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44 trifling Occasions. But if my Authority is not sufficient to support an Assertion of this Weight, I trust no one will reject the Conviction that arises from Effects, and therefore I shall restrain the Proof hereof to as short a Compass as possible. As then it is established by the concurrent Authority of Antiquity, that Fire, as it is an Element capable of Degeneration, and seemingly of Corruption, may increase a pestilential Malignity by Means of its great Subtilty, its prodigious Increase, and swift Propagation; Qualities too, which a Pestilence very much partakes of: That which they conceited of Fire, seems to me to be applicable in a much more philosophical Sense to that Spirit we are speaking of, and which so nearly resembles it. I am indeed a Stranger to any Thing in the Universe that makes so swift a Progress as a Pestilence, and therefore the Infectious Miasmata are in the sacred Scriptures styled Arrows that fly in the Dark; and howsoever certain are their Strokes, and tho' by Means of their Fineness they penetrate into the very Marrow, they yet shun by their Subtilty our Conceptions.