2. We are to note, that though there were never so many ways of Divination used, and whether the means used to predict by, were natural or supernatural, lawful or unlawful, frivolous and superstitious, or taken upon sound and rational grounds, yet were they all wicked and abominable, because they were used to withdraw the people from those Ordinances that God had appointed to give answers by, and to lead the people to inquire of vain and lying Idols, and their Priests, and thereby to commit Idolatry; and so whatsoever the means were, the end was wicked and damnable. [Sidenote: Psal. 115. 4, &c.] [Sidenote: Jer. 14. 14.] [Sidenote: 1 Cor. 8. 4.] [Sidenote: _Vid. Dr. Hammond. in loc._] [Sidenote: Isa. 41. 23.] [Sidenote: Jer. 10. 5.] 3. Moreover, what answers soever the Priests forged and gave (for it is manifest, that the Idols gave none at all; _for they had mouths and spake not, ears and heard not, eyes and saw not, feet and walked not, neither was there breath in their nostrils_) were nothing but lyes and conjectures of their own devising, and there an Idol in the Hebrew is sometimes styled ‏אֱלִיל‎ _nihilum_, and therefore saith the Prophet: _The Prophets prophesie lyes in my Name, I sent them not, neither have I commanded them. They prophesie unto you a false vision and divination, and a thing of nought, and the deceit of their heart._ Unto which the Apostle alludeth, when he saith: _We know that an Idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but one._ That is, that an Idol taken abstractively, without regard to the matter of which it was made, as gold, silver, stone, wood, or the like, which were natural substances, or respect to the figure or shape which was artificial, and the work of the Work-man, it was plainly nothing, and had no real existence as a God or Idol, but only in the Phantasies and minds of the blinded Worshippers; for it neither could truly foretel, nor act any thing of it self, but all that was done, was the lyes and inventions of the Priests that served them, and got their living by that villanous and lying trade. For God by the mouth of his Prophet doth set down the true difference of the true God, that could infallibly foretel and declare things that were to come, from the false Gods and Idols, and doth challenge them in this manner: _Shew the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are Gods: yea do good or do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold it together_. From whence it is plain, that the only κριτήριον to distinguish betwixt the Divinations that are given forth by the Spirit of God in his Prophets or Apostles is, that they are plain, certain, and infallible, and the event never faileth to answer the Prediction, but those that are given forth by Satan and his juggling and lying Ministers, are always ambiguous, doubtful, and perplex, and evermore deceive such as trust in them, as was manifest in Ahab, when all the false Prophets bade him go up to