DIVINATION

(Lat.) The art of foretelling future events. A singular and ever active feeling of curiosity has in all ages induced mm. kind to cast an anxious look ti> wards futurity in the desire of penetrating its mysteries, originally either by serious reflections on the past, by ■ comparison of tinpast with the present, or bj Inl more or le satisfactorily deduced from the prob currence of events. Rul mankind did not rest here: since the remotest period of antiquity, divination form i lar science, intimately allied to religion, and furnished with peculiar rules and regulations, more or le skilfui and ingenious, in proportion to the state of civilization of the people by whom it was practised. But of alt the ua lions of antiquity there were none who, notwithstanding their great learning and refinement, cultivated the science of divination with such enthusiasm as the Greeks and Romans. Independently of their credulity with regard to auguries and oracles, which may be termed the higher divination, the most trillim: incidents supplied them With the occasion to indulge in this propensity; and there was nothing in the wide range of human affairs from which they did not derive tokens of futurity. To cumin or even the chief objects gf divination among the ancients. would far exceed our prescribed limits. Under: ent heads, as Belomancy, Neckomancy, , the will find a notice of the principal of them; and for the rest he may consult with advantage Cicero, De Div in at i one See Oracle. DIVINE RIGHT, THE, OF KINGS, In Politics, means the absolute and unqualified claim of sovereigns on the obedience of the people; insomuch thai, although they may themselves submit to restrictions on their authority, yet subjects endeavouring to enforce those restrictions by resistance to their unlawful acts are guilty of a sin. This doctrine, so celebrated In English constitutional history, has been a erted on very different grounds. Hobbes (De Civ.) deduced the absolute authority of kings from the supposed social contract, whereby men parted absolutely with their natural rights in exchange for protection. But the fashionable political writers and theologians of the times both of Charles I. and II. (in the latter I Robert Filmer, author of the Patriarch a, may be more especially cited, on account of his having been directly an swered by Leslie), maintained that government had an ex istence before property, and before any suppost contract could took place; that it originated in the patriarchal sway, which was succeeded by the regal, and that no othet was authorized by Scripture. See also the Convo cat i or. Book of 1603; Archbishop Leslie on t.'ie Pov.er of the Prince; Sherlock's Case of Resistance to Supreme Pinr.eim, 1681; Mackenzie's Jus liegium, 1683. The same princ: pies were practically adopted by the Jacobites, when they maintained the divine right of the expelled sovereign, and afterwards of his descendants, by hereditary title. As to the views of modern high church 'SJivines on the subject- [s. 371]