Chapter 4. On the State of the Argument in behalf of the Ecclesiastical Miracles{175} 67. VARIOUS able writers, Leslie, Paley, and 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 [Note 1]; Leslie before him, {176} 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. {177} They tacitly grant that the antecedent improbability of miracles is at least so great that it can only be overcome by the strongest and most overpowering evidence; that second-best evidence does not even tend to prove them; that they are absolutely incredible up to the very moment that all doubt is decisively set at rest; that there can be no degrees of proof, no incipient and accumulating arguments to recommend them; that no relentings of mind or suspense of judgment is justifiable, as various fainter evidences are found to conspire in their favour; that they may be scorned as fictions, if they are not to be venerated as truths. 69. It looks like a mere truism to say that a fact is not disproved, because it is not proved; ten thousand occurrences are ever passing, which leave no record behind them, and do not cease to have been because they are forgotten. Yet Bishop Douglas, in his defence of the New Testament Miracles in answer to Hume, certainly assumes that no miracle is true which has not been proved so, or that it is safe to treat all miracles as false which are not recommended by evidence as strong as that which is adducible for the Miracles of Scripture. 70. In estimating statements of fact, it is usual to allow that various occurrences may be all true, which rest upon very different degrees of evidence. It does not prove that this passage of history is false and the {178} fabrication of impostors, because that passage is attested more distinctly and fully. Writers, however, like Douglas, are constantly reminding us that we need not receive the Ecclesiastical miracles, though we receive those of the New Testament. But the question is not whether we need not, but whether we ought not to receive the former, as well as the latter; and if it really is the case that we ought not, surely this must be in consequence of some positive reasons, not of a mere inferiority in the evidence. It is plain, then, that such reasoners, though they deny that an à priori ground can be maintained in fact against the miracles of Scripture, still at least agree with Hume in thinking such a ground does exist, and that it is conclusive against ecclesiastical miracles even antecedent to the evidence. 71. In the title of his Dissertation, Douglas promises us "a criterion by which the true miracles recorded in the New Testament are distinguished from the spurious miracles of the Pagans and Papists;" yet, when he proceeds to state in the body of the work the real object to which he addresses himself, we find that it relates quite as much to the evidence for either class of miracles as to the fact itself of their occurrence. He says, that whereas "the accounts which have been published to the world of miracles in general," are concerned with events which are supernatural either in themselves or under their circumstances, while the {179} latter class can be explained on natural principles, the former "may, from the insufficiency of the evidence produced in support of them, be justly suspected to have never happened." [Note 2] But how does insufficiency in the evidence create a positive prejudice against an alleged fact? How can things depend on our knowledge of them? This writer must mean that evidence of an inferior kind is insufficient to overcome a certain pre-existing objection which attaches to the very notion of these miracles; otherwise even slight evidence is sufficient to influence our minds, as Bishop Butler would tell us, so far as it is positive, and evidence of this defective kind may constitute the very trial of our obedience. 72. Douglas continues: "I flatter myself, that the evidence produced in their support,"—in support of the miracles of "Pagans and Papists,"—"will appear to be so very defective and insufficient, as justly to warrant our rejecting them as idle tales that never happened, and the inventions of bold and interested deceivers." [Note 3] There are many reasons to warrant our disbelieving alleged facts, and ascribing them to imposture; for instance, if the evidence is contradictory, or attended by suspicious circumstances; if the witnesses are of bad character, or strong inducements to fraud exist; but it is difficult to see how its mere {180} insufficiency or defectiveness is a justification of so decided a step. The direct effect of evidence is to create a presumption, according to its strength, in favour of the fact attested; it does not appear how it can create a presumption the other way. The real explanation of this mode of writing certainly must be, that the writer takes it for granted that all miraculous accounts are already in a manner self-condemned, as being miraculous, till they are proved; and that evidence offered for them, which does not amount to a proof, is but involved in that existing prejudice. There is no medium then; the testimony must either prevail or be scouted; it is certainly a fraud, if it is not an overpowering demonstration. 73. But the author in question scarcely leaves us in doubt of his meaning, when he avails himself of the following maxim of Dr. Middleton's: "I have already observed," he says, "that the testimony supporting [miracles] must be free from every suspicion of fraud and imposture. And the reason is this: the history of miracles (to make use of the words of an author whose authority you will think of some weight) is of a kind totally different from that of common events; the one to be suspected always of course without the strongest evidence to confirm it; the other to be admitted of course without as strong reason to suspect it. So that, wherever the evidence urged for miracles leaves grounds for a suspicion of fraud and imposition, {181} the very suspicion furnishes sufficient reasons for disbelieving them. And what I shall offer under this head will make it evident, that those miracles which the Protestant Christian thinks himself at liberty to reject have always been so insufficiently attested as to leave full scope for fraud and imposition." [Note 4] That is, we may ascribe a story to fraud, whenever it is not absolutely impossible so to ascribe it; we may summarily reject and vilify all evidence up to such evidence as is a moral demonstration, though to such we must immediately yield, because we cannot help it; and this as a matter "of course." All this surely implies the existence of some deep latent prejudice in the writer's mind against miraculous occurrences, considered in themselves; else it is not a reasonable mode of arguing. 