2 Saint Jerome says, that the Sadducees did not adopt the prophets, but contented themselves with believing the five books of Moses. Dodwell, De Jure Laicorum, asserts, that the prophets prepared themselves to prophesy by drinking wine. See page 259. It seems they were jugglers, poets, and musicians, who had made themselves masters of their trades, and knew how to exercise them profitably. If we examine the conduct of the boasted prophets of the Old Testament, we shall find them far from being virtuous persons. We see arrogant priests continually meddling with affairs of state, and interweaving them with religion. We see in them seditious subjects, incessantly caballing against all sovereigns, who were not sufficiently submissive to them. They cross their projects, excite their subjects to rebellion, effect their destruction, and thus accomplish the fatal predictions, which they had before made against them.1 Such is the character of most of the prophets, who have played a part in the history of the Jews. The studied obscurity of the prophecies is such, that those which are commonly applied to the Messiah, or the deliverer of Israel, are equally applicable to every enthusiast or prophet that appeared in Jerusalem or Judea. Christians, heated with the idea of Christ, think they meet him in all places, and pretend to see him in the darkest passages of the Old Testament. Deluding themselves by force of allegories, subtilties, commentaries, and forced interpretations, they have discovered the most formal predictions in all the vague oracles and nonsensical trash of the prophets.2 1 The prophet Samuel, displeased with Saul, who refused to second his cruelty, declared that he had forfeited the crown, and raised up a rival to him in the person of David. Elias appears to have been a seditious subject, who, finding himself unable to succeed in his rebellious designs, thought proper to escape due punishment by flight. Jeremiah himself gives us to understand that he conspired with the Assyrians against his besieged country. He seems to have employed himself in depriving: his fellow-citizens of both the will and the courage to defend themselves. He purchased a field of his relations, at the very time when he informed his countrymen that they were about to be dispersed, and led away in captivity. The king of Assyria recommends this prophet to his general, Nebuzaradan, whom he commands to take great care of him.--See Jeremiah.