If the reader fairly considers the strength of what I have advanced
in the foregoing section, I am convinced it will produce a wonderful
revolution in his notions and opinions, and he will be abundantly
better prepared to receive and to relish the concluding part of this
miraculous treatise. Readers may be divided into three classes--the
superficial, the ignorant, and the learned, and I have with much
felicity fitted my pen to the genius and advantage of each. The
superficial reader will be strangely provoked to laughter, which
clears the breast and the lungs, is sovereign against the spleen,
and the most innocent of all diuretics. The ignorant reader
(between whom and the former the distinction is extremely nice) will
find himself disposed to stare, which is an admirable remedy for ill
eyes, serves to raise and enliven the spirits, and wonderfully helps
perspiration. But the reader truly learned, chiefly for whose
benefit I wake when others sleep, and sleep when others wake, will
here find sufficient matter to employ his speculations for the rest
of his life. It were much to be wished, and I do here humbly
propose for an experiment, that every prince in Christendom will
take seven of the deepest scholars in his dominions and shut them up
close for seven years in seven chambers, with a command to write
seven ample commentaries on this comprehensive discourse. I shall
venture to affirm that, whatever difference may be found in their
several conjectures, they will be all, without the least distortion,
manifestly deducible from the text. Meantime it is my earnest
request that so useful an undertaking may be entered upon (if their
Majesties please) with all convenient speed, because I have a strong
inclination before I leave the world to taste a blessing which we
mysterious writers can seldom reach till we have got into our
graves, whether it is that fame being a fruit grafted on the body,