nus asserted that a great part (but not
all!) of the oracular system might be explained as priestly imposture, and
his slightly younger contemporary Caelius Calcagninus, in his dialogue on
oracles, seems to go still further and to deny the power of predicting the
future to any other being than the true God. An exceptional position is
occupied by Pomponazzi, who in his little pamphlet _De Incantationibus_
seems to wish to derive all magic, including the oracles, from natural
causes, though ultimately he formally acknowledges demonology as the
authoritative explanation. But these advances did not find acceptance; we
find even Voss combating the view on which they were founded. It is
characteristic of the power of demonology in this domain that in support
of his point of view he can quote no less a writer than Machiavelli.

The author who opened battle in real earnest against demonology was a
Dutch scholar, one van Dale, otherwise little known. In a couple of
treatises written about the close of the seventeenth century he tried to
show that the whole of idolatry (as well as the oracles in particular) was
not dependent on the intervention of supernatural beings, but was solely
due to imposture on the part of the priests. Van Dale was a Protestant, so
he easily got over the unanimous recognition of demonology by the Fathers
of the Church. The accounts of demons in the Old and New Testaments proved
more difficult to deal with; it is interesting to see how he wriggles
about to get round them--and it illustrates most instructively the degree
to which demonology affords the only reasonable and natural explanation of
paganism on the basis of early Christian belief.

Van Dale's books are learned works written in Latin, full of quotations in
Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and moreover confused and obscure in exposition,
as is often the case with Dutch writings of that time. But a clever
Frenchman, Fontenelle, took upon himself the task of rendering his work on
the oracles into French in a popular and attractive form. His book called
forth an answering pamphlet from a Jesuit advocating the traditional view;
the little controversy seems to have made some stir in France about the
year 1700. At any rate Banier, who, in the beginning of the eighteenth
century, treated ancient mythology from a Euhemeristic point of view, gave
some consideration to it. His own conclusion is--in 1738!--that demonology
cannot be dispensed with for the explanation