74. The Bishop continues in the same strain to "lay down a few general rules by which we may try those pretended miracles, one and all, wherever they occur, and which may set forth the grounds on which we suspect {182} them false." [Note 5] And then, "by way of illustration," he selects three, telling us that we suspect them false, or "we may suspect them false," when the existing accounts of miracles were not published till long after the time when, or not at the place where, they are said to have occurred; or, at least, if it seems probable that they were suffered to get into circulation without examination at the time and place. Here of course he does but act up to Middleton's bold principle which he has adopted; he considers himself at liberty to bid defiance and offer resistance to all evidence, till he is fairly subdued by it, till it is impossible to doubt, and no merit to believe; while he would never reject or impute fraud to a record of ordinary events, merely because it was published in a foreign country, or a hundred years after the events in question, however he might justly consider such circumstances to weaken the force of the evidence. 75. In a subsequent page of his work he speaks still more pointedly: "When the reporters of miracles," he says, "content themselves with general assertions and vague claims to a miraculous power, without ever attempting to corroborate them by descending to particular facts, and leave us strangely in the dark as to the persons by whom, the witnesses before whom, and the objects upon whom these miraculous powers are said to be exercised, omitting every circumstance {183} necessary to be related by them before any inquiry can be made into the truth of the pretension; when miracles, I say, are reported in this unsatisfactory manner, (and instances of miracles reported on the spot by contemporary writers, in such a manner, might be mentioned,) in this case it would be the height of credulity to pay any regard to them in a distant age, because no regard could possibly be paid to them in their own." [Note 6] Yet it does not appear how this "unsatisfactory manner" in the report can touch the events reported; if they took place, they were before and quite independent of the evidence at present existing for them, be it greater or less; our knowledge or ignorance does not create or annihilate facts. 76. Now these passages from Bishop Douglas have been drawn out, not simply with a view of criticising him, but in order to direct attention to the fact which he illustrates, viz., that our feeling towards the Ecclesiastical Miracles turns much less on the evidence producible for them, than on our view concerning their antecedent probability. If we think such interpositions of Providence likely or not unlikely, there is quite enough evidence existing to convince us that they really do occur; if we think them as unlikely as they appear to Douglas, Middleton, and others, then even evidence as great as that which is producible for the miracles of Scripture would not be too much, {184} nay, perhaps not enough, to conquer an inveterate, deep-rooted, and (as it may be called) ethical incredulity. 77. It shall here be assumed that this incredulity is a fault; and it is the result of a state of mind which has been prevalent among us for some generations, and from which we are now but slowly extricating ourselves. We have been accustomed to believe that Christianity is little more than a creed or doctrine, introduced into the world once for all, and then left to itself, after the manner of human institutions, and under the same ordinary governance with them, stored indeed with hopes and fears for the future, and containing certain general promises of aid for this life, but unattended by any special Divine Presence or any immediately supernatural gift. To minds habituated to such a view of Revealed Religion, the miracles of ecclesiastical history must needs be a shock, and almost an outrage, disturbing their feelings and unsettling their most elementary notions and thoroughly received opinions. They are eager to find defects in the evidence, or appearances of fraud in the witnesses, as a relief to their perplexity, and as an excuse for rejecting, as if on the score of reason, what their heart and imagination have rejected already. Or they are too firmly persuaded of the absurdity, as they consider it, which such pretensions on the part of the Church involve, to be moved by them at all; and they content {185} themselves with coldly demanding to know points which cannot now be known, or to be satisfied about difficulties which never will be cleared up, before they can be asked to take interest in statements which they consider so unreasonable. And certainly they are both philosophical and religious in thus acting, granting that the Lord of all is present with Christians only in the way of nature, as with His creatures all over the earth. On the other hand, if we believe that Christians are under an extraordinary Dispensation, such as Judaism was, and that the Church is a supernatural ordinance, we shall in mere consistency be disposed to treat even the report of miraculous occurrences with seriousness, from our faith in a Present Power adequate to their production. Nay, if we only go so far as to realize what Christianity is, when considered merely as a creed, and what stupendous over-powering facts are involved in the doctrine of a Divine Incarnation, we shall feel that no miracle can be great after it, nothing strange or marvellous, nothing beyond expectation. 2. 78. All this applies to the view we shall take of the nature of the facts which are laid before us, as well as of the character of the evidence. If we disbelieve the divinity of the Church, then we shall do our best to deny that the facts attested are miraculous, even {186} admitting them to be true. "Though our not knowing on whom, or by whom, or before whom, the miracles recorded by the Fathers of the second and third centuries were wrought," says Douglas, "should be allowed not to destroy their credit (though this is a concession which very few will make ... ), yet the facts appealed to are of so ambiguous a kind, that, granting they did happen, it will remain to be decided, by a consideration of the circumstances attending the performance of them, whether there was any miracle in the case or no." [Note 7] Certainly it is a rule of philosophy to refer effects, if possible, to known causes, rather than to imagine a cause for the occasion; and, on the other hand, to be suspicious of alleged facts for which no cause can be assigned, or which are unaccountable. If, then, there is nothing in the Church more than in any other society of men, it is natural to attribute the miracles alleged to have been wrought in it to natural causes, where that is possible, and to disparage the evidence where it is not so. But if the Church be possessed of supernatural powers, it is not unnatural to refer to these the facts reported, and to feel the same disposition to heighten their marvellousness as otherwise is felt to explain it away. Thus our view of the evidence will practically be decided by our views of theology. There are two providential systems in operation among us, the visible and the invisible, intersecting, {187} as it were, each other, and having a certain territory in common; and in many cases we do not know the exact boundaries of each, as again we do not know the minute details of those facts which are ascribed by their reporters to a miraculous agency. For instance, faith may sometimes be a natural cause of recovery from sickness, sometimes a miraculous instrument; the application of oil may be a mere expedient of medical art, or parallel to the application of water in Baptism. The Martyrs have before now found red-hot iron, on its second application, even grateful to their seared limbs; on the other hand, cases of a similar kind are said to have occurred where religion was not in question, and where a divine interposition cannot be conjectured. Sudden storms and as sudden calms on the lake of Gennesareth might be of common occurrence; yet the particular circumstances under which the waters were quieted at our Lord's word may have been sufficient to convince beholders that it was a miracle. The Red Sea may have been ordinarily exposed to the influence of the East Wind, and nevertheless the separation of its waters, as described in the Book of Exodus, may have required a supernatural influence. In these and numberless other instances men will systematize facts in their own way, according to their knowledge, opinions, and wishes, as they are used to do in all matters which come before them; and they will refer them to {188} causes which they see or believe, in spite of their being referable to other causes about which they are ignorant or sceptical. 