XIII. In his fifth and last application, he tells us, the Poet Nicander says, that Jupiter having granted to man the blessing of eternal youth, he by the advice of Prometheus, sold it to the serpent; in which is insinuated, that Luzbel, by his temptation, was the cause of the death of Adam and all his descendants. I don’t know what Nicander, whose works I am not acquainted with but by quotation, says upon the subject; but I know, that in a matter of this sort, the fiction of a particular poet should not, nor ought it to be urged, in opposition to the common and general received opinion of the mythologists, who attribute all the misfortunes of man, to the fatal box in which they were contained, and among which, were those of diseases. To this we may add, that Mons. Huet, who quotes the same Nicander, tells the story very differently. He says, that man having received from the hands of Jupiter the gift of perpetual youth, laid it on the loins of an ass, which ass came thirsty to a fountain that was guarded by a serpent, who prevented him from drinking; but he agreed to give the serpent what he carried on his back, provided he would permit him to quench his thirst; the bargain being made, the ass obtained the water, and surrendered to the serpent perpetual youth. According to this relation, there is no sale on the part of the man, nor does there appear any persuasion on the part of Prometheus; but the whole blame is laid upon the ass. SECT. V. XIV. We will now proceed to the applications of the illustrious Huet, which are made in two ways, some directly, others indirectly. I call those to be made directly, in which he proposes some immediate likeness between Moses and Prometheus; and I look upon those as indirect, in which he seeks for the likeness, by introducing some third agent or property. For example, Mons. Huet pretends, and by the assistance of certain analogies, endeavours to prove, that Prometheus and Mercury are one and the same person; and afterwards strives to demonstrate by other analogies, that Mercury and Moses are the same. This kind of proof is very frequently introduced by Mons. Huet, who, by pursuing the system of confounding all, or very nearly all the heathen deities in one, whatever similitude he finds to Moses in any one of them, he applies to identify the persons of every one of the others. But as in our progress, we mean expressly to dispute and arraign this system, we shall confine ourselves for the present, to the direct applications which are made by this author of the history of Prometheus to that of Moses.