INSTANCES OF LONGEVITY. 
44a 
two numbers by seven, for example, the age of the present race will 
be ninety-eight, and that of the Antediluvians nine hundred and ten. The 
period of man’s existence therefore may have gradually diminished ia 
proportion as the surface of the earth acquired more solidity by the 
constant action of gravity : and it is probable that the period from 
the creation to the days of David was sufficient to give the earth 
all the density it was capable of receiving from the influence of gra- 
vitation ; and consequently, that the surface of the earth has ever 
since remained in the same state, and the terms of growth in the pro- 
ductions of the earth, as well as the duration of life, have been inva- 
riably fixed from that period. 
It has been further supposed, that a principal cause of the longe- 
vity under consideration was, the wholesome constitution of the ante- 
diluvian air, which, after the deluge, became corrupted and unwhole- 
some, breaking, by degrees, the pristine crasis of the body, and 
shortening human life in a few ages, to near the present standard. 
The temperature of the air and seasons, before that catastrophe, are, 
upon very probable grounds, supposed to have been constantly uni- 
form and mild : the burning heats of summer, and the severities of 
the winter colds, were not then come forth, but spring and autumn 
reigned perpetually together ; and indeed, the circumstance, above 
all others most conducive to the prolongation of human life, in the 
postdiluvian world, appears to be an equal and benign temperature of 
climate, whence it seems reasonable to infer, that the same cause 
might have produced the same effect in the antediluvian world. 
Ancient and Modern Instances of Longevity. 
That the common duration of men’s ages has been the same in 
all periods since the general deluge, is plain both from sacred and 
profane history. Yet instances of lives greatly exceeding the com- 
mon extreme, are not only to be found in the history of all ages and 
countries^ but even in our island and in the present age. Mr. White- 
hurst, in his Inquiry into the Origin, and Strata of the Earth, has given 
a list, since enlarged by Dr. Fothergill, of thirty-two persons who died 
between 1635 and 1681, all of whom had lived above a century, most 
of them considerably longer, and one, who was living in 1780, had 
attained the astonishing age of 175. 
Lord Bacon assures us, from the most incontestable evidence, that 
in A. D. 76, when a general taxation was made over the Roman 
empire by Vespasian, there were found living in Italy, between the 
Appenines and the Po, no fewer than one hundred and twenty-four 
persons, aged one hundred and upwards. Of these, fifty-four were 
one hundred years old; fifty-seven were one hundred and ten ; two, 
one hundred and twenty-five ; four, one hundred and thirty; four, one 
hundred and thirty-six ; and . three, one hundred and forty years 
old, each ; besides nineteen others in Placentia, Faventia, Rimini, &c. 
of whom six were one hundred and ten years old ; seven, one hundred 
and twenty ; one, one hundred and twenty-five ; two, one hundred and 
thirty ; one, one hundred and thirty-one ; one, one hundred and thirty- 
two ; and one, one hundred and fifty ; and in our own age and country, 
