A deluge is an inundation or overflowing of the earth, either wholly or in part, by water.

We have several deluges recorded in history; as that of Oggyes, which overflowed almost all Attica, and that of Deucalion, which drowned Thessaly, in Greece; but the most memorable was that called the Universal Deluge, or Noah's Flood, which overflowed and destroyed the whole earth, and from which only Noah, and those with him in the ark, escaped. This flood forms one of the most considerable epochs in chronology. Its history is given by Moses, in the book of Genesis; and its date is fixed, by the best chronologers, at the year from the creation 1656, which answers to the year before Christ 2293. From this flood, the state of the world is divided into diluvion and antediluvion.

Amongst the many testimonies to the truth of this part of the Mosaic history, may be mentioned the general voice of mankind at all times, and in all parts of the world. The objections of the free-thinkers have indeed principally turned upon three points: the want of any direct history of that event by the profane writers of antiquity; the apparent impossibility of accounting for the quantity of wa-