79. When, then, controversialists go through the existing accounts of ecclesiastical miracles, and explain one after another on the hypothesis of natural causes; when they resolve a professed vision into a dream, a possession into epilepsy or madness, a prophecy into a sagacious conjecture, a recovery into the force of imagination, they are but expressing their own disbelief in the Grace committed to the Church; and of course they are consistent in denying its outward triumphs, when they have no true apprehension of its inward power. Those, on the other hand, who realize that the bodies of the Saints were in their lifetime the Temples of the Holiest, and are hereafter to rise again, will feel no offence at the report of miracles wrought through them; nor ought those who believe in the existence of evil spirits to have any difficulty at the notion of demoniacal possession and exorcism. And it may be taken as a general truth, that where there is an admission of Catholic doctrines, there no prejudice will exist against the Ecclesiastical Miracles; while those who disbelieve the existence among us of the hidden Power, will eagerly avail themselves of every plea for explaining away its open manifestations. All that can be objected here is, that miracles which admit of this double reference to causes natural and supernatural, {189} taken by themselves and in the first instance, are not evidence of Revealed Religion; but I have nowhere maintained that they are. Yet, though not part of the philosophical basis of Christianity, they may be evidence still to those who admit the Divine Presence in the Church, and in proportion as they realize it; they may be evidence in combination with more explicit miracles, or when viewed all together in their cumulative force; they may confirm or remind of the Apostolic miracles; they may startle, they may spread an indefinite awe over certain transactions or doctrines; they may in various ways subserve the probation of individuals to whom they are addressed, more fully than occurrences of a more marked character. The mere circumstance that they do not carry their own explanation with them is no argument against them, unless we would surrender the most sacred and awful events of our religion to the unbeliever [Note 8]. As the admission of a Creator is necessary for the argumentative force of the miracles of Moses or St. Paul, so does the doctrine of a Divine Presence in the Church supply what is ambiguous in the miracles of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus or St. Martin. {190} 3. 80. The course of these remarks has now sufficiently shown that in drawing out the argument in behalf of ecclesiastical miracles, the main point to which attention must be paid is the proof of their antecedent probability [Note 9]. If that is established, the task is nearly accomplished. If the miracles alleged are in harmony with the course of Divine Providence in the world, and with the analogy of faith as contained in Scripture, if it is possible to account for them, if they are referable to a known cause or system, and especially if it can be shown that they are recognized, promised, or predicted in Scripture, very little positive evidence is necessary to induce us to listen to them or even accept them, if not one by one, at least viewed as a collective body. In that case they are but the natural effects of supernatural agency, and Middleton's canon, which Douglas, {191} as above quoted, adopts to their disadvantage, becomes their protection. Then "the history of miracles," instead of being "suspected always of course, without the strongest evidence to confirm it," is at first sight almost "to be admitted of course, without a strong reason to suspect it;" such suspicions as attach to it arising from our actual experience of fraud, not from difficulties in its subject matter. If "the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them;" if the Church is "the kingdom of heaven;" if our Lord is with His disciples "alway, even unto the end of the world;" if He promised His Holy Spirit to be to them what He Himself was when visibly present, and if miracles were one special token of His Presence when on earth; if moreover miracles are expressly mentioned as tokens of the promised Comforter; if St. Paul speaks of "mighty signs and wonders by the power of the Spirit of God," and of his "speech and preaching" being "in demonstration of the Spirit and of power," and of "diversities of gifts but the same Spirit," and of "healing," "working of miracles," and "prophecy," as among His gifts; surely we have no cause to be surprised at hearing supernatural events reported in any age, and though we may freely exercise our best powers of inquiry and judgment on such and such reports, as they come before us, yet this is very different from hearing them with prejudice, and examining them with contempt or insult. {192} 81. This Essay, indeed, is not the place for doctrinal discussions: there is one text, however, to which attention may be drawn, without deviating into theology, in consequence of what may be called its historical character, which on other accounts also makes it more to our purpose,—our Lord's charge to His disciples at the end of St. Mark's Gospel. It might in truth have been anticipated that, among the promises with which He animated His desponding disciples when He was leaving them, some mention would be made of those supernatural powers which had been the most ready proof of His own divinity, and the most awful of the endowments with which during His ministry He had invested them. Nor does He disappoint the expectation; for in the passage alluded to He distinctly announces a continuation of these pledges of His favour, and that without fixing the term of it. At the very time apparently when He said to them, "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world," He also made two announcements, one for this life, the other for the life to come. "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved," was for the future; and the present promise, which concerns us here, ran thus: "These signs shall follow them that believe; In My Name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they {193} shall recover." Now let us see what presumption is created or suggested by this passage in behalf of the miraculous