An ingenious game was the one thus played by Paul, if ever there was one. Of this prophecy,[65] what when once mentioned, is plainly enough visible, is--this is of the number of those predictions, by which profit is put in for, and no loss risked: for such is the shape given to it. So long as the predictor lived, it would remain good and undisfulfilled: at the end of a certain time--namely, at the end of the life of the longest liver of the aggregate number of individuals in existence at that time,--the disfulfillment would indeed take place. But if, by that time, the predictor had made his exit,--as, in this case, being already of a certain age, it is tolerably certain he would,--the reproach of false prophecy would not have reached him: and, even, supposing it to have reached him, as it would do if he survived the last of them, still the speculation would not be a very bad one. His _prophecy_, his _purposes_ would have been fulfilled. Not altogether without claim to observation, is the manner, in which, by the adroitness of the soothsayer, the anxiety of questioners is evaded. That he himself does not know, nor ever expects to know,--that is what his prudence forbids his telling them. "The day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night:" this is what, in answer to former importunities, he had at _that_ time told them. "For you yourselves," says he, "know this perfectly;" that is, in so far as they could know from _his telling_: this being, in this instance, the only source,--of that _delusion_, to which he gave the name of _knowledge_. This he had told them _then_: and more, he takes care not to tell them _now_. "Of the times and seasons, brethren," says he, "ye have no need that I write unto you." Meantime, their hopes and fears, and therewith their dependence upon his good pleasure, are kept still alive: in the first place, the hope--that, knowing already more than he as yet desires to disclose, he may by ulterior obsequiousness be prevailed upon to disclose it: in the next place, the hope--that, though not as yet possessed of the information, he may at some future period be able to obtain it, and in that case give them the benefit of it. To a speculation of this sort,--in how particular a degree favourable the mode of communication by letter was, is sufficiently visible. Writing, was an operation not quite so prompt, in those days as in these. Between Thessalonica and Athens,--from whence, as they tell us, these Epistles were written,--there was not, it may be affirmed without much danger of error, any established letter-post: and, even if there was,--to this or that question, which a man sees in a letter, he makes or does not make answer, as he finds convenient. Not exactly so, when the questioner is at his elbow. SECTION 3. DISORDER AND MISCHIEF PRODUCED BY THIS PREDICTION.