SECTION II.

Some curious and surprising histories of oracles, which it was thought could be ascribed only to the power of genii, made the Christians think they were delivered by demons, and that they had ceased at the coming of Christ. They were thus enabled to save the time and trouble that would have been required by an investigation of the facts; and they thought to strengthen the religion which informed them of the existence of demons by referring to those beings such events.

The histories however that were circulated on the subject of oracles are exceedingly suspicious. That of Thamus, to which Eusebius gives credit, and which Plutarch alone relates, is followed in the same history by another story so ridiculous, that that would be sufficient to throw discredit upon it; but it is, besides, incapable of any reasonable interpretation. If this great Pan were a demon, can we suppose the demons incapable of communicating the event of his death to one another without employing Thamus about it? If the great Pan were Jesus Christ, how came it that not a single Pagan was undeceived with respect to his religion, and converted to the belief that this same Pan was in fact Jesus Christ who died in Judæa, if God Himself compelled the demons to announce this death to the pagans?

The history of Thulis, whose oracle is clear and positive on the subject of the Trinity, is related only by Suidas. This Thulis, king of Egypt, was not certainly one of the Ptolemies. What becomes of the whole oracle of Serapis, when it is ascertained that Herodotus does not speak of that god, while Tacitus relates at length how and why one of the Ptolemies brought the god Serapis from Pontus, where he had only until then been known?

The oracle delivered to Augustus about the Hebrew infant who should be obeyed by all the gods, is absolutely inadmissible. Cedrenus quotes it from Eusebius, but it is not now to be found in him. It certainly is not impossible that Cedrenus quotes it from Eusebius, but it is not now to be found in him. It certainly is not impossible that Cedrenus may have made a false quotation, or have quoted a work falsely ascribed to Eusebius; but how is it to be accounted for, that all the early apologists for Christianity should have preserved complete silence with respect to an oracle so favorable to their religion?

The oracles which Eusebius relates from Porphyry, who was attached to paganism, are not of a more embarrassing nature than those just noticed. He gives them to us stripped of all the accompanying circumstances that attended them in the writings of Porphyry. How do we know whether that pagan did not refute them. For the interest of his cause it would naturally have been an object for him to do so; and if he did not do it, most assuredly it was from some concealed motive, such, for instance, as presenting them to the Christians only for an occasion to prove and deride their credulity, if they should really receive them as true and rest their religion on such weak foundations.

Besides, some of the ancient Christians reproached the pagans with being the dupes of their priests. Observe how Clement of Alexandria speaks of them: "Boast as long as you please of your childish and impertinent oracles, whether of Claros or the Pythian Apollo, of Dindymus or Amphilocus; and add to these your augurs and interpreters of dreams and prodigies. Bring forward also those clever gentry who, in the presence of the mighty Pythian Apollo, effect their divinations through the medium of meal or barley, and those also who, by a certain talent of ventriloquism, have obtained such high reputation. Let the secrets of the Egyptian temples, and the necromancy of the Etruscans, remain in darkness; all these things are most certainly nothing more than decided impostures, as completely tricks as those of a juggler with his cups and balls. The goats carefully trained for the divination, the ravens elaborately instructed to deliver the oracles, are--if we may use the expression--merely accomplices of the charlatans by whom the whole world has thus been cheated."

Eusebius, in his turn, displays a number of excellent reasons to prove that oracles could be nothing but impostures; and if he attributes them to demons, it is the result of deplorable prejudices or of an affected respect for general opinion. The pagans would never admit that their oracles were merely the artifices of their priests; it was imagined therefore, by rather an awkward process of reasoning, that a little was gained in the dispute by admitting the possibility, that there might be something supernatural in their oracles, and insisting at the same time, that if there were, it was the operation, not of the deity, but of demons.

It is no longer necessary now, in order to expose the finesse and stratagems of priests, to resort to means which might themselves appear too strongly marked by those qualities. A time has already been when they were completely exhibited to the eyes of the whole world--the time, I mean when the Christian religion proudly triumphed over paganism under Christian emperors.

Theodoret says that Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, exhibited to the inhabitants of that city the hollow statues into which the priests entered, from secret passages, to deliver the oracles. When, by Constantine's order, the temple of Æsculapius at Ægea, in Cilicia, was pulled down, there was driven out of it, says Eusebius in his life of that emperor, not a god, nor a demon, but the human impostor who had so long duped the credulity of nations. To this he adds the general observation that, in the statues of the gods that were thrown down, not the slightest appearance was found of gods, or demons, or even any wretched and gloomy spectres, but only hay, straw, or the bones of the dead.

