miracles; and hence, wherever there are works wrought which absolutely surpass the powers of nature, there are likely to be others which surpass its ordinary action. It would be no cause for surprise if, as the destruction of Sodom is said to have arisen from volcanic influence, so in the multitude of cures which the Apostles effected some were solely attributable to natural, but unusual, effects of faith. And if Providence sometimes makes use of natural principles even when miracles seem intended as evidence of His immediate presence, much more is He likely to intermingle the ordinary and the extraordinary, when His object is not to prove a revelation, to accredit a messenger, or to certify a doctrine, but to confirm or encourage the faithful, or to rouse the attention of unbelievers. And it will be impossible to draw the line between the two; and the possibility of explaining some of them on natural principles will unjustly prejudice the mind against accounts of those which cannot be so explained.

65. Moreover, as Scripture expressly shows us, wherever there is miraculous power, there will be curious and interested bystanders who would fain "purchase the gift of God" for their own aggrandisement, and "cast out devils in the Name of Jesus,” and who counterfeit what they have not really to exhibit, and gain credit and followers among the ignorant and P Le Moyne Miracl. pp. 486, 502. Douglas' Crit. p. 93, etc.

perverse. The impostures, then, of various kinds which from the first hour abounded in the Church a prove as little against the truth of her miracles as against the canonicity of her Scriptures. Yet here too pretensions on the part of worthless men will be sure to scandalize inquirers, and the more so if, as is not unlikely, such pretenders manage to ally themselves with the Saints, and have an historical position in the fight which is made for the integrity or purity of the faith; yet, St. Paul was not less an Apostle, nor have Confessors and Doctors been less his successors, because "as they have gone to prayer" a spirit of Python has borne witness to them as "the servants of the most high God," and the teachers of "the way of salvation."

66. Nor is it any fair argument against Ecclesiastical miracles, that for the most part they have a legendary air, while the miracles contained in Scripture are on the contrary so soberly, so gravely, so exactly stated; unless indeed it is an absurdity to contemplate a gift of miracles without an attendant gift of inspiration. to record them. Were it not that the Evangelists were divinely guided, doubtless we should have in Scripture that confused mass of truth and fiction together, which the Apocryphal Gospels exhibit, and to which St. Luke seems to allude. I repeat, the character of facts is not changed because they are incor

a Vid. Acts viii. 9; xvi. 17; xix. 13. Vid. Lucian. Peregr. etc. ap. Middlet. Inqu. p. 23.

174 Internal Character of Ecclesiastical Miracles.

rectly reported; distance of time and place only does injury to the record of them. The Scripture miracles were in themselves what they are to us now, at the very time that the world was associating them with the prodigies of Jewish strollers, heathen magicians and astrologers, and idolatrous rites; they would have been thus associated to this day, had not inspiration interposed; yet, in spite of this, they would have been deserving our serious attention as now, so far as we were able to separate the truth from the falsehood. And such is the state in which Ecclesiastical miracles actually do come to us, because inspiration was not continued; they are dimly seen in twilight and amid shadows; let us not, then, quarrel with them on account of a characteristic which is but the necessary consequence of external circumstances.

CHAPTER IV.

67.

ON THE STATE OF THE ARGUMENT IN BEHALF

OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL MIRACLES.

ARIOUS able writers, Leslie, Paley, and

VARIOUS

Douglas, have laid down certain tests or criteria of matters of fact, which may serve as guarantees that the miracles really took place which are recorded in Scripture. They consider these criteria to be of so rigid a nature that an alleged event which satisfies them must necessarily have occurred, and that, as their argument seems to imply, however great its antecedent improbability. Thus they reply to objections such as Hume's drawn from the uniformity of nature; not meeting them directly, but rather superseding the necessity of considering them; for what is proved to be true, need not be proved to be possible. Hume scruples not to use "miracle" and "impossibility" as convertible terms; Leslie before him,

"What have we to oppose to such a cloud of witnesses but the absolute impossibility or miraculous nature of the events which they relate?" (Essay on Miracles.)

and Douglas after him, seem to answer, "Would you believe a miracle if you saw it? Now we are prepared to offer evidence, if not as strong, still as convincing, as ocular demonstration." Thus they escape from the abstract argument by a controversial method of a singularly practical, and as it may be called, English character.

68. It would be well if such writers stopped here, but it was hardly to be expected. Disputants are always exposed to the temptation of being over-candid towards objections which they think they have outrun; they admit as facts or truths what they have shown to be irrelevant as arguments. Thus, even were there nothing of a kindred tone of mind in Hume, who has assailed the Scripture miracles, and in some of our friends who have defended them, it might have been anticipated that the consciousness of possessing an irresistible weapon in the contest would have led us to treat the arguments of our opponents with a dangerous generosity. But, unhappily, there is much in Protestant habits of thought actually to dispose our writers to defer to a rationalistic principle of reasoning, the force of which they have managed to evade in the particular case. Hence, though they are earnest in their protest against Hume's summary rejection of all miraculous histories whatever, they make admissions, which only do not directly tell against the principal Scripture miracles, and do tell against all others.