Excerpt from An Historical and Critical Account of the So-Called Prophecy of St. Malachy Regarding the Succession of Popes The knowledge of the future belongs properly to God. This knowledge pertains not to the nature either of an angel or man; and if angels and men do foretell future events, they do so as mere agents or instruments according to the revelation they te ceive for the time being. As to what extent the angels of darkness can foretell, it is not easy to de cide. Certain it is they have no knowledge of the contingent future; that is to say, of the future pro perly so called, except what God for his own wise ends may give them. They are false prophets, how ever, as far as we are concerned, for we can never place confidence in them. They can at any rateknow things which are beyond our knowledge. This arises from their nature as Spirits, as well as from their knowledge of causes which are now present, though hidden from us. Thus, for instance, it would be no prophecy for the evil Spltlt to inform me that I was to receive a letter from a far-away friend some weeks or months hence. The Spirit of darkness could have seen the friend write the letter, and in a twinkle have winged his flight here to inform me of the fact. The demon may be also pretty successful in guessing the future. Fancy his natural cleverness and long experience. A knowledge of the future in man is usually a sign of great sanctity, for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy (apoc. Xix. Xc). But the Spirit of prophecy is not always a sign of sanctity, as for instance in the case of Balaam (numb. Sooth sayers and fortune-tellers may, perhaps, have been helped by the evil one in their predictions, and may have told things beyond the ordinary ken of mor tal; still it must not be forgotten that the devil is the father of lies, and the predictions of sooth sayers, even though inspired by him, cannot be trustworthy. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.