The greatest difficulty respecting oracles is surmounted, when it is ascertained and admitted, that demons had no concern with them. There is no longer any reason why they should cease precisely at the coming of Jesus Christ. And moreover, there are many proofs that oracles continued more than four hundred years after Jesus Christ, and that they were not totally silenced but by the total destruction of paganism.

Suetonius, in the life of Nero, says the oracle of Delphi warned that emperor to be aware of seventy-three years, and that Nero concluded he was to die at that age, never thinking upon old Galba, who, at the age of seventy-three, deprived him of the empire.

Philostratus, in his life of Apollonius of Tyana, who saw Domitian, informs us that Apollonius visited all the oracles of Greece, and that of Dodona, and that of Delphos; and that of Amphiaraus. Plutarch, who lived under Trajan, tells us that the oracles of Delphos still subsisted, although there was then only one priestess, instead of two or three. Under Adrian, Dion Chrysostom relates that he consulted the oracle of Delphos; he obtained from it an answer which appeared to him not a little perplexed, and which in fact was so.

Under the Antonines, Lucian asserts that a priest of Tyana went to inquire of the false prophet Alexander, whether the oracles which were then delivered at Dindymus, Claros, and Delphos, were really answers of Apollo, or impostures? Alexander had some fellow-feeling for these oracles, which were of a similar description to his own, and replied to the priest, that that was not permitted to be known; but when the same wise inquirer asked what he should be after his death, he was boldly answered, "You will be a camel, then a horse, afterwards a philosopher, and at length a prophet as great as Alexander."

After the Antonines, three emperors contended for the empire. The oracle of Delphos was consulted, says Spartian, to ascertain which of the three the republic might expect as its head. The oracle answered in a single verse to the following purport: The black is better; the African is good; the white is the worst. By the black was understood Pescennius Niger; by the African, Severus Septimus, who was from Africa; and by the white, Claudius Albinus.

Dion, who did not conclude his history before the eighth year of Alexander Severus, that is, the year 230, relates that in his time Amphilocus still delivered oracles in dreams. He informs us also, that there was in the city of Apollonia an oracle which declared future events by the manner in which the fire caught and consumed the incense thrown upon an altar.

Under Aurelian, about the year 272, the people of Palmyra, having revolted, consulted an oracle of Sarpedonian Apollo in Cilicia; they again consulted that of the Aphacian Venus. Licinus, according to the account of Sozomen, designing to renew the war against Constantine, consulted the oracle of Apollo of Dindymus, and received from it in answer two verses of Homer, of which the sense is--Unhappy old man, it becomes not you to combat with the young! you have no strength, and are sinking under the weight of age.

A certain god, scarcely if at all known, of the name of Besa, if we may credit Ammianus Marcellinus, still delivered oracles on billets at Abydos, in the extremity of the Thebais, under the reign of Constantius. Finally, Macrobius, who lived under Arcadius and Honorius, sons of Theodosius, speaks of the god of Heliopolis of Syria and his oracle, and of the fortunes of Antium, in terms which distinctly imply that they all still subsisted in his time.

We may observe that it is not of the slightest consequence whether these histories are true or whether the oracles in fact delivered the answers attributed to them; it is completely sufficient for the purpose that false answers could be attributed only to oracles which were in fact known still to subsist; and the histories which so many authors have published clearly prove that they did not cease but with the cessation of paganism itself.

Constantine pulled down but few temples, nor indeed could he venture to pull them down but on a pretext of crimes committed in them. It was on this ground that he ordered the demolition of those of the Aphacian Venus, and of Æsculapius which was at Ægea in Cilicia, both of them temples in which oracles were delivered. But he forbade sacrifices to the gods, and by that edict began to render temples useless.

Many oracles still subsisted when Julian assumed the reins of empire. He re-established some that were in a state of ruin; and he was even desirous of being the prophet of that of Dindymus. Jovian, his successor, began his reign with great zeal for the destruction of paganism; but in the short space of seven months, which comprised the whole time he reigned, he was unable to make any great progress. Theodosius, in order to attain the same object, ordered all the temples of the pagans to be shut up. At last, the exercise of that religion was prohibited under pain of death by an edict of the emperors Valentinian and Marcian, in the year 451 of the vulgar era; and the destruction of paganism necessarily involved that of oracles.

