as to imagine that she could be accounted by professing Christians a school of error, and a workshop of fraud and imposture. They wrote with the confidence that they were Christians, and that those to whom they transmitted the Gospel would not call them the ministers of Antichrist.

CHAPTER V.

ON THE EVIDENCE FOR PARTICULAR ALLEGED

MIRACLES.

T does not strictly fall within the scope of

107. IT

this Essay to pronounce upon the truth or falsehood of this or that miraculous narrative as it occurs in Ecclesiastical History; but only to furnish such general considerations as may be useful in forming a decision in particular cases. Yet considering the painful perplexity which many feel when left entirely to their own judgments in important matters, it may be allowable to go a step further, and without ruling open questions this way or that, to throw off the abstract and unreal character which attends a course of reasoning, by setting down the evidence for and against certain miracles as we meet with them. Moreover, so much has been said in the foregoing pages in behalf of the Ecclesiastical Miracles, antecedently considered, that it may be hastily inferred that all miraculous relations and reports should be admitted unhesitatingly and indiscriminately, without any attempt at separating truth from falsehood, or suspense

of judgment, or variation in the reliance placed in them one with another, or reserve or measure in the open acknowledgment of them. And such an examination of particular instances, as is proposed, may give opportunity to one or two additional remarks of a general character for which no place has hitherto been found.

108. An inquirer, then, should not enter upon the subject of the miracles reported or alleged in ecclesiastical history, without being prepared for fiction and exaggeration in the narrative, to an indefinite extent. This cannot be insisted on too often; nothing but the gift of inspiration could have hindered it. Nay, he must not expect that more than a few can be exhibited with evidence of so cogent and complete a character as to demand his acceptance; while a great number of them, as far as the evidence goes, are neither certainly true nor certainly false, but have very various degrees of probability viewed one with another; all of them recommended to his devout attention by the circumstance that others of the same family have been proved to be true, and all prejudiced. by his knowledge that so many others on the contrary are certainly not true. It will be his wisdom, then, not to reject or scorn accounts of miracles, where there is a fair chance of their being true; but to allow himself to be in suspense, to raise his mind to Him of whom they may possibly be telling to "stand in awe,

and sin not," and to ask for light,—yet to do no more; not boldly to put forward what, if it be from God, yet has not been put forward by Him. What He does in secret, we must think over in secret; what He has "openly showed in the sight of the heathen," we must publish abroad, “crying aloud, and sparing not." An alleged miracle is not untrue because it is unproved; nor is it excluded from our faith because it is not admitted into our controversy. Some are for our conviction, and these we are to "confess with the mouth" as well as "believe with the heart; " others are for our comfort and encouragement, and these we are to "keep, and ponder them in our heart," without urging them upon unwilling ears.

109. No one should be surprised at the admission that few of the Ecclesiastical Miracles are attended with an evidence sufficient to subdue our reason, because few of the Scripture Miracles are furnished with such an evidence. When a fact comes recommended to us by arguments which do not admit of an answer, when plain and great difficulties are in the way of denying it, and none, or none of comparative importance, in the way of admitting it, it may be said to subdue our reason. Thus Apologists for Christianity/ challenge unbelievers to produce an hypothesis sufficient to account for its doctrines, its rise, and its success, short of its truth; thus Lord Lyttelton analyses the possible motives and principles of the human

mind, in order to show that St. Paul's conversion admits of but one explanation, viz., that it was supernatural; thus writers on Prophecy appeal to its fulfilment, which they say can be accounted for by referring it to a Divine inspiration, and in no other way. Leslie, Paley, and others have employed themselves on similar arguments in defence of Revealed Religion. I am not saying how far arguments of a bold, decisive, and apparently demonstrative character, however great their value, are always the deepest and most satisfactory; but they are those which in this day are the most popular; they are those, the absence of which is made an objection to the Ecclesiastical Miracles. It is right then to remind those who consider this objection as fatal to these miracles, that the Miracles of Scripture are for the most part exposed to the same. If the miracles of Church History cannot be defended by the arguments of Leslie, Lyttelton, Paley, or Douglas, how many of the Scripture miracles satisfy their conditions? Some infidel authors advise us to accept no miracles which would not have a verdict in their favour in a court of justice; that is, they employ against Scripture a weapon which Protestants would confine to attacks upon the Church; as if moral and religious questions required legal proofs, and evidence were the test of truth.

IIO. It is true that the Scripture miracles were, for the most part, evidence of a Divine Revelation at the