Chapter III.
There is only one continuous collection of waters, but different names are given according to the diverse regions. This is how God prepared a place for the waters, which are spread throughout the whole world. Also, it includes lakes and ponds within the same gathering.
12. Now I ask, when he says: 'Let the water be gathered into one place,' how could one gathering receive the waters that are spread throughout lakes, marshes, ponds, rivers, and overflowed in valleys and plains and all the flatter places, flowing from springs and rivers? Or how could one gathering, when even now the seas are different? For we call it the Ocean sea, and the Tyrrhenian, and the Adriatic, and the Indian, and the Egyptian, and the Pontic, and the Propontis, and the Hellespont, and the Black, and the Aegean, and the Ionian, and the Atlantic sea. Many also call the Cretan Sea and the Northern Caspian Sea. Therefore, let us consider the words of Scripture, which have been examined by a balanced scale.
13. 'Let the water be collected,' he says, 'into one collection. The collection of waters is one and continuous, but the bays of the sea are different, as some of the legal writers say (Plat. in Timaeus). For indeed the sea has the most extensive bays, and deservedly in different places there are different names, because the names have adhered to the waters from the names of the regions. But the collection of waters is one, because the continuous waves, from the Indian Sea to the shores of Cadiz, and from there, encompassing the globe, it encloses the Red Sea in the Ocean: and within it the Adriatic and other seas are mixed with the Tyrrhenian, distinguished by names, not by waves.' Where you have it beautifully, because God called the collections of waters seas (Gen. I, 10). So also there is one overall collection, which is called the sea, and many collections which are called seas for regions. Just as there are many lands, such as Africa, Spain, Thrace, Macedonia, Syria, Egypt, Gaul, and Italy, which are called by the names of regions, and there is one land, so also many seas are called by the names of places, and there is one sea, as the prophet says, saying: Yours are the heavens, and yours is the earth, you founded the circle of the earth and its fullness, you created the north wind and the sea (Ps. LXXXVIII, 12). And to Job the Lord himself said: But have the gates of the sea been shut up? (Job 38:8).
14. Now, because we have spoken about a single collection, this question arises: whether, when waters were spread out throughout nearly all the earth and above the earth, in the valleys of fields, hollows of mountains, and the plains of the plains, a single gathering, poured forth from the sea, could have received and drained all those waters, which were stagnating before being poured forth through the entire river. For if everything was covered in this manner, he would not say, the earth was seen, unless he wanted to indicate that it was uncovered in all places. If the flood during the time of Noah covered and hid the mountains, when the separation had already been made between the waters above the heavens and those below the firmament, how much more can it not be doubted that even the tops of the mountains were concealed by that flooding? Therefore, from where was all that excess water derived? What receptacles were able to absorb it, so continuous and interconnected? Much could be said on this matter.
First, because the Creator of all things was able to spread out the spaces of the lands themselves; this some before us, affirming, have established according to their own opinion. I do not omit what He was able to do; I pass over what He did, which I have not learned clearly from the authority of the Scriptures, as it were a secret, lest from here perhaps other questions might be sought by them also. Nevertheless, I assert according to the Scriptures that He was able to spread out lowly places and open fields, just as He Himself says: 'I will walk before you and make mountains plain' (Isaiah 45:2). The force of the water itself could also make deeper things, which had settled, more turbulent: with such a movement of waves and such a surge of a more agitated element, which daily twists the depths of the sea and turns the sands out of the deep. Who then knows to what extent that great and uncharted sea, which encloses Britain raging with waves, establishes itself for sailors and extends into the farther and even inaccessible secrets of the stories themselves? Who then does not gather how much Lucrinus and Avernus in Italy, Tiberias also in Palestine, and that lake which stretches between Palestine and Egypt to the deserts of Arabia, and the various ports of Augustus and Trajan, and the sea poured out through the whole world?
16. But there are also lakes that are not mixed with waves, and stagnant pools that do not mingle with the currents, like Lake Como and Lake Garda, Lake Albano and many others, how is this one gathering of waters? But just as it is said that God made two lights, that is, the sun and the moon, even though there are also the lights of the stars, so too one gathering is said, even though there are many. For those that do not mix are not counted.