The Emperor, transported with rage and vexation,
resolved to revenge his gods, by eluding a solemn prediction of Christ.
He ordered the Jews to rebuild the temple of Jerusalem; but in beginning
to dig the foundations, balls of fire burst out, and consumed the
artificers, their tools and materials. These facts are attested by
Ammianus Marcellinus, a pagan, and the emperor's historian; and by St.
Chrysostom, St. Gregory Nazianzen, and Theodoret, Sozomen and Socrates,
in their ecclesiastical histories. The sophist Libanius, who was an
enemy of the Christians, confessed also that St. Babylas had silenced
the oracle of Apollo, in the suburbs of Antioch.
Plutarch relates that the pilot Thamus heard a voice in the air, crying
out:--"The great Pan is dead:" whereupon Eusebius observes, that the
deaths of the demons were frequent in the reign of Tiberius, when Christ
drove out the wicked spirits. The same judgments may be passed on
oracles as on possessions. It was on particular occasions, by the divine
permission, that the Christians cast out devils, or silenced oracles, in
the presence and even by the confession of the pagans themselves.
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