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15 th and 16 th verses , lie will find , on his supposition , that the 16 th verse is unnecessary tautology . I would thus render these three verses : " Be light " ( Psa . lxxiv . 16 , Prov . xv . 30 ) " through
the expanse of the airs , to make distinct the day from the night , that these may be signs , and seasons , and days , and years , and be the instruments of light in the expanse of the airs . For God had made two
illuminators i the greater illuminator to rule the day , and the l-csscr illuminator to rule the night , irith the stars , ' Arid by so rendering-them the whole order of creation to me appears perfectly natural and strictly philosophical . The first period of creation is
calling tire and light into action , raising volcanoes from the bed of the ocean , and , by their action on the air , netting the atmosphere in motion , and bursting through the denseness of chaos , making the first gloomy appearance of day and night . The next great action of the Deity ,
in his progress of forming chaos into ah inhabitable globe , was to set in jnotion , says Moses , the expansive powers of the airs within the hollow , ^ chaotic globe , and this , says Moses , by hardening the crust of the globe , separated the internal waters from the external .
The third stage of creation was the bursting of this crust of the solid earth in various parts , and collecting into the basin of the sea and in the hollow of the earth , the waters which before covered the whole earth , rendering the upper lands visible . This was followed by the creation of vegetable matter .
In this state of the creation the earth must have been covered with immense forests , lakes and marshes , covered with grass and dense vapours wholly unfit for the existence of birds , beasts and man . To lit them for such
existence appears to have been , in the philosophy of Moses , the fourth stage of the creation , by causing the solar rays to penetrate the dense vapours , strike the earth , and pierce its recesses , giving motion to all the powers of nuture
-Had Mr . Belsham only attacked the periods of lime Moses allots to this work of creation , 1 would not have disputed it with him : I would have agreed ,
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that whatever Onitfipotence could do was not the question ^ but \ vhat Omnipotence had dbtie ; that tf . day \ Vas with the Deity as a thousand years , and a thousand years but £ ls a day ; that
all nature bore the evident marks of the progressive work of creation , and that the periods of Moses are evidently to he taken as successive actions of time , aiid not as six actual davs .
But when Mr . Belsham attacks the philosophy of Moses , and imputes to him gross ignorance of the works of creation , he must excuse me for requiring evidence to support his assertions , and his attempt to destroy that
respect which some of the wisest and best of men have had for the philosophical as well as the theological writings of Moses . Mr . Belsham has not proved that Moses supposes the firmament to be solid ; he has only shewn that he himself draws such a
conclusion from , I think , very inconclusive premises . Nor does Air . Belsham ' s produced evidence prove that Moses thought that either sun or moon were fixed in the solid firmament , or , indeed , that Moses considered the firmament to be a solid arch ,
or even solid . These , and all these , are his own conclusions formed from equally distant premises ; for how can expansion , an active and ever-moving principle , have any thing to do with a
solid arch or with solidity ? And , however unphilosophical Mr . Belsham may think it is to suppose that light may exist in the absence of the sun , I believe that there are very few students of nature but will determine , that
light and fire are both wholly distinct from the sun ; and that the sun itsell , with all its glorious effulgence , is but the means of giving motion to light and lire , by calling all their energ ies into action . But though it does , and is the grand instrument the Creator
hus appointed for this purpose , it not the sole instrument ; every thing which blazes , from the dim taper to the conflagration of a burning mountain , produces in its degree , according to its flame , the same effect . Therefore , though the efforts of learned
men may be , as Mr . 13 . say s they have been , " preposterous in the extreme in attempting to reconcile the Mosaical cosmogony to p hilosop hical
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234 Mr . Teuton on the Mosaic History of tht Creation .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1822, page 234, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2511/page/42/
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