passages of Ecclesiastical History as we have received them. 82. First, let it be observed, five gifts are here mentioned as specimens of our Lord's bequest to His disciples on His departure: exorcism, speaking with new tongues, handling serpents, drinking poison without harm, and healing the sick. When our Lord first sent out the Apostles to preach during His ministry, He had specified four: "Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils." Comparing these two passages together, we find that two gifts are common to both of them, and thereby stand out as the most characteristic and prominent constituents of the supernatural endowment. It is observable, again, that these two gifts, of which there is this repeated mention, are not so wonderful or so decisively miraculous as those of which mention only occurs in one of the two texts. The power of exorcism and of healing is committed by our Lord to the Apostles, both when He first calls them, and when He is leaving them; but they are promised the gift of tongues only on their second mission, and that of raising the dead only on the first. This does not prove that they could not raise the dead when our Lord had left them; indeed, we know in matter of fact that they had, and that they exercised, the power; but it is natural to suppose that a stress is laid on what is {194} mentioned twice, and to form thence some idea, in consequence, of the predominant character of their miraculous endowment, when it was actually brought into exercise. In accordance with this anticipation, whatever it is worth in itself, St. Matthew heads his report of our Lord's charge to His Apostles on their first mission with mention of these very two gifts, and these only: "And when He had called unto Him His twelve Disciples, He gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease." And in like manner when the Seventy are sent, these two gifts, and these only, are specified by St. Luke as imparted to them; our Lord saying to them, "Heal the sick," and they answering, "Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through Thy Name." 83. Further, when we turn to the history of the Book of Acts we find the general tenor of the Apostles' miracles to be just such as these passages in the Gospels would lead us to expect; that is, were a Jew or heathen of the day, who had a fair opportunity of witnessing their miracles, to be asked what those miracles consisted in, the general impression left by them on his mind, and the best account which he could give of them would be, that they were the healing the sick and casting out devils. We have indeed instances recorded of their raising the dead, but only two in the whole book, those of Tabitha and Eutychus; and of these {195} the latter was almost a private act, and wrought expressly for the comfort of the brethren, not for the conviction of unbelievers; and though the former was the means of converting many in the neighbourhood, yet it was wrought at Joppa, among a number of "widows" and "saints," not in Jerusalem, where the jealous eyes of enemies would have been directed upon it. In the same book there are three instances of the gift of tongues, at Pentecost, in Cornelius's house, and at Ephesus on the confirmation of St. John's disciples. There is one instance of protection from the bite of serpents, that of St. Paul at Melita. There is no instance of cleansing leprosy, or of drinking poison without harm. With this frugality in the display of their highest gifts is singularly contrasted the bountifulness of the Apostles in exercising their powers of healing and exorcising. "They brought forth the sick into the streets, and laid them on beds and couches, that at the least the shadow of Peter passing by might overshadow some of them. There came also a multitude out of the cities round about unto Jerusalem, bringing sick folks, and them that were vexed with unclean spirits; and they were healed every one." Again, when St. Philip went down to Samaria, and "the people with one accord gave heed unto those things which Philip spake, hearing and seeing the miracles which he did," what were the particular gifts which he exercised? the inspired writer continues, "For unclean spirits, crying with loud voice, came out {196} of many that were possessed with them; and many taken with palsies, and that were lame, were healed. And there was great joy in that city." Again, we read of St. Paul, in a later part of the same book, as has been already quoted in another connection, that "from his body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs or aprons, and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out of them." [Acts v. 15, 16; viii. 6-8; xix. 12.] 84. If there is one other characteristic gift in the Book of Acts in addition to these, it is the gift of visions and divine intimations. And, as if to make up for our Lord's silence concerning it in the Gospel of St. Mark, St. Peter opens the sacred history of the Acts with a reference to the Prophet Joel's promise of the time, when "their sons and their daughters should prophesy, and their young men should see visions, and their old men should dream dreams;" an announcement of which the narrative which follows abundantly records the fulfilment. St. Stephen sees our Lord before his martyrdom; the Angel directs St. Philip to go towards Gaza, and the Holy Spirit Himself bids him join himself to the Ethiopian's chariot; St. Paul is converted by a vision of our Lord; St. Peter has the vision of the clean and unclean beasts, and Cornelius is addressed by an Angel; Angels release first the Apostles, then St. Peter from prison; "a vision appeared to Paul in the night, there stood a man of Macedonia;" at Corinth Christ {197} "spake to Paul in the night by a vision, Be not afraid;" Agabus and St. Philip's four daughters prophesy; in prison "the Lord stood by Paul, and said, Be of good cheer;" on board ship an Angel stood by him, saying, "Fear not, Paul, thou must be brought before Cæsar." [Acts vii. 56; viii. 26, 29; ix. 3-6; x. 3, 10, etc.] 85. Such is the general character of the miracles of the Book of Acts; and next let it be observed, such is the character of our Lord's miracles also, as they would strike the bulk of spectators. He raises indeed the dead three times, He feeds the multitude in the desert, He cleanses the leprosy, He gives sight to the blind, on various but still definite occasions; but how different is the language used by the Evangelists when His powers of healing and exorcising are spoken of! We read of "a great multitude of people out of all Judea and Jerusalem, and from the sea coast of Tyre and Sidon, which came to hear Him and to be healed of their diseases; and they that were vexed with unclean spirits; and they were healed. And the whole multitude sought to touch Him; for there went virtue out of Him, and healed them all." Again, "Whithersoever He entered, into villages, or cities, or country, they laid the sick in the streets, and besought Him that they might touch if it were but the corner of His garment; and as many as touched Him were made whole." Again, "They brought unto Him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and {198} those that were possessed with devils, and those that were lunatic, and those that had the palsy; and He healed them." [Luke vi. 17-19; Mark vi. 56; Matt. iv. 24.] It may be added that of other miraculous occurrences in the Gospels none are more frequent than visions and voices, from the Angel which appeared to Zacharias to the vision of Angels seen by the women after our Lord's resurrection; as is obvious without proof. 