. Others observe every ninth year as a climacteric.

Climacteric years are pretended, by some, to be fatal to political
bodies, which, perhaps, may be granted, when they are proved to be so
more than to natural ones; for it must be obvious that the reason of
such danger can by no means be discovered, nor the relation it can have
with any other of the numbers above mentioned.

Though this opinion has a great deal of antiquity on its side; Aulus
Gellius says--it was borrowed from the Chaldeans, who possibly might
receive it from Pythagoras, whose philosophy teemed much in numbers, and
who imagined a very extraordinary virtue in the number 7. The principal
authors on climacterics are--Plato, Cicero, Macrobius, Aulus Gellius.
Among the ancients--Argal, Magirus, and Solmatheus. Among the
moderns--St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, Beda and Boethius, all countenance
the opinion.

There is a work extant, though rather scarce, by Hevelius, under the
title of _Annus Climactericus_, wherein he describes the loss he
sustained by his observatory, &c. being burnt; which it would appear
happened in his grand climacteric, of which he was extremely
apprehensive.

Astrologers have also brought under their inspection and controul the
days of the year, which they have presumed to divide into _lucky_ and
_unlucky_ days; calling even the sacred scriptures, and the common
belief of christians, in former ages, to their assistance for this
purpose. They pretend that the fourteenth day of the first month was a
blessed day among the Israelites, authorised, as they pretend, by the
several passages out of Exodus, v. 18:--

"In the first _month_, on the fourteenth day of the month at even, ye
shall eat unleavened bread, until the one and twentieth day at even," v.
40. Now, the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt,
was four hundred and thirty years.

41. "And it came to pass, at the end of the four hundred and thirty
years, even the self same day it came to pass, that all the hosts of the
Lord went out from the land of Egypt."

42. "It is a night to be much observed unto the Lord for bringing them
out of the land of Egypt; that is that night of the Lord to be observed
of all the children of Israel, in their generations."

51. "And it came to pass, the self same day, that the Lord did bring the
children of Israel out of the land of Egypt by their armies." Also
_Leviticus, chap. 23, v. 5._ "In the fourteenth day of the first mont