Balthus, a learned Jesuit, answered both Van Dale and Fontenelle. He labours to prove, that there were real _oracles_, and such as can never be attributed to any artifices of the Priests or Priestesses; and that several of these became silent in the first ages of the Church, either by the coming of Jesus Christ, or by the prayers of the Saints. This doctrine is confirmed by a letter from Father Bouchet, missionary to Father Balthus; wherein it is declared, that what Father Balthus declares of the ancient oracles, is experimented every day in the Indies. It appears, according to Bouchet, that the devil still delivers oracles in the Indies; and that, not by idols, which would be liable to imposture, but by the mouths of the priests, and sometimes of the bye-standers; it is added that these oracles, too, cease, and the devil becomes mute in proportion as the Gospel is preached among them. It was Eusebius who first endeavoured to persuade the christians that the coming of Jesus Christ had struck the oracles dumb; though it appears from the laws of Theodosius, Gratian, and Valentinian, that the oracles were still consulted as far back as the year 358. Cicero says the oracles became dumb, in proportion as people, growing less credulous, began to suspect them for cheats. Two reasons are alleged by Plutarch for the ceasing of oracles: the one was Apollo’s chagrin, who, it seems, “took it in dudgeon,” to be interrogated about so many trifles. The other was, that in proportion as the genii, or demons, who had the management of the oracles, died and became extinct, the oracles must necessarily cease. He adds a third and more natural cause for the ceasing of _oracles_, viz. the forlorn state of Greece, ruined and desolated by wars. For, in consequence of this calamity, the smallness of the gains suffered the priests to sink into a poverty and contempt too bare to cover the fraud. Most of the fathers of the church imagined it to be the devil that gave _oracles_, and considered it as a pleasure he took to give dubious and equivocal answers, in order to have a handle to laugh at them. Vossius allows that it was the devil who spoke in oracles; but thinks that the obscurity of his answers was owing to his ignorance as to the precise circumstances of events. That artful and studied obscurity, wherein, says he, answers were couched, shew the embarrassment the devil was under; as those double meanings they usually bore provided for the accomplishment. When the thing foretold did not happen accordingly, the _oracle_, forsooth, was always misunderstood.