28. And now, God be praised, there is an end of all those questions which were the grounds of consulting the oracle. For now we repose altogether in the soft slumbers of peace, all our wars are at an end. There are now no tumults, no civil seditions, no tyrannies, no pestilences nor calamities depopulating Greece, no epidemic diseases needing powerful and choice drugs and medicines. Now, when there is nothing of variety, nothing of mystery, nothing dangerous, but only bare and ordinary questions about small trifles and vulgar things, as whether a man may marry, whether take a voyage by sea, or lend his money safely at interest,—and when the most important enquiries of cities are concerning the next harvest, the increase of their cattle, or the health of the inhabitants,—there to make use of verses, ambiguous words, and confounding obscurities, where the questions require short and easy answers, causes us to suspect that the sacred minister studies only cramp expressions, like some ambitious sophister, to wrest admiration from the ignorant. But the Pythian priestess is naturally of a more generous disposition; and therefore, when she is busy with the Deity, she has more need of truth than of satisfying her vain-glory, or of minding either the commendations or the dispraise of men. 29. And well it were, that we ourselves should be so affected. But on the contrary, being in a quandary and jealousy lest the oracle should lose the reputation it has had for these three thousand years, and lest people should forsake it and forbear going to it, we frame excuses to ourselves, and feign causes and reasons of things which we do not know, and which it is not convenient for us to know; out of a fond design to persuade the persons thus oddly dissatisfied, whom it became us rather to let alone. For certainly the mistake must redound to ourselves,[35] when we shall have such an opinion of our Deity as to approve and esteem those ancient and pithy proverbs of wise men, written at the entrance into the temple, “Know thyself,” “Nothing to excess,” as containing in few words a full and close compacted sentence, and yet find fault with the modern oracle for delivering answers concise and plain. Whereas those apophthegms are like waters crowded and pent up in a narrow room or running between contracted banks, where we can no more discern the bottom of the water than we can the depth and meaning of the sentence. And yet, if we consider what has been written and said concerning those sentences by such as have dived into their signification with an intent to clear their abstruseness, we shall hardly find disputes more prolix than those are. But the language of the Pythian priestess is such as the mathematicians define a right line to be, that is to say, the shortest that may be drawn betwixt two points. So likewise doth she avoid all winding and circles, all double meanings and abstruse ambiguities, and proceed directly to the truth.