ht to
the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city; for
without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and
idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie."

This last mark--falsehood--belongs to all heathen oracles, from the
first utterance by the serpent, down to the last response rapped out by
the medium. Take any one heathen oracle of which we have any definite
account--and the number is very small--and you will find that, if it is
not "as equivocal as Apollo," _it is false_.

For instance, Dean Stanley very confidently refers to certain heathen
oracles, "the fulfillment of which, according to Cicero, could not be
denied without a perversion of all history. Such was the foreshadowing
of the twelve centuries of Roman dominion, by the legend of the
apparition of the twelve vultures to Romulus, which was so understood
400 years before its accomplishment." Comparing the prophetic
predictions with such fables, he says: "_It is not that they are more
exact in particulars of time and place_; none can be more so than that
of the twelve centuries of the Roman Empire."[81]

The oracle thus exalted to a level with the predictions of our Lord and
his apostles is quoted by Censorinus,[82] A. D. 238, from Varro, who
died B. C. 28. Varro stated that he had heard Vettius, no common augur,
of great genius in disputing, a match with any of the most learned, say,
"If it was so, as the historians related, as to the auguries of the
founding of the city of Romulus and the twelve vultures, since the Roman
people had passed 120 years safe, it would reach 1,200."

Dean Stanley misquotes the oracle, and does injustice to the old heathen
prophet. He spake no word whatever about _dominion_; all he dared
conjecture for his city was _safety_. Even that is put in a highly
hypothetical mood. The augury begins with an "if," regarding the
apocryphal story of Romulus and the twelve vultures. But whether the
fable of the vultures be true or not, the augury of twelve centuries of
safety deduced from it is undeniably false, whether it refers to the
material city, or to the political constitution then established. The
city then built was burnt by Brennus, the Gaul. Its successor was taken
and plundered by Alaric, in A. D. 410; again by Genseric, and the
Vandals, in 455; and again by the Ostrogoths, in 546. Thus the material
city was repeatedly taken and destroyed during the twelve centuries
succeeding its fou