They all suppose the earth a created
existence. They must suppose a creator then; and that he possessed
power and wisdom to a great degree. As he intended the earth for the
habitation of animals and vegetables, is it reasonable to suppose, he
made two jobs of his creation, that he first made a chaotic lump,
and set it into rotatory motion, and then waited the millions of ages
necessary to form itself? That when it had done this, he stepped in a
second time, to create the animals and plants which were to inhabit it?
As the hand of a creator is to be called in, it may as well be called
in at one stage of the process as another. We may as well suppose he
created the earth at once, nearly in the state in which we see it, fit
for the preservation of the beings he placed on it. But it is said, we
have a proof that he did not create it in its present solid form, but in
a state of fluidity: because its present shape of an oblate spheroid is
precisely that, which a fluid mass revolving on its axis would assume.
I suppose, that the same equilibrium between gravity and centrifugal
force, which would determine a fluid mass into the form of an oblate
spheroid, would determine the wise creator of that mass, if he made it
in a solid state, to give it the same spheroidical form.
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