[105] If we consider the composition of the atmosphere which surrounds us, we must acknowledge that by far the greater part of it consists of fire and electric fluid, the latter being properly the element in a comparatively quiescent state. In deflagrating dephlogisticated and inflammable air, the mixture has sometimes shrunk up into a three hundredth part of its bulk; which shows that of these airs two hundred and ninety-nine parts are fire, the single remaining part only being earth, water, or some solid matter which we call the _basis_ of air. From this view of the causes of the plague, and from the facts which have been laid down concerning it, we cannot help perceiving a very strong similarity between the plagues mentioned in the Old Testament and those which still exist in the world. In one of the passages formerly quoted it is called an _inflammation_, an _extreme burning_; and from the testimonies of different authors above quoted, it is plain that the disease still deserves the name bestowed upon it in the sacred writings. From the account given of its proximate cause, it is plain that plagues of all degrees of intensity may take place, from absolute accension of the body, and its reduction to ashes, to the mildest state of the disease, in which the patient is not confined to his bed; and all this from the single principle of emission of heat from the body itself. It likewise appears that there may be either in the body itself, or in the element which surrounds it, such a constitution as will dispose that element which is the natural and immediate preserver of our life, suddenly to attack and destroy it, of which the case of the Italian priest is a most remarkable instance. In other cases, such as the Italian lady, and the woman at Coventry, the body itself seems to have given out its heat, though this could not be done without a concurrence of the surrounding ethereal fluid. In a stage still lower, the body is partially consumed, or rather partly charred into a kind of cinder, as where the _tokens_ are produced; and when the cause acts with still less violence, a fever is produced. In the Old Testament we find these different kinds of plagues very distinctly mentioned. In some cases the offenders died by actual fire, which either struck them from without, or was kindled within their bodies. In others, they seem to have died by that very deadly kind of plague of which we have already said so much, which kills in a few hours. This was probably the plague which destroyed the army of Sennacherib, and this in the tenth chapter of Isaiah is by some thought to have been prophesied of under the title of a _burning like the burning of a fire_.