Chap. VI. A N T I E N T METAPHYSICS. 183 



might be enabled to purchafe it ; and fo the vice was reftored, and 

 now continues, and is increafing, not only in London and its fub- 

 urbs, but all over the country, and to fo great a degree, that, if a 

 remedy is not applied, it will not only fhrivel and contract the 

 fize of the human body, but will abfolutely extinguifh the race 

 in not many generations. And we may already begin to calculate 

 as a French author does with refped: to France*, in how many years 

 there fhall be no inhabitants in Britain. 



What difeafes all thofe things that I have mentioned muft pro- 

 duce among a people, it is impoffible to fay ; 



Non^ niihift linguae centum ftnt, oraque centum^ 

 Ferrea njox. 



And, indeed, they appear to me to be without number or name i 

 For our Dodors have not only not found out cures for them all,, 

 which I believe to be impoffible, but they have not, even with the 

 affiftance of the learned languages, found out names for them all. 



When we compare, in this relped, antient times with modern, 

 we find the difference prodigious. From the moft antient, and beft 

 vouched record of human affairs, I mean the books of Mofes, it 

 does not appear that, in the antient times of which he treats, any 

 died of difeafe, not even children, of whom fo very great a number 

 die among us ; for, even long after the Flood, and as late as the 

 days of Jacob and his twelve fons, though we have a very particular 

 account of the children of all thofe fons, we do not find that any of 

 them died under age: For the two fons of Judah, who died young, lived 

 to be men, and then were killed by the Lord for reafons mentioned in 

 the text, t- The next mofl antient record are the poems of Homer 

 where we find that, though the Greeks, at the time of the Trojan 



warj. 



* The title of this pamphlet is, La enterets dc la France mal cnUndus. 

 t Genefis, Chap, xxxviii. Verf. 17 -to. 