This conclusion has nothing in it surprising or extraordinary: it is the natural consequence of the establishment of a new worship. Miraculous facts, or rather what it is desired should be considered as such, diminish in a false religion, either in proportion as it becomes firmly established and has no longer occasion for them, or in proportion as it gradually becomes weaker and weaker, because they no longer obtain credit. The ardent but useless desire to pry into futurity gave birth to oracles; imposture encouraged and sanctioned them; and fanaticism set the seal; for an infallible method of making fanatics is to persuade before you instruct. The poverty of the people, who had no longer anything left them to give; the imposture detected in many oracles, and thence naturally concluded to exist in all; and finally the edicts of the Christian emperors; such are the real causes of the establishment, and of the cessation, of this species of imposture. The introduction of an opposite state of circumstances into human affairs made it completely disappear; and oracles thus became involved in the vicissitudes accompanying all human institutions.

Some limit themselves to observing that the birth of Jesus Christ is the first epoch of the cessation of oracles. But why, on such an occasion, should some demons have fled, while others remained? Besides, ancient history proves decidedly that many oracles had been destroyed before this birth. All the distinguished oracles of Greece no longer existed, or scarcely existed, and the oracle was occasionally interrupted by the silence of an honest priest who would not consent to deceive the people. "The oracle of Delphi," says Lucian, "remains dumb since princes have become afraid of futurity; they have prohibited the gods from speaking, and the gods have obeyed them."

ORDEAL.

It might be imagined that all the absurdities which degrade human nature were destined to come to us from Asia, the source at the same time of all the sciences and arts! It was in Asia and in Egypt that mankind first dared to make the life or death of a person accused, dependent on the throw of a die, or something equally unconnected with reason and decided by chance--on cold water or hot water, on red hot iron, or a bit of barley bread. Similar superstition, we are assured by travellers, still exists in the Indies, on the coast of Malabar, and in Japan.

This superstition passed from Egypt into Greece. There was a very celebrated temple at Trezène in which every man who perjured himself died instantly of apoplexy. Hippolytus, in the tragedy of "Phædra," in the first scene of the fifth act, addresses the following lines to his mistress Aricia:

Aux portes de Trezène, et parmi ces tombeaux, Des princes de ma race antiques sepultures, Est un temple sacré formidable aux parjures. C'est là que les mortels n'osent jurer en vain; Le perfide y reçoit un châtiment soudain; Et, craignant d'y trouver la mort inévitable, Le mensonge n'a point de frem plus redoubtable.

At Trezène's gates, amidst the ancient tombs In which repose the princes of my race, A sacred temple stands, the perjurer's dread. No daring mortal there may falsely swear, For swift the vengeance which pursues his crime, Inevitable death his instant lot; Nowhere has falsehood a more awful curb.

The learned commentator of the great Racine makes the following remark on these Trezenian proofs or ordeals:

"M. de la Motte has remarked that Hippolytus should have proposed to his father to come and hear his justification in this temple, where no one dared venture on swearing to a falsehood. It is certain, that in such a case Theseus could not have doubted the innocence of that young prince; but he had received too convincing evidence against the virtue of Phædra, and Hippolytus was not inclined to make the experiment. M. de la Motte would have done well to have distrusted his own good taste, when he suspected that of Racine, who appears to have foreseen the objection here made. In fact, Theseus is so prejudiced against Hippolytus that he will not even permit him to justify himself by an oath."

I should observe that the criticism of La Motte was originally made by the deceased marquis de Lassai. He delivered it at M. de la Faye's, at a dinner party at which I was present together with the late M. de la Motte, who promised to make use of it; and, in fact, in his "Discourses upon Tragedy," he gives the honor of the criticism to the marquis de Lassai. The remark appeared to me particularly judicious, as well as to M. de la Faye and to all the guests present, who--of course excepting myself--were the most able critics in Paris. But we all agreed that Aricia was the person who should have called upon Theseus to try the accused by the ordeal of the Trezenian temple; and so much the more so, as Theseus immediately after talks for a long time together to that princess, who forgets the only thing that could clear up the doubts of the father and vindicate the son. The commentator in vain objects that Theseus has declared to his son he will not believe his oaths:

Toujours les scélérats ont recours au parjure. --Phedra. Act iv., scene 2.

The wicked always have recourse to oaths.

There is a prodigious difference between an oath taken in a common apartment, and an oath taken in a temple where the perjured are punished by sudden death. Had Aricia said but a single word on the subject, Theseus could have had no excuse for not conducting Hippolytus to this temple; but, in that case, what would have become of the catastrophe?

