ORACLE. 
Cyrus, If things muft neceffarily come to pafs, why doft 
thou amufe us with thy ambiguities? What doft thou, 
wretch as thou art, at Delphi; employed in muttering idle 
prophecies !”’ 
But Oenomaus is ftill more out of humour with the ora- 
cle, for the anfwer ~~ Apollo gave the Athenians, when 
Xerxes was att ack Greece with all the ftrength of 
wooden elle ; and that Salamis fhould behold the lofs of a 
hildren, dear to their mothers, either when 
»”? fays he, een father daughter is 
very becoming the deities! It is excellent, that there fhould 
be contrary inclinations and interefts in hea oor wizard. 
deavouring to app 
ae proved inexorable to the lait; if they gain it, why 
then Minerva at length prevailed.’’ 
is a very general opinion among the more learned, that 
oracles were all mere cheats and impoftures; either ealeu: 
lated to ferve the avaricious ends of the heathen priefts, or 
the political views of the princes. 
ayle fays satan they were mere human artifices, 
in which the devil had no hand. was ftrongly fupported 
y Van Dale, and M. Fontenelle, whe have written exprefsly 
on the fu 
Father "Bais, a Jefuit, wrote a treatife in defence of 
the fathers with regard to the origin of oracles; but with- 
out denying the impofture of the priefts, often blended with 
the oracles. He maintains the intervention of the devil in 
fome predictions, pe could not be afcribed to the cheats 
of Jefuits a abbé Banier efpoufes the fame fide 
not aes 
ng, and fupported themfelves with fo m 
f{plendour and sy Seige if they had been merely ae to 
the forgery of the p 
Bifhop Sherlock, i in “his “ Difcourfes concerning the Ufe 
and Intent of Prophecy,’’ expreffes his opinion, that it is 
impious to difbelieve the Heathen oracles, and to deny them 
to have been given out by the devil ; to whic > affertion Dr. 
ey in his ‘“* Exam nination, ee - s, vol. iii. 
evidence of plain fats, which are recorded of thofe oracles, 
as well as from the nature of the thing itfelf, that they were 
all mere impofture, wholly invented and fupported by human 
craft; without any fupernatural aid or interpofition what- 
foever. He alleges, that Cicero, egte of the Delphic 
oracle, the moft revered of any in the Heathen world, de- 
clares, ‘that nothing was oa more contemptible, not 
only in his days, but long before him;’? that Demofthenes, 
who lived about 300 years pra affirmed of the fame ora- 
cle, in a public fpeech to the people of Athens, that it 
«¢ was gained to the interefts of king Philip,” an enemy to 
that city; that the Greek hiftorians Me us, how, on feveral 
s days were treated uch contempt ; that 
Eufebius alfo, the great hiftorian of the primitive church, 
declares, that there were ‘‘ 600 writers among the Heathens 
emfelves,’? who h blicly written againft the reality 
of them. Although the primitive fathers conftantly affirmed 
them to have been t effedta 0 {upernatural power, 
n h et M. “de Bae maintains, 
t 
time to be nothing elfe but the rau 
examples of 
contrivance ; which he has illuftrated by ie ¢ 
Clemens of Alexandria, Origen, and Eufebius 
Plutarch has a treatife on the ceafing of fome oracles; 
and Van Dale, a h phyfician, has a vo to prove 
fall of Paganifm, under the empire o 
when a being diffipated, thefe inftitutions could no 
ae fubfit 
ale was anfwered by ue one Meebius, pro- 
felfor "of theology — at Leiptic, in 
and fhewed f the argu- 
ment ufed by many ‘writers in n behalf of Chriftianity, drawn 
— ies ceafing of oracles. 
as Eufebius oi firt endeavoured to perfuade the 
Chriftinns, that the ae of Jefus Chritt = {truck the 
oracles dumb; thoug appears from the 
dofius, Gratian, and Val anger that the 
confulted as low as the year 358. icero fays, the oracles 
became dumb, in proportion as people, growing lefs credu- 
lous, began to fufpeé them for cheats. 
Plutarch alleges two das for the ceafing of oracles : 
the one was Apollo’s chagrin; who, it feems, t 
aa 
o 
me) 
iy 
poverty and contem are to cover the fr 
That the ees were aed about or foon after the 
land, in the firft volume of his learned wor 
Neceffity and Advantage of Revelation, &c.’’ from exprefs 
teftimonies, not only of Chriftian, but of Heathen ea 
Lucan, who wrote his “ Pharfalia’’ in the reign of 0, 
{carcely 30 years after our Lord’s cracifixion, laments it as 
one of the greateft misfortunes of that age, that the Del- 
phian oracle, which he reprefents as one of the shoieet gifts 
of Bis gods, was become filent. 
Non ullo fecula dono 
Noftra carent majore Defim, quam Delphica Sedes 
Quod fileat Pharfal. 1, v. v. 111. 
In 
