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Burnet objected to Newton's first proposal because it removed the role of
extended history by forming all the earth's essential features at the outset—
see quote above with its plea for the flood as an agent of topography. Burnet
then rejected Newton's long initial days because he suspected that a later
acceleration in rotation would require supernatural intervention. (Burnet
favored an allegorical interpretation of Genesis 1, arguing that the notion of a
"day" could not be defined before the sun's creation on the fourth day.) "But
if the revolutions of the earth were thus slow at first, how came they to be
swifter? From natural causes or supernatural?" (325). Burnet also objected
that long early days would stretch the lives of patriarchs even beyond the
already problematical 969 of Methuselah and his compatriots—and that
while organisms might enjoy sunny days of such extended length, the long
nights might become unbearable: "If the day was thus long what a doleful
night would there be" (325).
Newton's response confirms Burnet's reading of their differences. Newton
argues that a separation of parts from original chaos might produce irregular
topography, not the smooth concentric layers of Burnet's system—therefore
requiring no subsequent narrative to explain the current face of our earth:
"Moses teaches a subdivision . . . of the miry waters under the firmament into
clear water and dry land on the surface of the whole globous mass, for which
separation nothing more was requisite than that the water should be drained
from the higher parts of the limus to leave them dry and gather together into
the lower to compose seas. And some parts might be made higher than
others" (333).
As for an early speeding of rotation, Newton confirmed Burnet's fears by
allowing a direct supernatural boost: "Where natural causes are at hand God
uses them as instruments in his works, but I do not think them alone
sufficient for the creation and therefore may be allowed to suppose that
amongst other things God gave the earth its motion by such degrees and at
such times as was most suitable to the creatures" (334). Newton also
disregarded the problem of "doleful nights" for the earth's first inhabitants,
arguing:
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