James Hutton (1726–1797) was a Scottish naturalist. His inquiry into the earth ends with a line that can sound like a claim about eternity. Read in full, it contains a qualification: he is reporting what the present investigation has shown.
One landscape presupposes another
Weathering and erosion supply material for new strata. To investigate such a bed is to infer an earlier land from which its material came.
The result, therefore, of our present enquiry is, that we find no vestige of a beginning,—no prospect of an end.
– James Hutton, Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, I, p. 304.[1]
Trace and limit
Hutton finds a succession of worlds. That is a statement about where the visible traces lead. His wording leaves a distinction between finding no beginning and asserting that there never was one.