt not but it would be agreeable to many of our Readers, were we to amuse them with a Detail of Particulars relating to his private Life, and trace it from. the Cradle thro' the feveral Stages, till we came to the shining Part of it as an Author; but, as we judge it not

of any great Importance, we have not made the proper Enquiries to enable us to do it. Mr Hutchinfon has himfelf given us the great Out-lines of his Life, in his Treatife of Power Effential and Mechanical; and, as to the inward Frame of his Mind, and Superiority of his Genius, the whole of his Writings, taken together, afford us the best Picture: To them we refer the Reader, as the best Accounts of him, and of the Manner in which he chose to spend his Time. He will there find, that the Book of Nature explained in the Book of God, or the Works of God, the Effects of the natural Agents on themselves, and on the feveral Parts of this Globe, above and below Ground, were his Inftructors, and the attending their Leffons, his chief Employment. He looked for Learning where few or none have fearched for it for many Years paft.The dark.

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Bowels of the Earth were his firft School, and the infpired Light, which he took in his Hand, difcovered the hidden Treasure; enabled him to trace the Footsteps of Divine Wrath in that ftupendous Act of Power, the Diffolution of the Earth, and univerfal Deluge, which mighty Cataftrophe, tho' it was the extraordinary Work of God, was performed by the natural Agents, they being the Inftruments in the Hand of God; and tho' they could never have overturned their own Empire, and destroyed this Globe, (for which they themselves, and all the Globes about us, were made) by those mechanical Powers they are invested with; yet he that gave them their Power, could and did make them exert it, in bringing out the Waters from the great Hollow within the Earth, to diffolve the Earth into a Colluvies, and reduce it to that fluid a 3 Con

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Condition it was created it; and when they had done fo, their Situation (being Part within the Earth, and Part without it) enabled them to compress each Way, and fo drive together the earthy Parts of the Shell we tread on, and separate them from the Waters, and thereby make a Divifion, Divider, or Wall, as it is expreffed, from Waters to Waters; and fo the Waters, immediately under the Shell of the Earth, were above the Air, the Expander, which then filled the great Cavity of the Earth: The expanfive Power within and without, or above and below, the Earth, still continuing to exert itself, would crack the Shell of the Earth in innumerable Places, and thereby let the Waters on it's Surface have free Paffage down, and fo Air and Water were the Inftruments, by which the Diffolution and Reformation of the Earth were

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