llful politicians, and
generals of armies, dexterously made use of the prepossession of the
people in favor of oracles, to persuade them what they had concerted
was approved of by the gods, and announced by the oracle. These things
and these oracles were often followed by success, not because the
oracle had predicted or ordained it, but because the enterprise being
well concerted and well conducted, and the soldiers also perfectly
persuaded that God was on their side, fought with more than ordinary
valor. Sometimes they gained over the priestess by the aid of
presents, and thus disposed her to give favorable replies. Demosthenes
haranguing at Athens against Philip, King of Macedon, said that the
priestess of Delphi _Philipized_, and only pronounced oracles
conformable to the inclinations, advantage, and interest of that
prince.

Porphyry, the greatest enemy of the Christian name,[202] makes no
difficulty of owning that these oracles were dictated by the spirit of
falsehood, and that the demons are the true authors of enchantments,
philtres, and spells; that they fascinate or deceive the eyes by the
spectres and phantoms which they cause to appear; that they
ambitiously desire to pass for gods; that their aerial and spiritual
bodies are nourished by the smell and smoke of the blood and fat of
the animals which are immolated to them; and that the office of
uttering oracles replete with falsehood, equivocation, and deceit has
devolved upon them. At the head of these demons he places _Hecate and
Serapis_. Jamblichus, another pagan author, speaks of them in the same
manner, and with as much contempt.

The ancient fathers who lived so near the times when these oracles
existed, several of whom had forsaken paganism and embraced
Christianity, and who consequently knew more about the oracles than we
can, speak of them as things invented, governed, and maintained by the
demons. The most sensible among the heathens do not speak of them
otherwise, but also they confess that often the malice, imposition,
servility and interest of the priests had great share in the matter,
and that they abused the simplicity, credulity and prepossessions of
the people.

Plutarch says,[203] that a governor of Cilicia having sent to consult
the oracle of Mopsus, as he was going to Malle in the same country,
the man who carried the billet fell asleep in the temple, where he saw
in a dream a handsome looking man, who said to him the single word
_bla