Such enthusiasts, excepting when enjoying the beatitude of ecstatic exaltation, are more to be pitied than feared. Persecution would most probably drive them to a dangerous state of fanatic rage; and the noble philosopher whom I have already quoted, very justly observes, "They are certainly ill physicians in the body politic who would needs be tampering with these mental eruptions, and, under the specious pretence of healing the itch of superstition, and saving souls from the contagion of enthusiasm, should set all nature in an uproar, and turn a few innocent carbuncles into an inflammation and a mortal gangrene." Enthusiasts are supposed by their followers to be gifted with the faculty of prophecy; and it is somewhat strange that the ancients considered certain temperaments as best fitted for this inspiration. The atrabilious temperament took the lead; and this melancholy state was to be increased by abstinence, mortification, and more especially rigid continence. The latter privation, indeed, was deemed indispensable for prophets; and the Jewish Rabbins inform us that Moses abandoned his wife Zipporah the very moment that he was prophetically inspired. A physical reason has been adduced to prove the necessity of a chaste life, which I here must be allowed to pass over; but upon the same principle, emasculation was considered as rendering man totally unfit for prophetic revelation, or indeed any holy inspiration; and we find in the first of Deuteronomy that such subjects were not admissible to the service of the Temple. Jesaias, and some other Jewish writers, have affirmed that Daniel belonged to that class of beings; but it has been shown that the name of _Spado_, which he bore, merely gave him the high rank that eunuchs held at the Assyrian court. Potiphar bore the same title among the Pharaohs. Baruch Spinosa maintained that temperaments should vary according to the nature of the prophecy; thus, a gay prophet would predict victory and happiness, a gloomy one misery and wars; peace and concord, if he is human; destruction and merciless events, if he were sanguinary: and, in support of his doctrine, he quotes the passage in Kings, where Elisha, when brought before Jehosophat, called for a minstrel ere he predicted that victory should crown the arms of Judah.