nefs affords; I again take up my pen. What I am going to fay will be looked on as impoffible, or incredible; but nothing is more certain, nor more worthily to be admired by all pofterity. I am now ninety-five years of age, and find myself as healthy and brifk, as if I were but twenty-five.

WHAT ingratitude should I be guilty of, did I not return thanks to the divine Goodness, for all his favors conferred upon me? Most of your old men have scarce arrived to fixty, but they find themselves loaded with infirmities: they are melancholy, unhealthful; always full of the frightful apprehenfions of dying: they tremble day and night for fear of being within one foot of their graves; and are fo strongly poffeffed with the dread of it, that it is a hard matter to divert them from that doleful thought. Bleffed be GOD, I am free from their ills and terIt is my opinion, that I ought

rors.

not

not to abandon myself to that vain fear : this I will make appear by the sequel.

SOME there are, who bring along with them a strong conftitution into the world, and live to old age: but it is generally (as already obferved) an old age of fickness and forrow; for which they are to thank themfelves; because they most unreasonably prefume on the ftrength of their conftitution; and will not on any account, abate of that hearty feeding which they indulged in their younger days. Just as if they were to be as vigorous at fourscore as in the flower of their youth; nay, they go about to juftify this their imprudence, pretending that as we lose our health and vigor by growing old, we fhould endeavour to repair the lofs, by increafing the quanti

ty

of our food, fince it is by fuftenance that man is preserved.

BUT in this they are dangerously miftaken; for as the natural heat and

ftrength

ftrength of the stomach leffens as a man grows in years, he fhould diminish the

quantity of his meat and drink, common prudence requiring that a man should proportion his diet to his digestive powers.

THIS is a certain truth, that sharp four humours on the stomach, proceed from a flow imperfect digestion; and that but little good chyle can be made, when the ftomach is filled with fresh food before it has carried off the former meal. -It cannot therefore be too frequently, nor too earnestly recommended, that as the natural heat decays by age, a man ought to abate the quantity of what he eats and drinks; nature requiring but very little for the healthy support of the life of man, especially that of an old man, Would my aged friends but attend to this single precept which has been fo fignally ferviceable to me, they would not be troubled with one twentieth of those infirmities

G 2

infirmities which now harrafs and make

And

their lives fo miferable. They would be light, active, and chearful like me, who am now near my hundredth year. those of them who were born with good conftitutions, might live to the age of one hundred and twenty. Had I been bleft with a robust constitution, I should in all probability, attain the fame age. But as I was born with feeble stamina, I fhall not perhaps outlive an hundred. And this moral certainty of living to a great age is to be fure, a moft pleafing and defirable attainment, and it is the prerogative of none but the temperate. For all those who (by immoderate eating and drinking) fill their bodies with grofs humours, can have no reasonable assurance of living a fingle day longer : oppreffed with food and fwoln with fuperfluous humours, they are in continual danger of violent fits of the cholic, deadly strokes of the apoplexy, fatal attacks of the cholera

cholera morbus, burning fevers, and many fuch acute and violent diseases, whereby thousands are carried to their graves, who a few hours before looked very hale and hearty. And this moral certainty of long life is built on fuch good grounds as feldom ever fail. For, generally speaking, Almighty God seems to have fettled his works on the fure grounds of natural caufes, and temperance is (by divine appointment) the natural cause of health and long life. Hence it is next to impoffible, that he who leads a strictly temperate life, fhould breed any fickness or die of an unnatural death, before he attains to the years to which the natural ftrength of his conftitution was to arrive. I know fome persons are fo weak as to excuse their wicked intemperance, by faying, that "the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the ftrong," and that therefore, let them eat and drink as they pleafe, they fhall

not