5. Ecclesiastical Miracles[Note 1] {416} [What is the use of going on with this Writer's criticisms upon me, when I am confined to the dull monotony of exposing and oversetting him again and again, with a persistence, which many will think merciless, and few will have the interest to read? Yet I am obliged to do so, lest I should seem to be evading difficulties. Now as to Miracles. [Note 2]] Catholics believe that they [Note 3] happen in any age of the Church, though not for the same purposes, in the same number, or with the same evidence, as in Apostolic times. The Apostles wrought them in evidence of their divine mission; and with this object they have been sometimes wrought by Evangelists of countries since, as even Protestants allow. Hence we hear of them in the history of St. Gregory in Pontus, and St. Martin in Gaul; and in their case, as in that of the Apostles, they were both numerous and clear. As they are granted to Evangelists, so are they granted, though in less measure and evidence, to other holy men; and as holy men are not found equally at all times and in all places, therefore miracles are in some places and times more than in others. And since, generally, they are granted to faith and prayer, therefore in a country in which faith and prayer abound, they will be more likely to occur, than where and when faith and prayer are not; so that their occurrence is irregular. And further, as faith and prayer obtain miracles, so still more commonly do they gain from above the ordinary interventions of Providence; and, as it is often very difficult to distinguish between a providence and a miracle, and there will be more providences than miracles, hence it will happen that many occurrences will be called {417} miraculous, which, strictly speaking, are not such, and [Note 4] not more than providential mercies, or what are sometimes called "graces" [Note 5] or "favours." Persons, who believe all this, in accordance with Catholic teaching, as I did and do, they, on the report of a miracle, will of necessity, the necessity of good logic, be led to say, first, "It may be," and secondly, "But I must have good evidence in order to believe it." <1.> It may be [Note 6], because miracles take place in all ages; it must be clearly proved, because perhaps after all it may be only a providential mercy, or an exaggeration, or a mistake, or an imposture. Well, this is precisely what I have said, which this Writer considers [Note 7] so irrational. I have [Note 8] said, as he quotes me, [p. 41,] "In this day, and under our present circumstances, we can only reply, that there is no reason why they should not be." Surely this is good logic, provided that miracles do occur in all ages; and so again is it logical to say [Note 9], "There is nothing, primâ facie, in the miraculous accounts in question, to repel a properly taught or religiously disposed mind." What is the matter with this statement? My assailant does not pretend to say what the matter is, and he cannot; but he expresses a rude, unmeaning astonishment. [Next, I stated what evidence there is for the miracles of which I was speaking; what is the harm of that? He observes, "What evidence Dr. Newman requires, he makes evident at once. He at least will fear for himself, and swallow the whole as it comes."—pp. 41-2. What random abuse is this, or, to use his own words of me just before, what "stuff and nonsense!" What is it I am "swallowing"? "the whole" what? the evidence? or the miracles? I have swallowed neither, nor implied any such thing. Blot twenty-six.] But to return: I have just said that a Catholic's state of mind, of logical necessity, will be, "It may be a miracle [Note 10], {418} but it has to be proved["]. What has to be proved? 1. That the event occurred as stated, and is not a false report or an exaggeration. 2. That it is clearly miraculous, and not a mere providence or answer to prayer within the order of nature. What is the fault of saying this? The inquiry is parallel to that which is made about some extraordinary fact in secular history. Supposing I hear that King Charles II. died a Catholic, I should [Note 11] say, [1.] It may be[. 2.] <but> What is your proof? Accordingly, in the passage which this writer [Note 12] quotes, I observe, "Miracles are the kind of facts proper to ecclesiastical history, just as instances of sagacity or daring, personal prowess, or crime, are the facts proper to secular history." What is the harm of this? [Note 13] [[Note 14] But this writer says, "Verily his [Dr. Newman's [Note 15]] idea of secular history is almost as degraded as his idea of ecclesiastical," p. 41, and he ends with this muddle of an Ipse dixit! Blot twenty-seven. [In like manner, about the Holy Coat at Trèves, he says of me, "Dr. Newman ... seems hardly sure of the authenticity of the Holy Coat." Why need I be, more than I am sure that Richard III. murdered the little princes? If I have not means of making up my mind one way or the other, surely my most logical course is "not to be sure." He continues, "Dr. Newman 'does not see why it may not have been what it professes to be.'" Well, is not that just what this Writer would say of a great number of the facts recorded in secular history? is it not what he would be obliged to say of much that is told us about the armour and other antiquities in the Tower of London? To this I alluded in the passage from which he quotes; but he has garbled that passage, and I must show it. He quotes me to this effect: "Is