Hippolytus, then, should not have mentioned at all the appalling power of the temple of Trezène to his beloved Aricia; he had no need whatever to take an oath of his love to her, for of that she was already most fully persuaded. In short, his doing so is an inadvertence, a small fault, which escaped the most ingenious, elegant, and impassioned tragedian that we ever had.

From this digression, I return to the barbarous madness of ordeals. They were not admitted in the Roman republic. We cannot consider as of one of these ordeals, the usage by which the most important enterprises were made to depend upon the manner in which the sacred pullets ate their vetches. We are here considering only ordeals applied to ascertain the guilt or innocence of men. It was never proposed to the Manliuses, Camilluses, or Scipios, to prove their innocence by plunging their hands into boiling water without its scalding them.

These suggestions of folly and barbarism were not admitted under the emperors. But the Tartars who came to destroy the empire--for the greater part of these plunderers issued originally from Tartary--filled our quarter of the world with their ridiculous and cruel jurisprudence, which they derived from the Persians. It was not known in the Eastern Empire till the time of Justinian, notwithstanding the detestable superstition which prevailed in it. But from that time the ordeals we are speaking of were received. This manner of trying men is so ancient that we find it established among the Jews in all periods of their history.

Korah, Dathan, and Abiram dispute the pontificate with the high priest Aaron in the wilderness; Moses commands them to bring him two hundred and fifty censors, and says to them: Let God choose between their censors and that of Aaron. Scarcely had the revolted made their appearance in order to submit to this ordeal, before they were swallowed up by the earth, and fire from heaven struck two hundred and fifty of their principal adherents; after which, the Lord destroyed fourteen thousand seven hundred more men of that party. The quarrel however for the priesthood still continued between the chiefs of Israel and Aaron. The ordeal of rods was then employed; each man presented his rod, and that of Aaron was the only one which budded.

Although the people of God had levelled the walls of Jericho by the sound of trumpets, they were overcome by the inhabitants of Ai. This defeat did not appear at all natural to Joshua; he consulted the Lord, who answered that Israel had sinned; that some one had appropriated to his own use a part of the plunder that had been taken at Jericho, and there devoted as accursed. In fact, all ought to have been burned, together with the men and women, children and cattle, and whoever had preserved and carried off any part was to be exterminated. Joshua, in order to discover the offender, subjected all the tribes to the trial by lot. The lot first fell on the tribe of Judah, then on the family of Zarah, then on the house of Zabdi, and finally on the grandson of Zabdi, whose name was Acham.

Scripture does not explain how it was that these wandering tribes came to have houses; neither does it inform us what kind of lots were made use of on the occasion; but it is clear from the text, that Acham, being convicted of stealing a small wedge of gold, a scarlet mantle, and two hundred shekels of silver, was burned to death in the valley of Achor, together with his sons, his sheep, his oxen, and his asses; and even his very tent was burned with him.

The promised land was divided by lot; lots were drawn respecting the two goats of expiation which should be sacrificed to the Lord, and which should go for a scapegoat into the wilderness. When Saul was to be chosen king, lots were consulted, and the lot fell on the tribe of Benjamin, on the family of Metri belonging to that tribe, and finally on Saul, the son of Kish, in the family of Metri.

The lot fell on Jonathan to be punished for having eaten some honey at the end of a rod. The sailors of Joppa drew lots to learn from God what was the cause of the tempest. The lot informed them that it was Jonah; and they threw him into the sea.

All these ordeals by lot, which among other nations were merely profane superstitions, were the voice of God Himself when employed by His cherished and beloved people; and so completely and decidedly the voice of God that even the apostles filled the place of the apostle Judas by lot. The two candidates for the succession were Matthias and Barnabas. Providence declared in favor of St. Matthias.

Pope Honorius, the third of that name, forbade by a decretal from that time forward the method of choosing bishops by lot. Deciding by lots was a very common practice, and was called by the pagans, "sortilegium." Cato, in the "Pharsalia," says, "Sortilegis egeant dubil...."

There were other ordeals among the Jews in the name of the Lord; as, for example, the waters of jealousy. A woman suspected of adultery was obliged to drink of that water mixed with ashes, and consecrated by the high priest. If she was guilty she instantly swelled and died. It is upon the foundation of this law that the whole Christian world in the West established oracles for persons under juridical accusation, not considering that what was ordained even by God Himself in the Old Testament was nothing more or less than an absurd superstition in the New.

