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Never in any instance were these aberrations of the fathers more vividly exemplified than in their theories upon the Pagan Oracles. On behalf of God, they were determined to be wiser than God; and, in demonstration of scriptural power, to advance doctrines which the Scriptures had nowhere warranted. At this point, however, we shall take a short course; and, to use a vulgar phrase, shall endeavor to “kill two birds with one stone.” It happens that the earliest book in our modern European literature, which has subsequently obtained a station of authority on the subject of the ancient Oracles, applied itself entirely to the erroneous theory of the fathers. This is the celebrated Antonii Van Dale, “De Ethnicorum Oraculis Dissertationes,” which was published at Amsterdam at least as early as the year 1682; that is, one hundred and sixty years ago. And upon the same subject there has been no subsequent book which maintains an equal rank. Van Dale might have treated his theme simply with a view to the investigation of the truth, as some recent inquirers have preferred doing; and, in that case, the fathers would have been noticed only as incidental occasions might bring forward their opinions–true or false. But to this author the errors of the fathers seemed capital; worthy, in fact, of forming his principal object; and, knowing their great authority in the Papal church, he anticipated, in the plan of attaching his own views to the false views of the fathers, an opening to a double patronage–that of the Protestants, in the first place, as interested in all doctrines seeming to be anti-papal; that of the sceptics, in the second place, as interested in the exposure of whatever had once commanded, but subsequently lost, the superstitious reverence of mankind. On this policy, he determined to treat the subject polemically. He fastened, therefore, upon the fathers with a deadly acharnement, that evidently meant to leave no arrears of work for any succeeding assailant; and it must be acknowledged that, simply in relation to this purpose of hostility, his work is triumphant. So much was not difficult to accomplish; for barely to enunciate the leading doctrine of the fathers is, in the ear of any chronologist, to overthrow it. But, though successful enough in its functions of destruction, on the other hand, as an affirmative or constructive work, the long treatise of Van Dale is most unsatisfactory. It leaves us with a hollow sound ringing in the ear, of malicious laughter from gnomes and imps grinning over the weaknesses of man–his paralytic facility in believing–his fraudulent villany in abusing this facility–but in no point accounting for those real effects of diffusive social benefits from the Oracle machinery, which must arrest the attention of candid students, amidst some opposite monuments of incorrigible credulity, or of elaborate imposture.

As a book, however, belonging to that small cycle (not numbering, perhaps, on all subjects, above three score), which may be said to have moulded and controlled the public opinion of Europe through the last five generations, already for itself the work of Van Dale merits a special attention. It is confessedly the classical book–the original fundus for the arguments and facts applicable to this question; and an accident has greatly strengthened its authority. Fontenelle, the most fashionable of European authors, at the opening of the eighteenth century, writing in a language at that time even more predominant than at present, did in effect employ all his advantages to propagate and popularize the views of Van Dale. Scepticism naturally courts the patronage of France; and in effect that same remark which a learned Belgian (Van Brouwer) has found frequent occasion to make upon single sections of Fontenelle’s work, may be fairly extended into a representative account of the whole–“L’on trouve les memes arguments chez Fontenelle, mais degages des longueurs du savant Van Dale, et exprimes avec plus d’elegance.” This rifaccimento did not injure the original work in reputation: it caused Van Dale to be less read, but to be more esteemed; since a man confessedly distinguished for his powers of composition had not thought it beneath his ambition to adopt and recompose Van Dale’s theory. This important position of Van Dale with regard to the effectual creed of Europe–so that, whether he were read directly or were slighted for a more fashionable expounder, equally in either case it was his doctrines which prevailed–must always confer a circumstantial value upon the original dissertations, “De Ethnicorum Oraculis.”