title of a king of which he was ambitious. The difficulty was to bring the Senate to confer it; for, without their sanction it was unsafe to assume it. One of his adherents thought of an expedient not unlikely to succeed. He produced a prophecy from the Cumaan Sibyl of a king who was to arise at this time, whose monarchy was to be universal, and whose government would be necessary and essential to the happiness of the world. The artful statesman knew, that if he could once create a general persuasion upon the credit of this prophecy, that universal monarchy was to be established, and that the state of the world required it, the difficulty would not be great to prove, that Cæsar was the person of his times best qualified to wield the sceptre.

The republican party took the alarm. Tully was at that time its chief support, and his great abilities were called forth to oppose this stratagem of the dictator's faction. In his opposition to it he brings no charge of falsification against those who alleged this prophecy. He denies not that a prophecy to this effect was actually contained in the Sibylline books, to which as a member of the Augural College he had free access, and when he allowed the existence of the prophecy, he was a better politician

than to make the application of it to Cæsar the point of controversy, and to risk the success of his opposition to the schemes of Cæsar's party upon the precarious success of that particular question. Confessing the prophecy he knew it was impolitic to attempt to apply it to any but a Roman, and applying it to a Roman it had been difficult to draw it away from Cæsar. He therefore takes another ground.— Having granted that the prophecy was fairly alleged by the opposite party from the Sibylline books, he attempts to overthrow the credit of the prophecy by a general attack on the credit of the books in which it was found. He affirms that these Sibylline oracles were no prophecies. His argument is, that in the writings of the Sibyl no marks are to be found of phrenzy or disorder, which the heathens conceived to be the necessary state of every prophet's mind while he prophesied, because the prophets of their oracular temples affected it. But these books, he says, carried such evident marks of art and study, particularly in the regular structure of the verse, as proved that it was the work of a writer who had the natural use and possession of his faculties. This statement of Tully's may be correct, but his conclusion is erroneous, at least it must appear so to us who take our notions of prophetic style from the spe

cimens which the Bible furnishes: for the true prophets were never impeded or disturbed in the natural use and possession of their faculties by the divine impulse. Their faculties were not disturbed, but exalted and invigorated; and in the most animated of the sacred prophecies we find, beside what might be the natural character of the prophetic style, force, elevation, and sudden transition, we find beside, an exquisite art of composition, and a wonderful regularity of versification. However, the Roman critic having proved, as he imagined from this circumstance, that these Sibylline oracles were no prophecies, concludes his whole argument with this edifying remark: "Let us then, says he, adhere to the prudent practice of our ancestors; let us keep the Sibyl in religious privacy; these writings are indeed rather calculated to extinguish than to propagate superstition." This testimony is above all exception. Tully, as an augur, had free access to the book in question. It cannot be doubted that he would improve his opportunities; for he was a man of an exquisite taste, of much learned curiosity; and, with these endowments, of a very religious turn of mind. It is certain therefore that he speaks upon the best information; and he is the more to be credited, as this frank confession fell from him in the

heat of a political debate in which he took an interested part. And from this testimony we may conclude, that the ancient fathers, whatever judgment is to be passed upon their pretended quotations from the Sibylline books, were not mistaken in the general assertion, that the worship of the one true God, the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and of a future retribution, were inculcated in these writings; which it seems, in Tully's judgment, (and a competent judge he was,) were proper weapons to combat idolatry and by what weapons may error be more successfully combated than by the truth?

If the Sibylline oracles in their general tenor were unfriendly to the interests of idolatry, it is the less to be wondered, that they should contain predictions of its final extirpation: Of this I shall now produce the evidence; still relying, not upon particular quotations, but upon the general allusions of the heathen writers.

Virgil the celebrated Roman poet flourished in the court of Augustus no long time before our Saviour's birth, when the general expectation of a person to appear who should abolish both physical and moral evil, was at the highest.

Among his works still extant is a congratulatory poem addressed to a noble Roman, the poet's friend, who bore the high office of consul at the time when it was written. The occasion seems to have been the birth of some child, in whose fortunes Pollio the poet's friend was nearly interested. The compliment to Pollio is double, being partly drawn from a flattering prediction of the infant's future greatness, (for it is affirmed, that he will prove nothing less than the expected deliverer,) and partly from this circumstance, that the year of Pollio's consulate should be distinguished by the birth of such a child. Whoever should read this poem without a knowledge of the history of the times would conclude, that it was a compliment to Pollio upon the birth of his own son.

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But it is a very extraordinary, but a very certain fact, that the consul had no son born in the year of. his consulate, or within any short time before or after it. Nor will the history of these times furnish us with any child born within a moderate distance of Pollio's year of office, which, by its rank and connexion with his family, might seem of sufficient importance to be the subject of this congratulation, even when all possible allowance has been made