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As is manifest from this presentation, Swedenborg supposes that
the descent of the water took place little by little and gradually, although
ho still appoars to connect the higher water-level with the universal flood.
But not long after this work he expressed himself very clcarly against
the view that all the testimonies advanced to show a higher water-level
in former times are connected with the universal flood. This occurred
in his letter to Jacob a Melle’*, dated Stockholm, May 21, 1721, which
was directly occasioned by v Melle’s work on petrifications (figured
stones) in the environs of Lubeck1, in which Swedenborg’s work On tlie
Ileiyht of Water, etc. is cited. By way of introduction it is advanced
in the letter that petrifications occur in vafious parts of Sweden, as also
that collections of such petrifications have heen made by the Provincial
Phvsician Johan Hesselius, the Assessor Dr. Magnus von Bromell (who
has also had them engraved on copper)2, and also by the Professor of
Medicine L. Boberg in Upsala. Swedenborg then passes over to the
proofs, which, according to his view, are at band to show that the
land was formerlv covered by the ocean (the same proofs which were
advanced in his treatise). But liere there is appended the weighty
addition. that not all the facts advanced could relate to Noali’s flood, which
indeed lasted only one year. Especially is this valid concerning the
changes which have taken place since Sweden was settled, etc. »These
circumstances indicate that not all the events under consideration took
jdace during the universal fiood, but that the carth and especially its
nort hern tracts were for a long time afterwards covered by a deep sea,
out of which they little by little arose in the degree tliat the water in
the northern tracts decreased, or in other words the foundations became
inhahitahle».
It may liere he observed that a summary, »similar to the one in the
letter to Jacob v Melle, although in some points more extended, was
also presented in the first chapter of the »Prodrontus Principiorum»3,
published in the autumn of the same year (1721). In it strata of salt
or whole mountains of salt are explained as having heen deposited on
the bottom of the sea at the time when the ocean covered the earth.
In this work also it is expressiv stated that not all of the testimonies
1 I)e lapidibus figuratis agri litorisque lubecensis. Lubecæ 1720.
3 The illustrations for Bromkli.’s »Lithographiæ snecanae speciinen secunduni»,
published subsequently (1727), are here referred to.
s The complete titles of the worlcs by Swedenborg here cited are given at pagea
10—41.
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