It is understood, thirdly, how much more fortunate the Jews [were], in their Priest, than the Gentiles — who, when they most superstitiously looked up to the flights, chatterings, and choicest dancings of birds, the entrails of cattle, [and] hoarse lowings or bleatings, [and] so studiously cultivated the shrines of Ammon, of Dodona, of Delphi, and the I-know-not-what caves of Trophonius, for the sake of oracles; [who] interrogated their images, their soothsayers, their “Pythons and diviners” (as Isaiah says) with such care and solicitude — yet obtained nothing but [what was] obscure, doubtful, uncertain, deceitful, and lying, as Cicero himself, Pliny, and others have discoursed. Hence Origen (bk. 7 Against Celsus): “I say,” he says, *“concerning the manner of the enumerated oracles, [that] we can bring forward many [things] from the authority of Aristotle and the Peripatetics, abrogating credit from the Pythia and the rest; [that] we can likewise transcribe from Epicurus and his followers what they think about these; and [can] show that the Greeks themselves set no value even on the most celebrated oracles of Greece. But let us grant [that] those [things] which are reported about the Pythia (as inspired by a divinity) and the rest of that kind of seers are not figments of men — [and] let us see whether, if we diligently weigh the truth of the matter, it cannot be proved that, even if there be oracles in the highest degree, [it does] not necessarily follow that some divinity presides over them, but rather certain evil demons, and spirits hostile to the human race, opposing themselves to the souls which tend to heaven by the way of virtue and true piety, by which they return to GOD. Certainly, concerning the Pythia — than which no other prophetic-seat is more celebrated — it is narrated [that] that seeress of Apollo sits over the opening of the Castalian cave, and, the spirit ascending thence, receives [it] through her female lap [womb], filled with which she brings forth those illustrious and (as they are thought) divine oracles. Consider now whether by this very [thing] the impurity of that spirit be not abundantly understood — [passing] not through blind passages far purer, to be penetrated through the female lap into the prophesying soul, but through those [parts] which an honest man could not endure to look at, much less to touch; and that not once and again (which perhaps were bearable), but as often as she, inflated by Phoebus, is believed to prophesy. Nay, that too — [that], beyond [her] script, maddened by magic arts, she herself understands what she is doing — is not the work of the divine spirit. For whoever is breathed upon by the divine power ought, before others who are helped by his oracles and advance to a better life agreeable to nature, himself to discern what is profitable — especially so long as GOD is in his breast. We indeed gather from the sacred scriptures [that] the Prophets of the Jews, illumined by the divine spirit (so far as it was needful [that] the interpreters of the divine counsels be illumined), first enjoyed the coming of the divinity to themselves; and, their soul (so to speak) touched by the Holy Spirit, both attained this [soul] more splendid, and [their] mind more perspicacious, and even the body itself — no longer contumacious against the spirit, or loathing the right rule of life — [being] namely dead (as our [people] speak) to the concupiscences of the flesh. For it is persuaded to us [we are persuaded] that the works of the flesh, inimical to GOD, are mortified through the divine—
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—Spirit. But if the Pythia is snatched out of herself while she chants the fates, of what sort must that spirit be reckoned — pouring darkness upon the mind and the reason — since it is like this kind of demons, which not a few Christians cast out of possessed bodies, and that without any curiosity of the great [magic arts] and of sorceries, but by prayers alone, and simple adjurations, which are the arts of simple men? For commonly plebeian men do these [things], convicting the demons’ weakness by their word, through the grace of CHRIST — [so] that there is no need, for routing them from a man’s soul and body, of wise words and strong reasonings about the faith.”* And afterward: “We set no value on the Pythian, Dodonaean, Clarian, Branchid, and Ammonian oracles, and whatever [others] are celebrated; and we admire the Jewish [oracles] alone — seeing [that] the brave, constant, and honest life of these [prophets] was worthy that the divine spirit should lodge in their souls; and [there is] nothing here like the divinations of demons.”