86. It appears, then, that the two special powers which were characteristic, as of our Lord's miraculous working, so also of His Apostles after Him, were exorcism and healing; and moreover that these were in matter of fact the two gifts especially promised to the Apostles above other gifts. It appears, also, that if one other gift must be selected from the Gospels and Book of Acts as of greater prominence than the rest it will be the gift of visions; so that cures, exorcisms, and visions are on the whole the three distinguishing specimens of Divine Power, by which our Lord authenticated to the world the Religion He bestowed upon it. Now it has already been observed [Note 10] that these are the very three especially claimed by the Primitive Church; while, as to the more stupendous miracles of raising the dead, giving sight to the blind, cleansing lepers, and the like, of these certainly she affords instances also, but very rarely, as if after the {199} manner of Scripture. This surely is a remarkable coincidence; and is the rather to be dwelt upon, because those who consider the vagueness of the language with which the ecclesiastical miracles are attested, as a proof that they were merely the fabrication of fraud or credulity, have to explain how it was that, while the parties accused were exercising their powers of imagination or imposture, they did not embellish their pages with similar vague statements of miracles of a more awful character, even from the mere love of variety, instead of confining themselves to those which in appearance at least were shared with them by Jews and heathen. 87. Nor can it reasonably be urged that their acquaintance with Scripture suggested to them in this matter an imitation of the Divine procedure as there recorded; because Scripture does not on the face of it impress upon the reader the fact which has been here pointed out. The actual course of the events which Scripture relates is one thing, and the course of the narrative is another; for the sacred writers do not state events with that relative prominence in which they severally occurred in fact. Inspiration has interfered to select and bring into the foreground the most cogent instances of Divine interposition, and has identified them by a number of distinct details; on the other hand, it has covered up from us the "many other signs" which "Jesus did in the presence of His disciples," "the which, if they should be written every {200} one, even the world itself," as St. John speaks, "could not contain the books that should be written." And doubtless there are doctrinal reasons also for this circumstance, if we had means of ascertaining them. But so it is, that the primâ facie appearance of the Gospel Miracles does not so correspond to that of the Ecclesiastical Miracles, as probably it would have corresponded, had St. John, for instance, given us a description of the second and third centuries, instead of St. Justin and Origen, or had Sulpicius described the Miracles of the Apostles at Jerusalem or Ephesus. 4. 88. And now, if this representation has any truth in it, if our Lord, in the passage of St. Mark in question, promised five gifts to His disciples, two of which were those of exorcism and healing; if these same two, distinguished in other places of the Gospels above the rest, are the prominent external signs of power in the history both of our Lord and of His Apostles; if these particular Miracles are the special instruments of the conversion of whole multitudes; if on account of the cures and exorcisms wrought by the twelve Apostles "believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women;" if on St. Philip's casting out devils, and curing palsy and lameness, "the people with one accord gave heed," and "there was great joy in that city;" if when an evil spirit had confessed, {201} "Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are ye?" "fear fell on them all," and "the Name of the Lord Jesus was magnified," and "the word of God grew mightily and prevailed;" what is to be said of those modern Apologists for Christianity who do their best to prove that these phenomena have nothing necessarily miraculous in them at all? So much is evident at once, that had they been the persons encountered by these miracles of the Apostles, had they been the Samaritans to whom St. Philip came, or the Ephesians who were addressed by St. Paul, they would have thought it their duty to have felt neither "much joy" with the one, nor "fear" with the other; and that, if Samaritans and Ephesians had acted on the modern view of what is rational and what is evidence, what sound judgment and what credulity, Christianity would not have made way and prospered, but we all should have been heathen at this day. 89. Bishop Douglas, for instance, observes, that the circumstance that the Fathers allow that "cures of diseases, particularly of demoniacs by exorcising them," "were exercised by pagans with the assistance of their demons and gods," and admit that "there were exorcists among the Jews and Gentiles, who by the use of certain forms of words, used as charms, and by the practice of certain rites, cast out devils, as well as the Christian exorcists," that this circumstance "some may think puts these feats of jugglers and impostors {202} upon the same footing of credibility with the works ascribed to Christians" [Note 11]:—why not with the works ascribed to Apostles? Again he urges, that "the cures ascribed to the prayers of Christians, to the imposition of their hands, etc., in those early times, might, for aught we know, be really brought about in a natural way, and be accounted for in the same way in which we have accounted for those ascribed to the Abbé Paris, and those attributed by the superstitious Papists to the intercession of the Saints":—perhaps the acute unbelievers of Corinth or Ephesus by a parallel argument justified their rejection of St. Paul. At Ephesus, when the demoniac leapt on the Jewish exorcists, "and overcame them, and prevailed against them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded," "fear" in consequence "fell on all the Jews and Greeks also dwelling at Ephesus;" but the Bishop would have taught them that "a few grimaces, wild gestures, disordered agitations, and blasphemous exclamations, suited to the character of the supposed infernal inhabitants, constitute all we know of their disease; and consequently, as all these symptoms are ambiguous, and may be assumed at pleasure by an impostor, a collusion between the exorcist and the person exorcised will account for the whole transaction, and every one who would avoid the character of being superstitiously credulous will naturally account for it in {203} this manner, rather than by supposing that any supernatural cause intervened." [Note 12] Such is this author's judgment of one of the two exhibitions of miraculous power with which our Saviour specially and singularly gifted His Apostles, and by which they, in matter of fact, converted the world. The question is not, whether in particular cases its apparent exercise may not be suspicious and inconclusive, for Douglas is speaking against the gift as such; so that a heathen of Ephesus would have been justified on his principles in demanding of St. Paul to see a man raised from the dead, before he believed in Christ. And such was the nature of the demand made by Autolycus upon St. Theophilus at the end of the second century, and Middleton and Gibbon justify it, and seem moreover to consider the mere silence of Theophilus to be a proof that such a miracle was utterly unknown in his days, as if resurrections abounded in the Acts [Note 13]. 