Page images
PDF
EPUB

further construction was then put on this prodigy, doth not appear: but as the science of augury advanced in succeeding times, a very momentous and striking prophecy was grounded upon it. For we have it affirmed,* on the high authority of M. T. VARRO, that Vettius Valens, an augur of distinguished name in those days, took occasion from this circumstance (and in the hearing of Varro himself) to fix the duration of the Roman empire. The TWELVE VULTURES, he said, which appeared to Romulus, portended, that the sovereignty of that state and city, whose foundations he was then laying, should continue for the space of TWELVE HUNDRED YEARS. It is of no moment to inquire, on what principles of his art the learned augur proceeder, in this calculation. The TRUTH is, that the event corresponded, in a surprizing manner, to the conjecture; and that the majesty of the western empire (of which Rome was the capital) did,

Avium, præpetibus sese, pulchrisque locis dant.
Conspicit inde sibi data Romulus esse priora,

Auspicio regni stabilita scamna solumque.

Cic. de Div. l. i. c. 48.

* Quot sæcula urbi Romæ debeantur, dicere meum non est: sed, quid apud Varronem legerim, non tacebo. Qui libro Antiquitatum duodevicesimo ait, fuisse Vettium Romæ in augurio non ignobilem, ingenio magno, cuivis docto in disceptando parem; eum se audisse dicentem: Si ita esset, ut traderent historici, de Romuli urbis condendæ auguriis, ac duodecim vulturibus; quoniam cxx annos incolumis præteriisset populus Romanus, ad mille et ducentos perventurum.

CENSORINUS de die natali, c. xvii. p. 97. Cantab. 1695.

indeed, expire under the merciless hands of the Goths, about the time limited by this augural prophet.

It should, further, be observed that this prediction was of such credit and notoriety, as to take the attention of the later Romans themselves,* who looked with anxiety for the accomplishment of it and that it was delivered by Valens, at least five hundred years before the event; when there was not the least appearance, that this catastrophe would befal, what was called, the ETERNAL CITY, within that period.

:

THIS is an instance of divination from augury. The OTHER, I am about to give, is a prophecy, in full form; respecting a still more important subject, and equally accomplished in the event. A poet, in the ideas of paganism, was a prophet, too.

* Hence Sidonius, in personating the city of Rome, makes her ask

Quid, rogo, bis seno mihi vulture Thuscus aruspex
Portendit?
Sidon. Carm. vii. 55.

And again, addressing himself to the same city,
Jam prope fata tui bissenas vulturis alas
Complebant (scis namque tuos, scis, Roma, labores.)

And, before him, Claudian, to the same purpose-
Tunc reputant annos, interceptoque volutu
Vulturis, incidunt properatis sæcula metis.

Ib. ver. 358.

B. G. ver. 262.

And Seneca* hath left us, in proof of the inspiration to which, in his double capacity, he might pretend, the following oracle;

-venient annis

Secula seris, quibus Oceanus
Vincula rerum laxet, et ingens
Pateat tellus, Tiphysque novos
Detegat orbes; nec sit terris
Ultima Thule.

This prediction was made in the reign of Nero; and, for more than fourteen hundred years, might only pass for one of those sallies of imagination, in which poetry so much delights. But, when, at length, in the close of the fifteenth century, the discoveries of Columbus had realized this vision: when that enterprizing navigator had forced the barriers of the vast Atlantic ocean; had loosened, what the poet calls, the chains of things; and in these later ages, as was expressly signified, had set at liberty an immense continent, shut up before in surrounding seas from the commerce and acquaintance of our world; when this event, I say, so important and so unexpected, came to pass, it might almost surprize one into the belief, that the prediction was something more than a

* Medea, ver. 374. † Annis seris.

poetical fancy; and that Heaven had, indeed, revealed to one favoured Spaniard, what it had decreed, in due time, to accomplish by another.

THESE two instances of casual conjecture, converted by time and accident into prophecies, I shall take for granted, are as remarkable, as any other that can be alledged. Cicero, in his first book of Divinations, where he laboured to assert the reality of such a power in the pagan world, was able to produce nothing equal, or comparable to them. We have the fullest evidence, that these two predictions were delivered by the persons, to whom they are ascribed; and in the time, in which they are said to have been delivered, that is, many hundred years before the event. They, both of them, respect events of the greatest dignity and importance: one of them, the downfal of the mightiest empire, that hath hitherto subsisted on the face of the earth; and the other, the discovery of a new world. Both, express the time, when these extraordinary events were to happen: the latter, by a general description, indeed, yet not more general, than is frequent in the scriptural prophets; but the former, in the most precise and limited terms. In a word, both these predictions are authentic, important, circumstantial: they foretel events, which no human sagacity could have foreseen; and they have been strictly and properly fulfilled.

Now, if such coincidencies, as these, do not infer divine inspiration; if, notwithstanding all appearances to the contrary, it must still be allowed (as it will, on all sides) that they were simply fortuitous, or what we call the effects of hazard and pure chance, by what characters shall we distinguish genuine, from pretended, prophecies; or in what way shall it be discovered, that the scriptural prophets spake by the Spirit of God, when these pagan diviners could thus prophecy, by their own spirit?

To this objection, put with all the force which I am able to give to it, I reply directly, That the distinction so importunately demanded, may very easily and clearly be assigned.

If one or two such prophecies, only, had occurred in our scriptures; if even several such had occurred in the whole extent of those writings, and in the large compass of time they take up, without descending to a greater detail than is expressed in these pagan oracles; nay, if a greater number still of supposed predictions, thus generally delivered in the sacred writings, had been applicable only to single, independent events, dispersed indifferently through the several ages of the world: In all these cases, I should freely admit, that the argument from prophecy was very precarious and

« PreviousContinue »