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" cafe another degree of affurance againft the fad which they en- 

 " deavoiir to eftablifh ; from which contradidion there neceffarily 

 " arife a counterpoife and mutual deftrudion of belief and au- 

 *' thority." 



In this paragraph many particulars indeed deferve animad- 

 verfion. 



1°. The extraordinary and the marvellous fhould not be con- 

 founded. Many fads are extraordinary, yet not marvellous ; and 

 many marvellous, that are not extraordinary. The birth of twins 

 is not an ordinary fad, nor is the death of a man at the age of 

 one hundred years, yet, though there be but one inftance of the 

 firft in a flock of one thoufand ewes, and of the other in a mortuary 

 lift often thoufand deaths, a common fhepherd is credited in the firft 

 cafe, and an unknown compiler of a bill of mortality in the fecond 

 cafe, without any diminution of credit; and the reafon is, becaufe 

 neither fad is contradidory to the known laws of nature, though 

 both are unufual, and the laws relative either to the origin or 

 celfation of life are in great meafure unknown, and becaufe fuch 

 fads, though by far not the moft ufual, are yet known by tefti- 

 mony to have often occurred. 



2^. It is plain from the conftant recurrence of the words 

 we and us, that by the experience mentioned in this paragraph 

 our own perfonal experience is denoted, and indeed the tenor of 



A a 2 his 