90. Again, St. Peter cured Æneas of the palsy, "and all that dwelt at Lydda and Saron saw him, and turned to the Lord;" but the Bishop would have {204} advised them to wait till they had seen Tabitha raised; because "palsies, it is well known, arise from obstructions of the spirits that circulate in the nerves, so that their influx into the muscles is impeded, or from obstructions of the arterious blood. Nothing more, therefore, was required here than to remove that obstruction." [Note 14] 91. We read in Scripture of the sudden cure of the dropsy; but the Bishop observes, "That enthusiasm should warm its votaries to a holy madness, and excite the wildest transports and agitations throughout their whole frame, is an effect which, in a country so fruitful of this production as is ours (though enthusiasm be the product of every soil and of every religion), must be consistent with the experience of many." [Note 15] Then he adds, speaking of some particular cases: "As one of the curative indications of a dropsy is an evacuation of the water by perspiration, and as the medicines administered by the physician aim to produce this effect, ... what could be more {205} likely to excite such copious perspiration than the enthusiastic transport with which they prayed, and the convulsive struggles which shook their whole frame?" [Note 16] 92. Peter's wife's mother was raised from her fever at once, so as even to be able to "minister" to the holy company; but Bishop Douglas would have suggested to the Pharisees that, had there been more raising of the dead, more restoring of sight to the blind, such cures might have been dispensed with, because, where minds are "heated and inflamed, and every faculty of their souls burning with the raptures of devout joy and enthusiastic confidence," it is "far from being impossible ... that in some cases a change might be wrought on the habit of the body;" [Note 17] for "in this case the nervous system is strongly acted upon, and fresh and violent motions are communicated to the fluids;" [Note 18] and "such agitations necessarily suppose that the velocity of the fluids" is "greatly accelerated;" [Note 19] and "gouts, palsies, fevers of all kinds, and even ruptures, have been thus cured." [Note 20] It certainly does not appear why a class of miracles which was, in matter of fact, the principal means of the conversion of the world in the age of the Apostles, should, when professed in the second and third centuries, {206} be put aside by our Apologists on the excuse that "powers were not appealed to, less ambiguous in their nature," nor "other works performed, which admit of no solution from natural causes, and were incapable of being the effects of fraud and collusion." [Note 21] 93. This being the language of so respectable a writer as Bishop Douglas, the following sentiments from Middleton cannot surprise us. Of miracles of healing he says: "In truth, this particular claim of curing diseases miraculously affords great room for … delusion and a wide field for the exercise of craft. Every man's experience has taught him that diseases thought fatal and desperate are oft surprisingly healed of themselves, by some secret and sudden effort of nature impenetrable to the skill of man; but to ascribe this presently to a miracle, as weak and superstitious minds are apt to do, to the prayers of the living or the intercessions of the dead, is what neither sound reason nor true religion will justify." [Note 22] Of exorcisms: that certain circumstances "concerning the speeches and confessions of the devils, their answering to all questions, owning themselves to be wicked spirits, etc., … may not improbably be accounted for, either by the disordered state of the patient, answering wildly and at random to any questions proposed, or by the arts of imposture and contrivance between the parties concerned in the {207} act." [Note 23] And of visions: "To declare freely what I think, whatever ground there might be in those primitive ages either to reject or to allow the authority of those visions, yet, from all the accounts of them that remain to us in these days, there seems to be the greatest reason to suspect that they were all contrived, or authorized at least, by the leading men of the Church." [Note 24] 94. Such, then, is the opinion of Christian Apologists concerning the nature of those miracles to which our Lord mainly entrusted the cause of His sacred truth; for, however great the differences may be between the Scripture and Ecclesiastical miracles, viewed as a whole, so far is certain, that the actual and immediate instruments by which the world was convinced of the Gospel were those which these writers distinctly discredit as of an ambiguous and suspicious character. And, if it be asked whether, after all, such miracles are not suspicious, whatever be the consequence of admitting it, I answer, that they are suspicious to read of, but not to see. The particular circumstances of an exorcism, which no narrative can convey, might bring home to the mind a conviction that it was a divine work, quite sufficient for conversion; and much more a number of such awful exhibitions. Generalized statements and abstract arguments are poor representations of fact; {208} but, as they are used to serve the purpose of those who would disparage Saints, it is necessary to show that they can be turned by unbelievers as plausibly, though as sophistically, against Apostles. 5. 95. To proceed. The same words of our Saviour which have introduced these remarks in defence of the nature of the ecclesiastical gifts will suggest an explanation of certain difficulties in the mode of their exercise. Christ says, first, "He that believeth shall be saved;" and then, "These signs shall follow them that believe." Here it is obvious to remark, that the power of working miracles is not promised in these words to the preachers of the Gospel merely, but to the converts [Note 25]. It is not said, "Preach the Gospel to {209} every creature, and these signs shall follow your preaching," but "these signs shall follow them that believe," the same persons to whom salvation is promised in the verse preceding [Note 26]. And further, whereas final salvation is there represented as a personal gift, the gift of miracles is not granted here to "him that believeth," but to "them that believe." And the {210} particular word used, which the Authorized Version translates "follow," suggests or encourages the notion that the miracles promised were to attend upon or to be collateral with their faith, as general indications and tokens [Note 27]; not indeed that they were to be the result of every act of faith and in every person, but that on the whole, where men were united together by faith in the name of Christ, there miracles would also be wrought by Him who was "in the midst of them." Thus the gift was rather in the Church than of the Church. 