_Oh say, Thou Great, Thou sacred Name,
What Scenes Thy thoughtful Breast employ,
Capacious as that mighty Frame
You raise with Ease, with Ease destroy?
Each World shall boast thy Fame; and YOU,
Who charm’d the OLD, should grace the NEW._
TO THE
KING’s
MOST
Excellent Majesty.
_SIR_,
New-found Lands and Countries accrue to the Prince whose Subject makes
the first Discovery; and having retriev’d a World that had been lost for
some thousands of Years, out of the Memory of Man, and the Records of
Time, I thought it my Duty to lay it at your Majesty’s Feet. ’Twill not
enlarge your Dominions, ’tis past and gone; nor dare I say it will
enlarge your Thoughts; but I hope it may gratify your Princely Curiosity
to read the Description of it, and see the Fate that attended it.
We have still the broken Materials of that first World, and walk upon
its Ruins; while it stood, there was the Seat of _Paradise_, and the
Scenes of the _Golden Age_; when it fell, it made the Deluge; and this
unshapen Earth we now inhabit, is the Form it was found in when the
Waters had retir’d, and the dry Land appear’d. These things, Sir, I
propose and presume to prove in the following Treatise, which I
willingly submit to your Majesty’s Judgment and Censure; being very well
satisfied, that if I had sought a Patron in all the List of Kings, your
Contemporaries, or in the Roll of your Nobles of either Order, I could
not have found a more competent Judge in a Speculation of this Nature.
Your Majesty’s Sagacity, and happy Genius for natural History, for
Observations and Remarks upon the Earth, the Heavens, and the Sea, is a
better Preparation for Inquiries of this kind, than all the dead
Learning of the Schools.
SIR, This Theory, in the full Extent of it, is to reach to the last
Period of the Earth, and the End of all Things; but this first Volume
takes in only so much as is already past, from the Origin of the Earth,
to this present Time and State of Nature. To describe in like manner the
Changes and Revolutions of Nature that are to come, and see thorough all
succeeding Ages, will require a steady and attentive Eye, and a Retreat
from the Noise of the World; especially so to connect the Parts, and
present them all under one View, that we may see, as in a Mirror, the
several Faces of Nature, from first to last, throughout all the Circle
of Successions.
YOUR Majesty having been pleas’d to give Encouragement to this
Translation, I humbly present it to your gracious Acceptance. And ’tis
our Interest, as well as Duty, in Disquisitions of this Nature, to
address our selves to your Majesty, as the Defender of _Philosophick
Liberties_, against those that would usurp upon the fundamental
Privilege and Birthright of Mankind, _The free Use of Reason_. Your
Majesty hath always appear’d the Royal Patron of Learning and the
Sciences; and ’tis suitable to the Greatness of a Princely Spirit to
favour and promote whatsoever tends to the Enlargement of human
Knowledge, and the Improvement of human Nature. To be Good and Gracious,
and a Lover of Knowledge, are, methinks, two of the most amiable Things
in this World: And that your Majesty may always bear that Character in
present and future Ages; and after a long and prosperous Reign enjoy a
blessed Immortality, is the constant Prayer of
_Your MAJESTY’s
Most Humble and
Most Obedient Subject_,