Affirms (out of _Zeno_) that the _Chaos_, whereof all things were
made, was, according to _Hesiod_, Water; which, settling first, became
Slime, and then condens'd into solid Earth. And the same Opinion about
the Generation of Slime seems to have been entertain'd by _Orpheus_,
out of whom one of the Antients[7] cites this Testimony,
[Greek: Ek tou hydatos ilui katiste.]
_Of Water Slime was made._
[Footnote 5: De Natura Deorum.]
[Footnote 6: Argonaut. 4.]
[Footnote 7: Athenagoras.]
It seems also by what is delivered in _Strabo_[8] out of another
Author, concerning the _Indians_, That they likewise held that all
things had differing Beginnings, but that of which the World was made,
was Water. And the like Opinion has been by some of the Antients
ascrib'd to the _Phoenicians_, from whom _Thales_ himself is
conceiv'd to have borrow'd it; as probably the Greeks did much of
their Theologie, and, as I am apt to think, of their Philosophy too;
since the Devising of the Atomical _Hypothesis_ commonly ascrib'd to
_Lucippus_ and his Disciple _Democritus_, is by Learned Men attributed
to one _Moschus_ a _Phoenician_. And possibly the Opinion is yet
antienter than so; For 'tis known that the _Phoenicians_ borrow'd
most of their Learning from the _Hebrews_. And among those that
acknowledge the Books of _Moses_, many have been inclin'd to think
Water to have been the Primitive and Universal Matter, by perusing the
Beginning of _Genesis_, where the Waters seem to be mention'd as the
Material Cause, not only of Sublunary Compounded Bodies, but of all
those that make up the Universe; whose Component Parts did orderly,
as it were, emerge out of that vast Abysse, by the Operation of the
Spirit of God, who is said to have been moving Himself as hatching
Females do (as the Original [Hebrew: merachephet], _Meracephet_[9] is
said to Import, and as it seems to signifie in one of the two other
places, wherein alone I have met with it in the Hebrew Bible)[10] upon
the Face of the Waters; which being, as may be suppos'd, Divinely
Impregnated with the seeds of all things, were by that productive
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