96. An important text already quoted teaches us the same thing: "I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions: and also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out My Spirit." The young, the old, the bond and the free, all flesh, all conditions of men, were to be the recipients of the miraculous illuminations of the Gospel. The event exactly accomplished the prediction. In the very opening of the New Dispensation, not only Zacharias the Priest, but Mary the young {211} maiden, Elizabeth the matron, Anna the widow of fourscore and four years, and just and aged Simeon, were inspired to bear witness to it. Again, in the Book of Acts, while Peter was preaching to Cornelius, "the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word." At Ephesus, when St. Paul had laid his hands on John's disciples, the Holy Ghost came on them, "and all the men were about twelve." Moreover, we hear of St. Philip's "four daughters, virgins, which did prophesy." And the disorders of the Church of Corinth plainly show that the miraculous gifts were not confined to one or two principal persons of high station or spiritual attainments, but were "dispersed abroad" with a bountiful hand over all the faithful. The same inference may be drawn from St. Peter's direction, "As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God." Such, then, is the Scripture account of the bestowal of the miraculous powers in the Apostolic age; and, I repeat, it serves to remove certain misapprehensions and objections which have been made to their exhibition as instanced in the times that follow. 97. For instance, there seems a fallacy in the mode in which a phrase is used, which often occurs in the controversy. It has been contended that there is no "standing gift of miracles" in the Church; and then it is concluded that therefore no manifestation of {212} Divine Power takes place in it, but those rare and solemn interpositions which we have reason to think actually occur even in heathen countries. "The position which I affirm," says Middleton, "is that, after the days of the Apostles, no standing power of miracles was continued to the Church, to which they might perpetually appeal for the conviction of unbelievers. Yet all my antagonists treat my argument as if it absolutely rejected everything of a miraculous kind, whether wrought within the Church by the agency of men, or on any other occasion by the immediate hand of God." [Note 28] Now, there is an ambiguity in the words "standing power," according as we take it to mean a capacity committed to particular persons and exercised by them, or a Divine Agency generally operating in the Church and among Christians, as its Almighty Author wills. Middleton denies the standing power in its former sense; but in our Lord's promise, as well as in St. Paul's description of the presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church, the latter is the prominent idea. Middleton speaks, just after the passage above quoted, of "the Church having no standing power of working" miracles, and elsewhere of a "standing power of working miracles, as exerted openly in the Church, for the conviction of unbelievers." [Note 29] Again, he speaks of the "opinion that after {213} the days of the Apostles there resided still in the primitive Church, through several successive ages, a divine and extraordinary power of working miracles, which was frequently and openly exerted, in confirmation of the truth of the Gospel, and for the conviction of unbelievers." [Note 30] In like manner Douglas says of Middleton that "his Free Inquiry is not, whether any miracles were performed after the times of the Apostles, but whether, after that period, miraculous powers subsisted in the Church; not whether God interposed at all, but whether He interposed by making use of men as His instruments." [Note 31] Here he makes "the subsistence of miraculous powers" equivalent with "the instrumentality of men in their operation;" meaning by the latter the conscious exercise of them by inspired persons in proof of a divine mission, as a former passage of his work shows [Note 32]. The present Bishop of Lincoln (Kaye) takes the same view of the controversy, observing that Middleton's object "was to prove that, after the Apostolic age, no standing power of working miracles existed in the Church, that there was no regular succession of favoured individuals upon whom God conferred supernatural powers, which they could exercise for the benefit of the Church of Christ, whenever their judgment, guided by the influence {214} of the Holy Spirit, told them that it was expedient so to do." [Note 33] Certainly, if this is what Middleton set about to do, he had not a difficult task before him. 98. Yet Lord Barrington, before Middleton, had implied that the question lay between the same two issues. "There cannot be much doubt," he says, "of these gifts lasting as much longer as the oldest of those lived to whom St. John imparted them ... Irenæus, speaking of the prophetic gifts, mentions the gift of tongues and the discernment of spirits. And that these did not last longer seems to have been the case in fact, since Irenæus, who died about the year 190, in a very old age, speaks of his having seen these gifts, but says nothing of his own having them." [Note 34] That is, Barrington makes no medium between a definite transmission of the gift from Christian to Christian by imposition of hands or similar formal act, such as would involve Irenæus's own possession of it, and on the other hand its having utterly failed. Irenæus saw the gift, he had it not, therefore it was failing in his time; else he would have had it. 99. What ecclesiastical history rather inculcates is the doctrine of an abiding presence of Divinity such as dwelt upon the Ark, showing itself as it would, and when it would, and without fixed rules; which {215} was seated primarily in the body of Christians, and manifested itself sometimes in persons, sometimes in places, as the case might be, in saintly men, or in "babes and sucklings," or in the very stones of the Temple; which for a while was latent, and then became manifest again; which to some persons, places, or generations was an evidence, and to others was not [Note 35]. The ideas of "regular succession," conscious "exercise" of power, objects deliberately contemplated, discretionary use of a gift, and the like, are quite foreign to a theory of miraculous agency of this kind; yet, at the same time, it cannot surely be denied that in one sense such an appointment may {216} rightly be called a "standing power," and that it is very much more than such rare "interpositions of Providence," and such "miracles of invisible agency," as the above writers seem to consider the only alternative to the admission of a discretionary, and conscious, and transmitted gift. 100. The Ark was a standing instrument of miraculous operation, yet it did not send forth its virtue at all times, nor at the will of man. What was the nature of its mysterious powers we learn from the beginning of the First Book of Samuel; where we