for all his providential blessings. Great are the wonders that he doth for the children of men."

Here the Doctor dropt off his chair, just as he had pronounced the word men, and in a moment became a lifeless sordid body. His death was occasioned by the blowing up of his stomach, as I found upon opening his body, at the request of his lady. When the blood which is confined within the vessels of the human body, is agitated with a due motion, it maintains life; but if there be a stagnation of it in an artery, it makes an aneurism; in a vein, a varix; under the skin, a bruise; in the nose, it may excite an hæmorrhage; in the vessels of the brain, an apoplexy; in the lungs, an hæmoptoe; in the cavity of the thorax, an empyema; and when it perfectly stagnates there, immediate death.

An animal, observe me, Reader, must live so long as this fluid circulates through the conical pipes in his body, from the lesser base in the centre, the heart, to the greater in the extreme parts; and from the capillary evanescent arteries, by the nascent returning veins to the heart again; but when this fluid ceases to flow through the incurved canals, and the velocities are no longer in the inverse duplicate ratio of the inflated pipes, then it dies. The animal has done for ever with food and sex; the two great principles which move this

world, and produce not only so much honest industry, but so many wars and fightings, such cruel oppressions, and that variety of woes we read of in the tragical history of the world. Even one of them does wonders. Cunnus teterrima belli causa. And

when united, the force is irresistible.

But as I was saying, when this fluid ceases to flow, the man has done with lust and hunger. The pope, the warrior, and the maid, are still. The machine is at absolute rest, that is, in perfect insensibility; and the soul of it is removed to the vestibulum or porch of the highest holy place; in a vehicle, says Wollaston, and Burnet of the Charterhouse, as needful to our contact with the material system, as it must exist with a spiritual body, says the Rev. Caleb Fleming, in his Survey of the Search after Souls, because of its being present with its Saviour, beholding his glory, who is in human form and figure, which requires some similitude in the vehicle, in order to the more easy and familiar society and enjoyment. Or, as the learned Master of Peter-house, Dr. Edmund Law, and Dr. Sherlock, bishop of London inform us, it remains insensible for ages, till the consummation of all things; from the dissolution of the body, is stupid, senseless, and dead asleep till the resurrection.

Such was the case of my friend, Dr. STANVIL;

he dropt down dead at once. A rarefaction in his stomach, by the heat and fermentation of what he had taken the night before at supper, destroyed him. That concave viscus, or bowel, which is seated in the abdomen below the diaphragm, I mean the stomach, was inflamed, and as the descending trunk of the aorta passes down between it and the spine, that is, between the stomach and back part of the ribs, the inflation and distention of the bowel compressed and constringed the transverse section of the artery aorta, in its descending branch, and by lessening it, impeded the descent of the blood from the heart, and obliged it to ascend in a greater quantity than usual to the head. By this means, the parts of the head were distended and stretched with blood, which brought on an apoplexy, and the operation upward being violent, the equilibrium was entirely broken, and the vital tide could flow no more. This I found on opening the body. I likewise observed that, exclusive of the compressure of the descending trunk of the artery aorta, the muscular coats of the stomach were stretched, inflated, and distended; and of consequence, the blood-vessels which enter into the constitution of those muscles, were stretched, dilated, and turgid with blood, and therefore the blood could not be driven forward in the course of its circulation with

its natural and due velocity, but must prove an obstacle to the descent of the blood from the heart, and oblige almost the whole tide to move upwards. This, and the constringing the aorta, at its orifice or transverse section, between the costa and the bowel called the stomach, is enough, I assure you, Reader, to knock up the head of a giant, and put a stop to all the operations of nature. Thus fell this gentleman in the thirty-second year of his age.

Whether the learned Dr. Edmund Law*, and the great Dr. Sherlock + bishop of London, be

* Notwithstanding all the fine learning of Dr. Law, I think he is mistaken in many of his notions, and especially in his Notes on Archbishop King's Origin of Evil; as I intend to shew in my Notes aforementioned. His Tritheism likewise requires a few animadversions; which I shall humbly offer with plainness, fairness, and freedom.

+ Dr. Sherlock, bishop of London died at Fulham, after a long and lingering illness, Saturday, July 18, 1761, three months after the great and excellent bishop Hoadley, who departed this life at Chelsea, April 20, 1761. Sherlock and Hoadley never agreed; and which of them was right I attempt to shew in my Notes on Men and Things and Books. Which will be published as soon as possible. Why I think Hoadley's Sermons far preferable to Sherlock's, vastly beautiful though some

right, in asserting, the human soul sleeps like a bat or a swallow, in some cavern for a period, till the last trumpet awakens Lewis XIV. the hero of Voltaire and Henault; to answer for his treachery, falsehood, and cruelty; or, whether that excellent divine Mr. Fleming has declared the truth, in maintaining in his late Survey, that the conscious scheme was the doctrine of Christ and his apostles; this however is certain, that my friend STANVIL is either now present with his Saviour, beholding his glory, in a vehicle resembling the body of our Lord; as the dissenter just mentioned teaches; or if, according to Archdeacon Law, the author of Considerations on the State of the World, and my Lord of London, in his Sermons, the scriptures take no account of an intermediate state in death, and we shall not awake or be made alive until the day of judgment; then will my friend have eternal life at

things are in the Discourses of the latter; and that my Lord of Winchester's Plain Account of the Supper is a most rational and fine performance; as gold to earth in respect of all that has been written against this book. Why, I say, all Hoadley's Tracts are matchless and invulnerable, and that he was victor in the Bangorian controversy, the Reader will find in many considerations on these subjects in the book called Notes, &c. aforementioned.