the Tower of London shut against sight-seers because the coats of mail or pikes there may have half-legendary tales connected with them? why then may not the country people come up in joyous {419} companies, singing and piping, to see the holy coat at Trèves?" On this he remarks, "To see, forsooth! to worship, Dr. Newman would have said, had he known (as I take for granted he does not) the facts of that imposture." Here, if I understand him, he implies that the people came up, not only to see, but to worship, and that I have slurred over the fact that their coming was an act of religious homage, that is, what he would call "worship." Now, will it be believed that, so far from concealing this, I had carefully stated it in the sentence immediately preceding, and he suppresses it? I say, "The world pays civil honour to it [a jewel said to be Alfred's [Note 16]] on the probability; we pay religious honour to relics, if so be, on the probability. Is the Tower of London," I proceed, "shut," &c. Blot twenty-eight. These words of mine, however, are but one sentence in a long argument, conveying the Catholic view on the subject of ecclesiastical miracles; and, as it is carefully worked out, and very much to the present point, and will save me doing over again what I could not do better or more fully now, if I set about it, I shall make a very long extract from the Lecture in which it occurs, and so bring this Head to an end. The argument, I should first observe, which is worked out, is this, that Catholics set out with a definite religious tenet as a first principle, and Protestants with a contrary one, and that on this account it comes to pass that miracles are credible to Catholics and incredible to Protestants. "We affirm that the Supreme Being has wrought miracles on earth ever since the time of the Apostles; Protestants deny it. Why do we affirm, why do they deny? We affirm it on a first principle, they deny it on a first principle; and on either side the first principle is made to be decisive of the question ... Both they and we start with the miracles of the Apostles; and then their first principle or presumption against our miracles is this, 'What God did once, He is not likely to do again;' while {420} our first principle or presumption for our miracles is this; 'What God did once, He is likely to do again.' They say, It cannot be supposed He will work many miracles; we, It cannot be supposed He will work few. "The Protestant, I say, laughs at the very idea of miracles or supernatural powers as occurring at this day; his first principle is rooted in him; he repels from him the idea of miracles; he laughs at the notion of evidence; one is just as likely as another; they are all false. Why ? because of his first principle, There are no miracles since the Apostles. Here, indeed, is a short and easy way of getting rid of the whole subject, not by reason, but by a first principle which he calls reason. Yes, it is reason, granting his first principle is true; it is not reason, supposing his first principle is false. "There is in the Church a vast tradition and testimony about miracles; how is it to be accounted for? If miracles can take place, then the fact of the miracle will be a natural explanation of the report, just as the fact of a man dying accounts satisfactorily for the news that he is dead; but the Protestant cannot so explain it, because he thinks miracles cannot take place; so he is necessarily driven, by way of accounting for the report of them, to impute that report to fraud. He cannot help himself. I repeat it; the whole mass of accusations which Protestants bring against us under this head, Catholic credulity, imposture, pious frauds, hypocrisy, priestcraft, this vast and varied superstructure of imputation, you see, all rests on an assumption, on an opinion of theirs, for which they offer no kind of proof. What then, in fact, do they say more than this, If Protestantism be true, you Catholics are a most awful set of knaves? Here, at least, is a most sensible and undeniable position. "Now, on the other hand, let me take our own side of the question, and consider how we ourselves stand relatively to the charge made against us. Catholics, then, hold the mystery of the Incarnation; and the Incarnation is the most stupendous event which ever can take place on earth; and after it and henceforth, I do not see how we can scruple at any miracle on the mere ground of its being unlikely to happen ... When we start with assuming that {421} miracles are not unlikely, we are putting forth a position which lies embedded, as it were, and involved in the great revealed fact of the Incarnation. So much is plain on starting; but more is plain too. Miracles are not only not unlikely, but they are positively likely; and for this simple reason, because for the most part, when God begins, He goes on. We conceive, that when He first did a miracle, He began a series; what He commenced, He continued: what has been, will be. Surely this is good and clear reasoning. To my own mind, certainly, it is incomparably more difficult to believe that the Divine Being should do one miracle and no more, than that He should do a thousand; that He should do one great miracle only, than that He should do a multitude of lesser besides ... If the Divine Being does a thing once, He is, judging by human reason, likely to do it again. This surely is common sense. If a beggar gets food at a gentleman's house once, does he not send others thither