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174  ANNUAL REGISTER

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drew the wedge out afterwards, with pincers, and recalled the animals to life, by injecting, through the exterior aperture with a tin syringe, a spirituous liquor of his own composition, to which he attributes surprising effects.
 "The taste of this liquor resembles that of commanders balm." 
 Here's a treacherous renegade for you. We are undone if ever we should go to war with the French again—For as fast as we knock them on the head, this cursed Tunestrick comes with his syringe and phials, and resurrects them again, in a squirt; and how pot-valiant will they be, after they have gotten a sup in their heads! So that Hudibras's philosophy,

 But he that is in battle slain,
 Will never rise to fight again,

goes for nothing, now. For dead men, as it seems, may rise again, like Bayes's troops, or the savages in the Fantocini; and the expression in Dryden's ode, of "thrice he flew the slain," may possibly become a mere literal fact, in future.
 'Tis true indeed that the article does not say the experiment had been yet tried upon a Frenchman's brain; but I don't think it will be any great straining of anatomy, to suppose that what may be good for a sheep's head, may serve as well for his.
 I see plainly now the reason of the King of France reducing his forces, so greatly, of late; for an handful of men make an army, under the present manoeuvre. Leonidas would not have left Xerxes a soldier alive, if Tunestrick had been but a surgeon of his regiment; for all the mischief that the Persian sabres could have done, on that famous day, would be only to have given the Spartan's a head-ach. What a shame for our ministry, to let Lewis get such an advantage of us! But nothing can go right, I'm convinced of it, 'till Wilkes or I get the lead.
 In fine, after the manner that these Promethean, these Pigmalion, these Deucalion artists are proceeding, we may expect soon to see the good old fashioned method of propagation, grown quite out of use, and only to be heard of in the Philosophical Transactions, among exploded systems, as an obsolete act of nature. And we may then have reason to say of men, in general, what the woman of a coffee-house did of a certain numerous family once, in London, one or other of whom people were enquiring for, every day at her bar; "There are more F——ds, I believe, said she, than ever God made."

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Analogy; from the same

THE common, or obvious appearances of things, are not always the true nature of them; nay, frequently are found to be their very reverse. To give two instances—first, in the most insignificant article; a hair, which seems to be perfectly round, to the naked eye, is shewn to be really flat, or angular—I forget which, through a microscope. Next, in the highest object; the sun appears to move round the earth, and the world to stand still—both of which circumstances have been long since demonstrably proved to be false.
 Nay more—philosophy has sufficiently 

For the YEAR 1772.    175

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ciently evinced that the former supposed state of these respective bodies, could not have been true, in the possible nature of things; as thought itself could hardly fly at the rate the sun must do, to produce the phaenomena of astronomy.
 [An ingenious Frenchman had no other way of accommodating the difficulty of the sun's rising every morning in the east, after it had set in the west, but by supposing it to steal slily back again to its former station, in the night. One of our F. R. S. in the Transactions, accounted as wisely for the disappearance of comets, by saying that they retired to the Antipodes. This paragraph by the by.]
 Thus then, after the conviction of our understanding, from the two particulars instanced above, that our senses are liable to mistake, without the assistance of art, and our apprehension subject to error, unless instructed by science; and these in the most common objects of nature, why do we remain so sceptical still, in matters of faith, supposing the authority to be good, merely because they have not yet descended among the subjects of our fallible conceptions, and limited knowledge? And why give easier credit to Lewenhoeck and Copernicus, than to Christ and St. Paul? Read the forty-five paradoxes, in Gordon's Geographical Grammar, rationally impossible, and mathematically certain, and suspect your own ignorance and presumption. 
 It will be no answer, to say that neither Lewenhoeck nor Copernicus were credited, 'till after they had afforded demonstrations of their assertions. Philosophy and religion are things of quite different natures. Any conviction stronger than a rational testimony, founded on the external and internal evidences of Christianity, would destroy the merits both of faith and good works, cancel free will, and leave us nothing worth rewarding.
 Galilaeo, Bacon, Boyle, and Newton shone forth, like the milky way, in the dark paths of science; and as much as reason excels instinct, so far did the praeternatural instinct, if I may be allowed the distinction, of these enlightened persons, exceed the general faculties of the human mind.
 The common powers of investigation or reflection could never have reached to such sublime heights, without the assistance of a certain afflatus divinus*, or superior impulse, by special grace conferred upon them; which has been withheld from other men of equal sense, and of more learning, and greater study, perhaps.

 ——"Spirits are not finely touched,
 "But to fine issues."——

Who deny this aphorism, must call God's providence a lucky hit†. Shall then the Deity exert an energy, to assist our temporal concerns, only, and leave our eternal interests without a guide! Are mathematical truths inspired, and religious ones left unrevealed! Shall the legislators of earthly states propose rewards and punishments, for the government of the political world, and can the great Archon of mankind leave the moral one with-

* Nunquam vir magnus sine divino affatû.  CIC. † Pope.with-

Transcription Notes:
---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-05-13 19:10:02 Many typed "f"s should be "s"s.