eplied in the words
of Cicero, "Quae tandem ista auguratio est, annorum potius quam aut
raensium aut dierum?" De Divinatione, ii. 30. Observe with what
irreverence Lucian, (in Alexandro, c. 13.) and his friend Celsus ap.
Origen, (l. vii. p. 327,) express themselves concerning the Hebrew
prophets.]

[Footnote 193: The philosophers who derided the more ancient predictions
of the Sibyls, would easily have detected the Jewish and Christian
forgeries, which have been so triumphantly quoted by the fathers, from
Justin Martyr to Lactantius. When the Sibylline verses had performed
their appointed task, they, like the system of the millennium, were
quietly laid aside. The Christian Sybil had unluckily fixed the ruin of
Rome for the year 195, A. U. C. 948.]

But how shall we excuse the supine inattention of the Pagan and
philosophic world, to those evidences which were represented by the hand
of Omnipotence, not to their reason, but to their senses? During the age
of Christ, of his apostles, and of their first disciples, the doctrine
which they preached was confirmed by innumerable prodigies. The lame
walked, the blind saw, the sick were healed, the dead were raised,
daemons were expelled, and the laws of Nature were frequently suspended
for the benefit of the church. But the sages of Greece and Rome turned
aside from the awful spectacle, and, pursuing the ordinary occupations
of life and study, appeared unconscious of any alterations in the moral
or physical government of the world. Under the reign of Tiberius, the
whole earth, [194] or at least a celebrated province of the Roman empire,
[195] was involved in a preternatural darkness of three hours. Even this
miraculous event, which ought to have excited the wonder, the curiosity,
and the devotion of mankind, passed without notice in an age of science
and history. [196] It happened during the lifetime of Seneca and the
elder Pliny, who must have experienced the immediate effects, or
received the earliest intelligence, of the prodigy. Each of these
philosophers, in a laborious work, has recorded all the great phenomena
of Nature, earthquakes, meteors comets, and eclipses, which his
indefatigable curiosity could collect. [197] Both the one and the other
have omitted to mention the greatest phenomenon to which the mortal eye
has been witness since the creation of the globe. A distinct chapter
of Pliny [198] is designed for eclipses of an extraordinary nature and
unusual duration;