Upon these and similar relations we have to observe, that as it is not probable that God would suffer the reverence of mankind to be excited in favour of the fictitious deities of the heathen world, by any miraculous suffrage to the opinion of their existence, we must be inclined to consider these dreams as having merely a casual reference to historical circumstances; or perhaps as fictitious inventions intenced to raise surprise, or respect, for the worship and ceremonies of pagan superstition.

Upon similar considerations, we should be inclined to discredit the relation which is given of the repeated appearances of Hercules to Sophocles, to point out the person who had stolen a golden patera from his temple; on the conviction of whom the temple was said to have been dedicated to Hercules, the discoverer *.

Heywood's Hier. L. iv. p. 224.

Even those persons who assent to the inspiration of dreams which had a beneficial tendency, must reject such as contradict the sure principles of religion, and involve consequences inconsistent with the declared doctrines of Scripture, since certainly to represent the power of inspiration to have contributed to advance the gloom, and strengthen the fetters of superstition, must be deemed injurious to the attributes of that Being, whose jealous wisdom is understood to delight in the progress of truth, and who seems to have challenged the works and energies of preternatural power and knowledge, in exclusive support of the evidence and claims of true religion.

It may be said, perhaps, that we are authorized by sacred instruction to maintain, that the Almighty has often judged it right to display his resentment against gross and flagrant wickedness, by suffering its followers to be infatuated in the delusions of their own vanity, and hardened in the obstinacy of their wilful

error; subjecting them sometimes not only to the arts and wicked contrivances of interested men, but also to the imposing miracles and malignant deceptions of superior beings; and that as the wonders which God permitted the magicians of Egypt to perform contributed to aggravate the perverseness of Pharaoh, so dreams and oracles might, as Justin Martyr * supposed, be purposely suffered, at the suggestion of evil spirits, to mislead those who, disregarding the simple evidence of a stupendous and well-regulated creation, which never ceased to bear testimony to the government of an intelligent and benevolent God, plunged themselves into the depths of a profligate and licentious idolatry.

Whatever force we may allow to this argument, we cannot suppose, that when God was not particularly offended, and when the dreams which were furnished actually afforded deliver

* Apol. C. i.

ance, that they were designed to be instru mental to the punishment of general error. It is an arrangement undoubtedly consistent with general and equitable laws, that the punishment of sins should result from the indulgence of evil, as Saul, when he wished to break through the appointed and acknowledged decrees of God, by having recourse to those necromantic arts which he himself had discountenanced as superstitious, heard his fatal sentence uttered with unerring truth; and as Ahab was justly seduced by an evil spirit, when he refused to listen to any prophet who predicted not "smooth things" unto him; still however it is utterly improbable, that communications of divine mercy should have been designed to be merely subservient to the establishment of error. If the dream, which was said to have been imparted to Stilpo, had any foundation in truth, it should seem to have been designed to check the spirit of offering up expensive eblations to the heathen deities. The account 'represents him to have dreamt, that he saw

Neptune expostulating with him for not having immolated an ox to him, as was the custom of the priests. Upon which he remonstrated with the deity, for coming like a child, to complain to him, that he had not filled the city with the smoke of an expensive sacrifice, when he had done what his circumstances would admit upon which the god extended his hand to him with a smile in proof of approbation, and promised that, on his account, he would afford a plentiful supply of water to the Megarensians *.

Upon the whole then, however unwilling to weaken any impressions which may be conceived to have even an indirect tendency to promote moral purposes, the author conceives, that there is little or nothing to be collected from the history of heathen antiquity, which can be allowed to establish the supposition of dreams being prophetic; and perhaps