Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 13 -- Hydrotheology/Theohydrology
An Apologie (1627) by English clergyman George Hakewill
(1578-1649) asserted that, "The Power and Providence of God in
the Government of the World" and censured, "the common Error
touching Natures Perpetuall and Universall Decay.” Behind
Hakewill was the "weightie authoritie” of Solomon, "the wisest
man that ever lived,” and "his reason drawne from the Circulation
of all things as it were in a ring.”
How often, Hakewill noted, does Solomon “beat upon the
circulation and running round of all things.” Both the wind and
the water move in circuits. “Whereupon hee inferres, the thing
that hath beene, it is that that shall bee, and that which is done,
is that which shall be done, and there is no new thing under the
Sunne.”
Specific to the theohydrology of underground rivers, we turn to
another member of the English clergy, John Swan (d. 1671),
author of Speculum Mundi (1635), or
A glasse representing the face of the world: shewing both that it
did begin, and must also end: the whole of which may be fitly
called an hexameron or discourse of the clauses, continuance,
and qualities of things in nature, occasioned as matter pertinent
to the work done in the six dayes of the world's creation.
The frontispiece, rife with esoteric symbolism, is shown to the
right.
Swan’s encyclopedic tome arrangement of science according to
the six days of creation embodies the conflict between science
and scripture, superstition and belief.
The air is now “corrupted” and the “fruits of the earth of a feeble nourishment.” The Flood
wrought damage through the action of “the salt waters of the great deep,” and also by way of
“vapors or... Exhalations.”
Swan's answers to six self-addressed hydrological questions are excerpted below.
1. How the waters were gathered together?
For the efficient cause of the sea was the onely word of God.
2. How it can be said that they were gathered to one place; seeing there be many seas, lakes,
rivers, and fountains that are farre asunder?
Every part of the water is joyned unto the whole as it were with arms and legs, and veins
diversely dilated and stretched out.
3. Whether they be higher than the earth?
Suppose that certain springs arise out of the highest mountains, must the sea therefore needs
be higher than those mountains? Surely I think not. For albeit I be not of Aristotles minde, nor
of their opinions who do not derive the rivers from the seas, nor make subscription onto them
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