Duel by wager of battle was one of those ordeals, and lasted down to the sixteenth century. He who killed his adversary was always in the right. The most dreadful of all these curious and barbarous ordeals, was that of a man's carrying a bar of red-hot iron to the distance of nine paces without burning himself. Accordingly, the history of the middle ages, fabulous as it is, does not record any instance of this ordeal, nor of that which consisted in walking over nine burning ploughshares. All the others might be doubted, or the deceptions and tricks employed in relation to them to deceive the judges might be easily explained. It was very easy, for example, to appear to pass through the trial of boiling water without injury; a vessel might be produced half full of cold water, into which the judicial boiling water might be put; and the accused might safely plunge his arm up to the elbow in the lukewarm mixture, and take up from the bottom the sacred blessed ring that had been thrown into it for that purpose.

Oil might be made to boil with water; the oil begins to rise and appears to boil when the water begins to simmer, and the oil at that time has acquired but a small degree of heat. In such circumstances, a man seems to plunge his hand into boiling water; but, in fact, moistens it with the harmless oil, which preserves it from contact with and injury by the water.

A champion may easily, by degrees, harden and habituate himself to holding, for a few seconds, a ring that has been thrown into the fire, without any very striking or painful marks of burning. To pass between two fires without being scorched is no very extraordinary proof of skill or address, when the movement is made with great rapidity and the face and hands are well rubbed with ointment. It is thus that the formidable Peter Aldobrandini, or "The Fiery Peter," as he was called, used to manage--if there is any truth in his history--when he passed between two blazing fires at Florence, in order to demonstrate, with God's help, that his archbishop was a knave and debauchee. O, charlatans! charlatans! henceforth disappear forever from the pages of history!

There existed a rather ludicrous ordeal, which consisted in making an accused person try to swallow a piece of barley bread, which it was believed would certainly choke him if he were guilty. I am not, however, so much diverted with this case as with the conduct of Harlequin, when the judge interrogated him concerning a robbery of which Dr. Balouard accused him. The judge was sitting at table, and drinking some excellent wine at the time, when Harlequin was brought in; perceiving which, the latter takes up the bottle, and, pouring the whole of its contents into a glass, swallows it at a draught, saying to the doctor: "If I am guilty of what you accuse me, sir, I hope this wine will prove poison to me."

ORDINATION.

If a soldier, charged by the king of France with the honor of conferring the order of St. Louis upon another soldier, had not, when presenting the latter with the cross, the intention of making him a knight of that order, would the receiver of the badge be on that account the less a member of the order than if such intention had existed? Certainly not.

How was it, then, that many priests thought it necessary to be re-ordained after the death of the celebrated Lavardin, bishop of Mans? That singular prelate, who had instituted the order of "Good Fellows"--Des Coteaux--bethought himself on his deathbed of a singular trick, in the way of revenge, on a class of persons who had much annoyed him. He was well known as one of the most daring freethinkers of the age of Louis XIV., and had been publicly upbraided with his infidel sentiments, by many of those on whom he had conferred orders of priesthood. It is natural at the approach of death, for a sensitive and apprehensive soul to revert to the religion of its early years. Decency alone would have required of the bishop, that at least at his death he should give an example of edification to the flock to which he had given so much scandal by his life. But he was so deeply exasperated against his clergy, as to declare, that not a single individual of those whom he had himself ordained was really and truly a priest; that all their acts in the capacity of priests were null and void; and that he never entertained the intention of conferring any sacrament.

Such reasoning seems certainly characteristic, and just such as might be expected from a drunken man; the priests of Mans might have replied to him, "It is not your intention that is of any consequence, but ours. We had an ardent and determined desire to be priests; we did all in our power to become such. We are perfectly ingenuous and sincere; if you are not so, that is nothing at all to us." The maxim applicable to the occasion is, "quic quid accipitur ad modum recipientis accipitur," and not "ad modum dantis." "When our wine merchant has sold us a half a hogshead of wine, we drink it, although he might have a secret intention to hinder us from drinking it; we shall still be priests in spite of your testament."

Those reasons were sound and satisfactory. However, the greater number of those who had been ordained by that bishop did not consider themselves as real and authorized priests, and subjected themselves to ordination a second time. Mascaron, a man of moderate talents, but of great celebrity as a preacher, persuaded them, both by his discourses and example, to have the ceremony repeated. The affair occasioned great scandal at Mans, and Paris, and Versailles; but like everything else was soon forgotten.

ORIGINAL SIN.