But supposing, as Plutarch evidently does, that these spirits administered, under the Supreme Being, the affairs of men, taking care of the virtuous, punishing the bad, and sometimes communicating with the best, (as particularly the genius of Socrates always warned him of approaching dangers, and taught him to avoid them,) I cannot but wonder, that every one who has hitherto written Plutarch’s life, and particularly Rualdus, the most knowing of them all, should so confidently affirm, that these oracles were given by bad spirits, according to Plutarch. As Christians, indeed, we may think them so; but that Plutarch so thought, it is a most apparent falsehood. It is enough to convince a reasonable man, that our author, in his old age, (and that then he doted not we may see by the Treatise he has written, that old men ought to have the management of public affairs,) I say, that then he initiated himself in the sacred rites of Delphos, and died, for aught we know, Apollo’s priest. Now, it is not to be imagined that he thought the god he served a cacodemon, or, as we call him, a devil. Nothing could be farther from the opinion and practice of this holy philosopher than so gross an impiety. The story of the Pythias, or Priestess of Apollo, which he relates immediately before the ending of that Treatise concerning the Cessation of Oracles, confirms my assertion, rather than shakes it; for it is there delivered, “That going with great reluctation into the sacred place to be inspired, she came out foaming at the mouth, her eyes gogling, her breast heaving, her voice undistinguishable and shrill, as if she had an earthquake within her, labouring for vent; and, in short, that thus tormented with the god, whom she was not able to support, she died distracted in few days after.” For he had said before, “that the divineress ought to have no perturbations of mind, or impure passions, at the time when she was to consult the oracle; and if she had, she was no more fit to be inspired, than an instrument untuned to render an harmonious sound.” And he gives us to suspect, by what he says at the close of this relation, “that this Pythias had not lived chastely for some time before it.” So that her death appears more like a punishment inflicted for loose living by some holy power, than the mere malignancy of a spirit delighted naturally in mischief.—There is another observation, which indeed comes nearer to their purpose, which I will digress so far as to relate, because it somewhat appertains to our own country:—“There are many islands (says he) which lie scattered about Britain, after the manner of our Sporades. They are unpeopled, and some of them are called the Islands of the Heroes, or the Genii. One Demetrius was sent by the emperor [who, by computation of the time, must either be Caligula or Claudius] to discover those parts; and arriving at one of the islands, next adjoining to the fore-mentioned,