ot possess books, first prayed, and then casually
opened upon Mark, chapter iv, "Unto you it is given to know the mystery
of the kingdom of God; but unto them that are without, all these things
are done in parables;" from which he drew the conclusion, that books
were not necessary for him.

One Peter of Thoulouse being accused of heresy, and having denied it
upon oath, one of those who stood by, in order to judge of the truth of
his oath, seized the book upon which he had sworn, and opening it
hastily, met with the words of the devil to our Saviour, "What have we
to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth?" and from thence concluded that
the accused was guilty, and had nothing to do with Christ!

The extraordinary case also of King Charles I. and Lord Falkland, as
applicable to divination of this kind, is related. Being together at
Oxford, they went one day to see the public library, and were shown,
among other books, a Virgil, finely printed and exquisitely bound. Lord
Falkland, to divert the king, proposed that he should make a trial of
his fortune by the _Sortes Virgilanae_. The king opening the book, the
passage he happened to light upon was part of Dido's imprecation against
Aeneas in lib. iv. l. 615. King Charles seeming concerned at the
accident, Lord Falkland would likewise try his own fortune, hoping he
might fall upon some passage that could have no relation to his case,
and thus divert the king's thoughts from any impression the other might
have upon him; but the place Lord Falkland stumbled upon was still more
suited to his destiny, being the expressions of Evander upon the
untimely death of his son Pallas, lib. xi. Lord Falkland fell in the
battle of Newbury, in 1644, and Charles was beheaded in 1649.

The kind of divination among the Jews, termed by them Bath Kol, or the
daughter of the voice, was not very dissimilar to the _Sortes Sanctorum_
of the Christians. The mode of practising it was by appealing to the
first words accidentally heard from any one speaking or reading. The
following is an instance from the Talmud:--Rabbi Jochanau and Rabbi
Simeon. Ben Lachish, desiring to see the face of R. Samuel, a Babylonish
doctor: "Let us follow," said they, "the hearing of Bath Kol."
Travelling, therefore, near a school, they heard the voice of a boy:
reading these words out of the First Book of Samuel, "And Samuel died."
They observed this, and inferred from hence that their friend Samuel was
dead, and so they f