shoulders, it pushed and turned them on all sides, and the high-priest,
interrogating it on all sorts of affairs, if it refused its consent, it
drove the priests back; if otherwise, it made them advance.

Suetonius says, that, some months before the birth of Augustus, an
oracle was current, importing, that nature was labouring at the
production of a king, who would be master of the Roman Empire; that the
Senate in great consternation, had forbid the rearing of any male
children who should be born that year, but that the senators whose wives
were pregnant, found means to hinder the inscribing of the decree in the
public registers. It seems that the prediction, of which Augustus was
only the type, regarded the birth of Jesus Christ, the spiritual king of
the whole world; or that the wicked spirit was willing, by suggesting
this rigorous decree to the Senate, to depose Herod; and by this
example, to involve the Messiah in the massacre that was made by his
orders of all the children of two years and under. The whole world was
then full of the coming of the Messiah. We see by Virgil's fourth
eclogue, that he applies to the son of the Consul Asinius Pollio the
prophecies which, from the Jews, had then passed into foreign nations.
This child the object of Virgil's flattery, died the ninth day after he
was born. Tacitus, Suetonius, and Josephus, applied to Vespasian the
prophecies that regarded the Messiah.


ORACLES OFTEN EQUIVOCAL AND OBSCURE.

The oracles, were often very equivocal, or so obscure that their
signification was not understood but after the event. A few examples,
out of a great many, will be sufficient.