after him? If you are attacked by thieves once, do you forthwith leave your windows open at night? … Nay, suppose you yourselves were once to see a miracle, would you not feel the occurrence to be like passing a line? would you, in consequence of it, declare, 'I never will believe another if I hear of one?' would it not, on the contrary, predispose you to listen to a new report? … "When I hear the report of a miracle, my first feeling would be of the same kind as if it were a report of any natural exploit or event. Supposing, for instance, I heard a report of the death of some public man; it would not startle me, even if I did not at once credit it, for all men must die. Did I read of any great feat of valour, I should believe it, if imputed to Alexander or Cœur de Lion. Did I hear of any act of baseness, I should disbelieve it, if imputed to a friend whom I knew and loved. And so in like manner were a miracle reported to me as wrought by a Member of Parliament, or a Bishop of the Establishment, or a Wesleyan preacher, I should repudiate the notion: were it referred to a saint, or the relic of a saint, or the intercession of a saint, I should not be startled at it, though I might not at once believe it. And I certainly should be right in this conduct, supposing my First Principle be true. {422} Miracles to the Catholic are historical facts, and nothing short of this; and they are to be regarded and dealt with as other facts; and as natural facts, under circumstances, do not startle Protestants, so supernatural, under circumstances, do not startle the Catholic. They may or may not have taken place in particular cases; he may be unable to determine which, he may have no distinct evidence; he may suspend his judgment, but he will say 'It is very possible;' he never will say 'I cannot believe it.' "Take the history of Alfred; you know his wise, mild, beneficent, yet daring character, and his romantic vicissitudes of fortune. This great king has a number of stories, or, as you may call them, legends told of him. Do you believe them all? no. Do you, on the other hand, think them incredible? no. Do you call a man a dupe or a block-head for believing them? no. Do you call an author a knave or a cheat who records them? no. You go into neither extreme, whether of implicit faith or of violent reprobation. You are not so extravagant; you see that they suit his character, they may have happened: yet this is so romantic, that has so little evidence, a third is so confused in dates or in geography, that you are in matter of fact indisposed towards them. Others are probably true, others certainly. Nor do you force every one to take your view of particular stories; you and your neighbour think differently about this or that in detail, and agree to differ. There is in the museum at Oxford, a jewel or trinket said to be Alfred's; it is shown to all comers; I never heard the keeper of the museum accused of hypocrisy or fraud for showing, with Alfred's name appended, what he might or might not himself believe to have belonged to that great king; nor did I ever see any party of strangers who were looking at it with awe, regarded by any self-complacent bystander with scornful compassion. Yet the curiosity is not to a certainty Alfred's. The world pays civil honour to it on the probability; we pay religious honour to relics, if so be, on the probability. Is the Tower of London shut against sight-seers, because the coats of mail and pikes there may have half-legendary tales connected with them? why then may not the country people come up in joyous companies, singing and piping, to see {423} the Holy Coat at Trèves? There is our Queen again, who is so truly and justly popular; she roves about in the midst of tradition and romance; she scatters myths and legends from her as she goes along; she is a being of poetry, and you might fairly be sceptical whether she had any personal existence. She is always at some beautiful, noble, bounteous work or other, if you trust the papers. She is doing alms-deeds in the Highlands; she meets beggars in her rides at Windsor; she writes verses in albums, or draws sketches, or is mistaken for the house-keeper by some blind old woman, or she runs up a hill as if she were a child. Who finds fault with these things? he would be a cynic, he would be white-livered, and would have gall for blood, who was not struck with this graceful, touching evidence of the love her subjects bear her. Who could have the head, even if he had the heart, who could be so cross and peevish, who could be so solemn and perverse, as to say that some of these stories may be simple lies, and all of them might have stronger evidence than they carry with them? Do you think she is displeased at them? Why then should He, the Great Father, who once walked the earth, look sternly on the unavoidable mistakes of His own subjects and children in their devotion to Him and His? Even granting they mistake some cases in particular, from the infirmity of human nature and the contingencies of evidence, and fancy there is or has been a miracle here and there when there is not, though a tradition, attached to a picture, or to a shrine, or a well, be very doubtful, though one relic be sometimes mistaken for another, and St. Theodore stands for St. Eugenius or St. Agathocles, still, once take into account our First Principle, that He is likely to continue miracles among us, which is as good as the Protestant's, and I do not see why He should feel much