Page:The Universe, a poem - Baker (1727).djvu/19

What is this Earth, of which thou art so proud?
Lost and unknown, in the more glorious Crowd,
$\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,}$A Point it scarce appears.———^[1]E'er it begun
The rest their Courses have,————
And shall, when it's no more, for endless Ages run.

Correct

1. That this Globe whereon we live, hath, in its present State, existed but some few thousand Years, both Scripture and Reason sufficiently evince. This we may learn from the slow Progress of Arts and Sciences, from its not yet being fully inhabited, from all History and Monuments of Antiquity whatsoever, and from the fresh Remembrance we still have of the Golden Age or first State of Nature; which appears so much plainer as we descend to the more early Writers, that we can almost trace out its Origine. But, on the other hand, we have no Reason to imagine all the other Orbs around us to be of so late a Date; for supposing the Sun and Planets in this our System, to have been disposed in their present Order, or created all at the same Time, (which is the most can justly be contended for) what Inference can we bring from hence, that all the other heavenly Bodies must have been so too? Bodies so remote from this Earth of ours, that we can neither reach them with our Eye nor our Imagination, and which can no more be influenced by our Globe, than a Man at Rome can be jostled by one at London: And we might as well maintain, that all the People now living were born at the same Minute, as that the whole Universe was created at the same Time. This erroneous Opinion proceeds from the Vanity of Mankind, in imagining these innumerable immense Bodies to have taken their Beginning, only to fill up the Train of Attendants on our earthly Spot; and that the sole Design of their Creation was to be of use to Us, whereas the least Consideration may serve to prove how very few are to Us of any use at all.
   Our Glasses discover innumerably more Stars than we can discern with the naked Eye; and still the better our Glasses are, the more we find out, lying beyond the other, and so on, for any

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