Originally these intercessors appear to have been sorcerers, rather than priests, for spirits were believed to be hostile to man; and perhaps the first conception of a god may have been reached through the victory of a clan of sorcerers in fight. As Statius said eighteen hundred years ago, “Primus in orbe deos fecit timor.”[80] Probably the early wizards won their power by the discovery of natural secrets, which, though they could be transmitted to their descendants, might also be discovered by strangers. The later discoverers would become rival medicine men, and battle would be the only test by which the orthodoxy of the competitors could be determined. The victors would almost certainly stigmatize the beings the vanquished served, as devils who tormented men. There is an example of this process in the eighteenth chapter of 1 Kings:-- “And Elijah ... said, How long halt ye between two opinions? if the Lord be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word.” Then Elijah proposed that each side should dress a bullock, and lay it on wood, and call upon their spirit; and the one who sent down fire should be God. And all the people answered that it was well spoken. And Jezebel’s prophets took their bullock and dressed it, and called on “Baal from morning even until noon, saying, O Baal, hear us!” But nothing came of it. Then Elijah mocked them, “and said, Cry aloud: ... either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked.” And they cried aloud, and cut themselves with knives till “blood gushed out upon them. And ... there was neither voice, nor any to answer.” Then Elijah built his altar, and cut up his bullock and laid him on wood, and poured twelve barrels of water over the whole, and filled a trench with water. And “the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. “And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces: and they said, The Lord, he is the God. “And Elijah said unto them, Take the prophets of Baal; let not one of them escape. And they took them: and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and slew them there.”