Ammonius having said these words, and I returning no answer, Cleombrotus took up the discourse, and addressed himself to me. Hast thou then, said he, confessed that it is the God who makes and unmakes oracles? Not I, said I; for I maintain that God was never the cause of taking away or abolishing any oracle or divination; but, on the contrary, whereas he produces and prepares several things for our use, so Nature leads them into corruption, and not seldom into a privation of their whole being. Or, to speak better, matter, which is itself privation or negation, often flies away, and dissolves what a more excellent being than herself had wrought. So that I am of opinion, there are other causes which obscure and extinguish these prophetic spirits. For though God does give to men several good and excellent things, yet he gives to none of them the power to exist eternally; for, though the Gods never die, yet their gifts do, as Sophocles speaks. It were then well becoming philosophers who exercise themselves in the study of Nature and the first matter, to enquire into the existence, property, and tendency of those things, but to leave the origin and first cause to God, as is most reasonable. For it is a very childish and silly thing, to suppose that the God himself does, like the spirits speaking in the bowels of ventriloquists (which were anciently called Euryclees, and now Pythons), enter into the bodies of the prophets, and speak by their mouths and voices, as fit instruments for that purpose. For he that thus mixes God in human affairs has not that respect and reverence which is due to so great a majesty, as being ignorant of his power and virtue.