LXIV. And let it not be insisted in opposition to this, that if the fact had been so well established, it could have admitted of no contradiction. They know little of the human passions, who think this remark a solid one. Those who contradict, either through blind prepossession, or from motives of emulation, interest, or envy, seldom submit, or will own themselves convinced by proofs that are self-evident; nor is there any species of evidence, that can bar every door, at which a false subterfuge may steal in, nor against the intrusion of a thousand sophistical objections, introduced by those, who are under the dominion of the beforenamed passions. I speak feelingly of this matter, having had woeful experience of the truth of what I assert, since I first began to write for the public. LXV. In reality, some of the objections that were made to inoculation, were the most ridiculous in the world. Some rigid Presbyterians, made the cause of religion interested in the question, and asserted, that that practice, was an affront to the sovereignty, and an opposition to the decrees of God; and one of them declared in his preaching, that it was a diabolical invention, for the devil by inoculation had communicated the small-pox to Job, which was the distemper that so sorely afflicted that holy Patriarch. Into what absurdities, does a violent ardour hurry a man in a controversy! Of all sensible human beings, there are none so nearly allied to mad men, as passionate disputants. LXVI. Towards the conclusion of this virulent contest, a very curious circumstance came to light, which was, that this precautionary method which had made so much noise, and which had generally been supposed to have been brought from Turkey, had for ages before, been in use in the island of Great Britain itself; for that it had been practised from time immemorial, in the southern parts of the principality of Wales, where they communicated the infection in two ways either by rubbing some of the variolous matter hard on the skin of the person to whom the distemper was to be given, or else by dipping a needle into that matter, and pricking his skin with it; and as they gave the person from whom the matter was taken a small sum of money, this was called buying the small pox; and they produce very authentic testimonies, that scarce any one of those who came by the distemper in this manner died, and that there was no instance of a person who had acquired the disease in this way, ever having had it a second time. SECT. XV.