WHEN I had proceeded thus far, I judged it proper to fubmit this differtation to the perufal of a very learned and judicious phyfician; whose candour I relied upon, to be informed, whether any objection lay against this account of Job's and David's distemper, befides those mentioned in the last notes. His answer was, That he apprehended, if Job's diftemper was not altogether fupernatural, that it might be the elephantiafis ; and referred me, for further information, to Areteus's account of that distemper; which accordingly I have confidered with all the care I could; and find, there are many. symptoms in which these diseases agree; and yet they are, upon the whole, very different.

THE elephantiafis, and fmall-pox, are both infectious diftempers; and men often fly from their nearest friends, when infected

I anfever, That no licence is more familiar to poets, than speaking of things paft, in the present tense; especially when the description is enlivened, as it very often is, by fo doing. And I think, there is a particular beauty in defcribing diftempers in that manner; because it makes the diftrefs prefent to the reader ---- Befides that feveral paffages in the thirty-eighth Pfalm plainly refer to a time paft; particularly the 11th, 12th, and 13th verses.

by

by them: the body is swelled, and the skin is broken, in both, and the breath tainted ; and both are attended, at certain periods,with intense itchings; and both are vexed with disturbed and frightful dreams (as all feverish diforders are) and the small-pox is fometimes attended with a difficulty of breathing, as the elephantiafis always is with a kind of ftrangling: fo far they agree. But here they differ the elephantiafis never breaks out thro' all the skin at once, as the small-pox does; it begins with a burning in the bowels, and next appears in the face, which it fwells, burnishes, and brightens; and from the moment it appears there, it is abfolutely mortal; nor did any human creature ever survive it. In the elephantiafis, the eyes are cloudy, and become of a braffy colour ; and the brows fwelled, and let down over the eyes, like thofe of an angry lion. In the Small-pox, the eye-lids are closed and conglutinated, and the eyes not clouded, but abfolutely darkened, as Job's were.

IN the elephantiafis, the foles of the feet are cracked, but no boils, either there or on the crown of the head, as Job had, and as is common in the fmall-pox. In the ele

phantiafis,

phantiafis, the patients are flothful and fleepy, from the beginning to the end: Job's diftemper was fleepless and restless, as the small-pox often is.

Jo B's diftemper was attended with vomiting, with pains in his back, with loathing of food, and loss of skin: all these are attendants upon the small-pox, but unknown to the elephantiafis.

JOB indeed complains of wrinkles, and it is certain, that the elephantiafis wrinkles the fkin; but he complains, in the fame breath, of being lean and withered *; whereas, in the elephantiafis, there is an univerfal fwelling and therefore it is reasonable to conclude, that this leannefs, and these wrinkles of Job's were the effects of his forrows, antecedent to that sickness, with which Satan fmote him.

Ir were easy to add more proofs to the fame purpofe; but, I hope, those I have already urged, will be thought fufficient to evince, that Job's diftemper was not the elephantiafis.

Job xvi. 8.

To

To conclude:

As rational conjectures are oftentimes ufeful inlets to knowledge, the candid reader will, I hope, be indulgent to this, in relation to David's diftemper; which I am far from obtruding as a truth: for, after all, poffibly all his Pfalms upon this head may be no more than figurative descriptions of the state of his mind, fick with fin: nor is this fuppofition ill grounded upon the 4th verfe of the forty-firft Pfalm, before referred to: Heal my foul; for I have finned against thee. And, agreeably to this way of thinking, we find fin figured out to us, in the prophetic style, under the ideas of bruises and wounds, and putrifying fores, Ifa. i. 6.

CHA P.

CHA P. VIII.

Abfalom takes the Advantage of his Father's Sickness, to form a Confpiracy against him. The Methods be made ufe of to delude the People in his Favour.

A

BSALOM had not been long restored to his father's favour, before his pride and popularity broke out in an extraordinary

manner.

Ir is fufficiently evident, from fome paffages in this history, that David, as his fons grew up, gave each of them fome patrimony, which he left to their own management (it was not then deemed beneath the dignity of princes, to be early initiated in all the patriarchal arts of rural industry). Particularly Abfalom, we know, had flocks and fields of corn; and it is probable, that his wealth increased in his exile and confinement: not only as his expences might be leffened on thefe accounts; but also, as his circumstances might be confiderably bettered, by prefents

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