house of bondage, to thrust thee out of the way which the Lord thy God commanded thee to walk in. So shalt thou So shalt thou put the evil away from the midst of thee." Of the application of this principle there is a very remarkable example in the case of Hananiah the prophet, recorded at length in the twenty-eighth chapter of Jeremiah.

b

Exactly in the same manner, St. Paul tells the Galatians, that though "an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed." It is precisely the same also with regard to those false Christs and false prophets who are spoken of in the twenty-fourth chapter of St. Matthew, and of whom it is there said, and by our Saviour himself, that they "shall show great signs and wonders, insomuch that if it were possible they shall deceive the very elect."

Let us suppose for the present that these predictions or miracles are to be accounted real, and not merely pretended. Whether real, or not, yet, at least, in the passages cited, the sacred writers do not dispute their reality, even

a V. 1-5.

b Ch. i. 8.

c V. 24.

though they advance an argument against their validity in these same passages. The authority of an angel is superhuman of course. The attestation of miracles is a superhuman attestation; and that of predictions, of which the essence is their miraculousness, is plainly superhuman also. Let it then be allowed that superhuman beings may really possess the power of working miracles to seduce men from the faith, either from their faith in the moral justice and holiness which we know by reason to be the attributes of God, or in the clear doctrines of God's authorised revelations. How then is it argued that we may be preserved from seduction? How but by the examination of the doctrine taught? by the power afforded us either by revelation, or reason, of discerning its consistency with what we know to be true: of making its consistency with what we so know a proof, or condition, of its admissibility?

To this proof from Scripture nothing should need to be added. But in profane history also we may find evident indications that, in thus requiring of us to try the validity of any assumed prophetic authority by the nature and credibility of the doctrine advanced, God requires no

thing of which the light of nature alone has not actually discerned the reasonableness.

Among other examples that might to this purport be cited, there is a story in Herodotus, that, during the Persian invasion of Lydia, Pactyas, who had opposed Cyrus, fled to Cuma. The Persians insisted on his being given up to them. We all know that, in that age, nothing was held to be more sacred than to preserve inviolate the laws of hospitality: and the Cumæans, though very fearful of provoking Cyrus by a refusal, yet shrank from the guilt of giving up a suppliant to certain death. In this dilemma they applied to the oracle. The response of the oracle was that they should give Pactyas up. And this they would have done, but that Aristodicus, one of their citizens, thinking that the response had not been faithfully transmitted, prevailed on them to try a second consultation.

The oracle again answered that they should give Pactyas up. On this, Aristodicus, who was now one of the applicants, went round the temple, and disturbed or plundered the nests which the sparrows and other birds had built

a Clio, 157-159.

there. While he was doing this, a voice was heard from the inmost part of the building: "Impious man, what means this attack on my suppliants?" Aristodicus replies: "If you protect then your suppliants, how can you order the Cumæans to abandon theirs?" The oracle answers: "Yes! I order it that you may perish in the guilt you will contract by such flagrant impiety, and never come again to consult the oracle on the question of giving up your suppliants."

We here, I think, see plainly that the sense affixed to the oracle was a sense which may be with sufficient propriety termed ironical; exactly in the same manner in which the prophet Micaiah must be regarded as speaking ironically, where he answers to the question put by Ahab, whether he should go against Ramoth-Gilead to battle: "Go and prosper: for the Lord shall deliver it into the hand of the king." It is plainly implied that it was an impiety in the Cumæans to seek from the oracle a sanction for inhospitality; as it is implied that Ahab had

a 1 Kings, xxii. 15.

a

sufficient reason to expect that a true prophet would prophesy evil concerning him. But farther also, in the response made by the oracle, the structure of the response, or its mere tone and expression, affords no symptom that there was any irony used. There was apparently nothing but the inconsistency of its tenor with the recognised laws of hospitality, which could at all indicate that it ought not to be acted on. It is implied that the reason, why Aristodicus judged rightly in not acting on it, was that he justly deemed the admissibility of the doctrine a condition without which he could not but hesitate as to the oracle's real authority.―This case includes also all that I argue for, in alleging the credibility of the doctrine taught as one condition which may reasonably be exacted of assenting to the evidence of superhuman authority.

It is equally plain, also, that as a superhuman authority may thus be invalidated by any inconsistency of the doctrine taught with other doctrines previously known or admitted, so it may be refuted also by opposite authority. The strength of the less must be compelled to yield