Now, if it be true as is hinted before, That the Chinese Empire was
Peopled long before the Flood; and that they were not destroyed in
the General Deluge in the Days of Noah; 'tis no such strange thing,
that they should so much out-do us in this sort of Eye-sight we call
General Knowledge, since the Perfections bestow'd on Nature, when in
her Youth and Prime met with no General Suffocation by that Calamity.
But if I was extreamly delighted with the extraordinary things I saw
in those Countries, you cannot but imagine I was exceedingly mov'd,
when I heard of a Lunar World; and that the way was passable from
these Parts.
I had heard of a World in the Moon among some of our Learned
Philosophers, and Moor, as I have been told, had a Moon in his Head;
but none of the fine Pretenders, no not Bishop Wilkins, ever found
Mechanick Engines, whose Motion was sufficient to attempt the
Passage. A late happy Author indeed, among his Mechanick Operations
of the Spirit, had found out an Enthusiasm, which if he could have
pursued to its proper Extream, without doubt might, either in the
Body or out of the Body, have Landed him somewhere hereabout; but
that he form'd his System wholly upon the mistaken Notion of Wind,
which Learned Hypothesis being directly contrary to the Nature of
things in this Climate, where the Elasticity of the Air is quite
different and where the pressure of the Atmosphere has for want of
Vapour no Force, all his Notion dissolv'd in its Native Vapour call'd
Wind, and flew upward in blew Strakes of a livid Flame call'd
Blasphemy, which burnt up all the Wit and Fancy of the Author, and
left a strange stench behind it, that has this unhappy quality in it,
that every Body that Reads the Book, smells the Author, tho' he be
never so far off; nay, tho' he took Shipping to Dublin, to secure his
Friends from the least danger of a Conjecture.
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