Chap. IV. A N T I E N T M E T A P H Y S I C S. 125 



lived after the flood ? Miift we bring them like wife down to the 

 ftandard of modern times ? What fhall we fay of the account Mofes 

 gives of himfelf ? That, at th^ age of eighty, he undertook and ac- 

 complifhed perhaps the greateft work that ever was performed by 

 mortal man, — the delivering his nation fromfubjedlion to the greateft 

 King then in the world, bringing them out of his country in fpite 

 of him, and giving them a religion, laws, and a conftitution. Is 

 there any man of this generation at that age capable of fuch an 

 exertion, cither of Body or Mind ? But Mofes, after he had done 

 all this, died at the age of 120, perfed:ly entire even in body. 



And thus, I think, I have fliown, that, fuppofe any of my read- 

 ers fhould be fo unfortunate as to agree with Mr David Hume, that 

 Mofes's account of the firft ages of the world, as well as the reft of 

 the Bible Hiftory, is a mere fidion, yet it is not a fidion which 

 a Man may not believe, without deferving the cenfure of having 

 the nvhole Principles of his iinderjlanding fuhverted^ but, on the con- 

 trary, as probable a fidlion as the agreement of other hiftories of 

 thofe ages, and the philofophy of Man, can make it. 



As to what David fays of the life of Man, in his time, being 

 reduced to feventy years, it only ferves to confirm my hypo- 

 thefis, of the lives of Men being fliortened in proportion as they 

 are removed from the natural ftate. Ifrael, in tiie time of David, 

 was not a young nation ; for, if we reckon from their going down 

 to Egypt with their father Jacob, they were then near to 700 years 

 old, which could not fail, according to my philofophy, to makf a 

 great alteration as to the length of their lives. 



With refped to the Greeks, we have, as I have obferved, no 

 fuch antient record of their nation as we have of the Jewifli. We 

 know nothing, therefore, of the lives of their Patriarchs, nor any 



thing 



