power and wisdom of that Providence that governs all things here below. These things Reason and Plulosophy approve of; but if you further require that they should shew a Necessity of this future destruction of the World, from Natural Causes, with the time and all other circumstances of this effect; your demands are unreasonable, seeing these things do not depend solely upon Nature. But if you will content your self to know what dispositions there are in Nature towards such a change, how it may begin, proceed, and be consummate, under the conduct of Providence, be pleased to read the following Discourse for your further satisfaction.

CHAP. III

That the World will be destroy'd by Fire, is the doctrine of the Ancients, especially of the Stoicks. That the same doctrine is more ancient than the Greeks, and deriv'd from the Barbarick Philosophy, and That probably from Noah; the Father of all Traditionary Learning. The same doctrine expresly authoriz'd by Revelation, and inroll'd into the Sacred Canon.

THAT the present World, or the present frame of Nature, will be destroy'd, we have already shewn. In what manner this destruction will be, by what force or what kind of fate, must be our next enquiry. The Philosophers have always spoken of Fire and Water, those two unruly Elements, as the only Caufes that can destroy the World, and work our ruine; And accordingly they say, all the great and fatal Revolutions of Nature, either past or to come, depend upon the violence of these Two; when they get the mastery, and overwhelm all the rest and