OF HUMAN LIFE. 



The writer of the foregoing account does not indeed 

 fay, in fo many plain terms, that he holds the won- 

 derful narrative, which Flamel is faid to have given of 

 himfelf and Paul Lucas's dervife, of Flamel, to be hiSon- 

 cal fact : but he fays, however fo much to their credi- 

 bility, that he nearly gives us room to fufpecl:, that he 

 has a little waggifli delign, of putting his reader into 

 that kind of unpleafant equipoife between believing and 

 not believing, which, as is well known, has the effc& 9 

 with the generality of mankind, of making them, for 

 the fake of freeing themfelves from this difagreeable 

 Hate of mind, by a flight manoeuvre of their inclina- 

 tion, which eafily takes a bias from the inborn love 

 which all of us have to the extraordinary and the 

 marvellous, give credit to tranfactions., againfr. which 

 nothing elfe can be adduced but that they are in- 

 credible from every argument of reafon, and rather 

 to believe the hiftorical evidences than vouch for the 

 truth of them, till either the abfolute impoflibility of 

 the matter itfelf, or the falfehood of the evidences oa 

 which their reality refts, be evidently demoniirat^J, 



As I, for my part, would not willingly (even by mj 

 filence) be the caufe that only one of my readers flasuld 

 be milled, by any inducement he may feem to per- 

 ceive in it to forfake the even path of folid rea£o% for 

 a bye-way, which, in the end, muft lead into an sbyft, 

 or, at leaft, into — the dirt; I beg perrniillon to h&- 

 zard my thoughts, with all ppflible bie vity, on the 

 gold-maker FlameFs hiitory. 



In the firft place, it will not be deemed , fupedlm90$ 

 to rectify fome circurnftances relative to the perfos of 

 6 tkm. 



