“The prophets, by means only of the immortal God and good angels, have received the spirit of vaticination, by which they foresee things and foretell future events; for nothing is perfect without Him, whose power and goodness is so great to His creatures, that though they are but men, nevertheless, by the likeness of our good genius to the angels,[54] this heat and the prophetical power draws near us, as it happens by the beams of the sun, which cast their influence both on elementary and not elementary bodies; as for us who are men, we cannot attain anything by our natural knowledge of the secrets of God our Creator. ‘Quia non est nostrum nosse tempora nec momenta,’ &c. (Acts i. 7.)” It should be noticed by every candid critic that there is strong internal evidence in this passage of genuine truthfulness in the writer. First he defines his own position to be merely that of a _seer_. He then gives his idea of a prophet, and describes him as one who has received a spirit of vaticination by foresight. He then says that this prophetical heat is unattainable by any natural knowledge of man, but comes like that of the sun, direct from the Giver of all good gifts to man. This is very much as Samuel How, the inspired cobbler, Bunyan, or any old Puritan in the seventeenth century would have described it: “The sufficiency of the Spirit’s teaching without human learning.” But in addition to this perfect simplicity of spirit, he ventures to quote the Saviour’s words: “It is not for you to know the times or the seasons,” which, with Matthew xxiv. 36, is the strongest passage in the New Testament against a gift of prophecy in man. Would a man who had any doubt at all about his possession of the faculty of prevision cite a passage which seemed to withhold the prophetic gift from all mankind under the new covenant of the Christian dispensation? Grotius and Heinsius show that these words χρόνους ἧ καιροὺς should be understood of the _time, times, and an half_, of Daniel (xii. 7), when Christ, of the stem of Jesse, should begin under Constantine to direct the executive government of kings on earth as King of kings, which took place 300 years later. If this were to be hidden from Apostles, how should a layman, and idiot (so to speak), look for inspiration? To me this consideration entirely and finally disposes of any doubt as to imposition intentional. Be Nostradamus prophet and seer, or not, it is next to impossible for anyone of fair and impartial mind hereafter to hold that he was an impostor. To suppose it even, is _impossible_ to a rational judge, if we grant that we are, in a degree ever so little, capable by nature of estimating the motives of a fellow-creature. In another part of the preface he says:--