Sir Walter Rawleigh foresaw the future consequences of the separatists and the sectaries in the national church, and the very scene his imagination raised in 1530 has been exhibited, to the letter of his description, two centuries after the prediction! His memorable words are--"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!