displeasure with us on account of this, or should cease to work wonders in our behalf. In the Protestant's view, indeed, who assumes that miracles never are, our thaumatology is one great falsehood; but that is his First Principle, as I have said so often, which he does not prove but assume. If he, indeed, upheld our system, or we held his principle, in either case he or we should be impostors; but though we should be partners {424} to a fraud if we thought like Protestants, we surely are not if we think like Catholics. "Such then is the answer I make to those who would urge against us the multitude of miracles recorded in our Saints' Lives and devotional works, for many of which there is little evidence, and for some next to none. We think them true in the same sense in which Protestants think the history of England true. When they say that, they do not mean to say that there are no mistakes, but no mistakes of consequence, none which alter the general course of history. Nor do they mean they are equally sure of every part; for evidence is fuller and better for some things than for others. They do not stake their credit on the truth of Froissart or Sully, they do not pledge themselves for the accuracy of Doddington or Walpole, they do not embrace as an Evangelist Hume, Sharon Turner, or Macaulay. And yet they do not think it necessary, on the other hand, to commence a religious war against all our historical catechisms, and abstracts, and dictionaries, and tales, and biographies, through the country; they have no call on them to amend and expurgate books of archæology, antiquities, heraldry, architecture, geography, and statistics, to re-write our inscriptions, and to establish a censorship on all new publications for the time to come. And so as regards the miracles of the Catholic Church; if, indeed, miracles never can occur, then, indeed, impute the narratives to fraud; but till you prove they are not likely, we shall consider the histories which have come down to us true on the whole, though in particular cases they may be exaggerated or unfounded. Where, indeed, they can certainly be proved to be false, there we shall be bound to do our best to get rid of them; but till that is clear, we shall be liberal enough to allow others to use their private judgment in their favour, as we use ours in their disparagement. For myself, lest I appear in any way to be shrinking from a determinate judgment on the claims of some of those miracles and relics, which Protestants are so startled at, and to be hiding particular questions in what is vague and general, I will avow distinctly, that, putting out of the question the hypothesis of unknown laws of nature (which is an evasion {425} from the force of any proof), I think it impossible to withstand the evidence which is brought for the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius at Naples, and for the motion of the eyes of the pictures of the Madonna in the Roman States. I see no reason to doubt the material of the Lombard crown at Monza; and I do not see why the Holy Coat at Trèves may not have been what it professes to be. I firmly believe that portions of the True Cross are at Rome and elsewhere, that the Crib of Bethlehem is at Rome, and the bodies of St. Peter and St. Paul also … Many men when they hear an educated man so speak, will at once impute the avowal to insanity, or to an idiosyncrasy, or to imbecility of mind, or to decrepitude of powers, or to fanaticism, or to hypocrisy. They have a right to say so, if they will; and we have a right to ask them why they do not say it of those who bow down before the Mystery of mysteries, the Divine Incarnation?" [Note 17]] In my Essay on Miracles of the year 1826, I proposed three questions about a professed miraculous occurrence, 1. is it antecedently probable? 2. is it in its nature certainly miraculous? 3. has it sufficient evidence? These are the three heads [Note 18] <in my Essay of 1842; and> under which [Note 19] I still wish to conduct the inquiry into the miracles of Ecclesiastical History. [Note 20] Top | Appendix 1 | Contents | Biographies | Works | Home Notes1. 5. (in heading)] Note B. On page 125. 2. For the passage in [ ] the following
paragraph was substituted in 1865: The writer, who gave occasion for
the foregoing Narrative, was very severe with me for what I had said
about Miracles in the Preface to the Life of St. Walburga. I observe
therefore as follows:— 3. they] miracles 4. and] that is, 5. "graces"] "grazie" 6. 1. It may be, This commenced a new
paragraph in 1865. 7. have] had here and in previous sentence 8. this Writer considers] the writer, who has
given occasion to this Volume, considered 9. is it logical to say] I am logical in saying 10. But to return: ... may be a miracle,
but] 2. But, though a miracle be conceivable, 11. should] am led to 12. Accordingly, ... harm of this? In 1865
these lines were transposed to follow the words rude, unmeaning
astonishment (p. 417, l. 23). 13. this writer] he 14. The passage in [ ], pp. 418-25
was not reprinted in 1865. 15. [Dr. Newman's] These are Dr. Newman's
[ ]. 16. These are the Author's [ ]. 17. The passage in [ ], pp. 418 to
425, was not reprinted in 1865. 18. These are the three heads] To these three
heads I had regard 19. which] them 20. Here followed, in 1865, the remainder of
Note B. On Ecclesiastical Miracles, pp. 407-15 of this book. Top | Appendix 1 | Contents | Biographies | Works | Home Newman Reader — Works of John Henry Newman |