-"Time will even bring it to pass, if it were not resisted, that God
would be _turned out of churches_ into _barns_, and from thence again
into the _fields_ and _mountains_, and under _hedges_--all order of
discipline and church government left to _newness of opinion_ and men's
fancies, and _as many kinds of religion_ spring up as there are parish
churches within England." We are struck by the profound genius of
Tacitus, who clearly foresaw the calamities which so long ravaged Europe
on the fall of the Roman Empire, in a work written five hundred years
before the event! In that sublime anticipation of the future, he
observed--"When the Romans shall be hunted out from those countries
which they have conquered, what will then happen? The revolted people,
freed from their master oppressor, will not be able to subsist without
destroying their neighbours, and the most cruel wars will exist among
all these nations."

We are told that Solon at Athens, contemplating on the port and citadel
of Munychia, suddenly exclaimed, "How blind is man to futurity! Could
the Athenians foresee what mischief this will do their city, they would
even eat it with their own teeth to get rid of it!"--a prediction
verified more than two hundred years afterwards! Thales desired to be
buried in an obscure quarter of Milesia, observing that that very spot
would in time be the forum. Charlemagne, in his old age, observing from
the window of a castle a Norman descent on his coast, tears started in
the eyes of the aged monarch. He predicted that since they dared to
threaten his dominions while he was yet living, what would they do when
he should be no more!--a melancholy prediction, says De Foix, of their
subsequent incursions, and of the protracted calamities of the French
nation during a whole century!

There seems to be something in minds which take in extensive views of
human nature which serves them as a kind of divination, and the
consciousness of this faculty has even been asserted by some. Cicero
appeals to Atticus how he had always judged of the affairs of the
republic as a good diviner; and that its overthrow had happened as he
had foreseen fourteen years before.[183] Cicero had not only predicted
what happened in his own times, but also what occurred long after,
according to the testimony of Cornelius Nepos. The philosopher, indeed,
affects no secret revelation, nor visionary second-sight; he honestly
tells us that this art had been acquired