read of it first as stationed in the tabernacle, and of the Almighty speaking from it to the child Samuel; next it is captured in battle by the Philistines; but next, when it is set up in the house of Dagon, the idol, without visible cause, falls down before it, and its worshippers are smitten. Next, the cattle which are yoked to it are constrained against their natural instinct to carry it back to Israel. And then the men of Bethshemeth are smitten for looking into it. Was there, or was there not, then, a standing power of miracles in the Jewish Church? There was not, in the sense in which Middleton understands the phrase; there was no "regular succession" of "individuals" who exercised supernatural gifts with a divinely enlightened discretion; even the Prophets were not such a body; yet the Divine Presence consisted in much more than an occasional and extraordinary visitation or intervention {217} in the course of events. That such too should be the nature of the Presence in the Christian Church is at least quite consistent with the tenor of the new Testament; and is almost implied when, in the text which has given rise to these remarks, our Lord bestows its miraculous manifestations upon the body at large. The supernatural glory might abide, and yet be manifold, variable, uncertain, inscrutable, uncontrollable, like the natural atmosphere; dispensing gleams, shadows, traces of Almighty Power, but giving no such clear and perfect vision of it as one might gaze upon and record distinctly in its details for controversial purposes. Thus we are told, "The wind bloweth where it listeth;" "a little while, and ye shall not see Me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see Me;" "their eyes were holden," and "they knew Him, and He vanished;" "suddenly there came a sound from heaven;" when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; "all these worketh that One and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He will." At one time our Lord connects the gift with special holiness, as when He says that certain exorcisms require "prayer and fasting;" at another He allows it to the reprobate, as when He says that those whom He never knew will in the last day appeal to the wonderful works they did in His Name. At one time St. Paul, in evidence of his divine mission, says, "Truly the signs of an {218} Apostle were wrought among you;" at another he seems to ascribe the power to an imposture: "Though an Angel from heaven preach any other Gospel unto you, let him be accursed." 6. 101. Another difficulty which the text in question enables us to meet is the indiscriminate bestowal of the miraculous gift, as we read of it in ecclesiastical history. Its being in the Church, not of the Church, implies this apparent disorder and want of method in its manifestations, as has been already observed. Yet Middleton objects, speaking of the Fathers, "None of these venerable Saints have anywhere affirmed, that either they themselves, or the Apostolic Fathers before them, were endued with any power of working miracles, but declare only in general, that such powers were actually subsisting in their days and openly existed in the Church; that they had often seen the wonderful effects of them; and that everybody else might see the same, whenever they pleased; but as to the persons who wrought them, they leave us strangely in the dark; for instead of specifying names, conditions, and characters, their general style is, Such and such works are done among us or by us; by our people; by a few; by many; by our exorcists; by ignorant laymen, women, boys, and any simple Christian whatsoever." [Note 36] That is, his objection {219} is against the very idea of a gift, committed to the body of the Church, or abiding in the Church. Objectors are hard to please; sometimes they imply dislike of the notion of the gift as delegated to a ministerial succession, and formally transmitted from individual to individual, and then, on the contrary, of its belonging to the Church itself without the intervention of rites of appropriation or definite recipients: what is this but saying that they will not entertain the notion of a continuance of miracles at all? As to Middleton's objection, it seems directed against the prophetic anticipation of the times of the Gospel made to the Jews, as quoted already, that "their sons and daughters should prophesy, their young men see visions, and their old men dream dreams," quite as much as against any seeming incongruities and anomalies which are found in the early Church. 102. Middleton's complaint, that the Fathers do not themselves profess a miraculous gift, is echoed by Gibbon. "It may seem somewhat remarkable," he says, "that Bernard of Clairvaux, who records so many miracles of his friend St. Malachi, never takes any notice of his own, which, in their turn, however, are carefully related by his companions and disciples. In the long series of ecclesiastical history, does there exist a single instance of a Saint asserting that he himself possessed the gift of miracles?" [Note 37] The concluding {220} question concerns our present subject, though St. Bernard himself is far removed from the period of history on which we are engaged. I observe then, first, that it is not often that the gift of miracles is even ascribed to a Saint [Note 38]. In many cases miracles are only ascribed to their tombs or relics; or when miracles are ascribed to them when living, these are but single and occasional, not parts of a series. Moreover, they are commonly what Paley calls tentative miracles, or some out of many which have been attempted, and have been done accordingly without any previous confidence in their power to effect them. Moses and Elijah could predict the result; but the miracles in question were scarcely more than experiments and trials, even though success had been granted them many times before [Note 39]. Under these circumstances, {221} how could the individual men who wrought them appeal to them themselves? It was not till afterwards, when their friends and disciples could calmly look back upon their life, and review the various actions and providences which occurred in the course of it, that they would be able to put together the scattered tokens of Divine favour, none or few of which might in themselves be a certain evidence of a miraculous power. As well might we expect men in their lifetime to be called Saints, as workers of miracles. But this is not all; the objection serves to suggest a very observable distinction, which holds good between the conduct of those whose miracles are designed to be evidence of the truth of religion, and that of others though similarly gifted. The Apostles, for instance, did their miracles openly, because these were intended to be instruments of conversion; but when the supernatural Power took up its abode in the Church, and manifested itself as it would, and not for definite objects which it signified at the time of its manifestation, it could not but seem to imply some personal privilege, when operating in an individual, who would in consequence be as little inclined to proclaim it aloud as to make a boast of his graces. {222} 7. 103. The same peculiarity in the gift will also account for that deficiency in the evidence, and other unsatisfactory circumstances of a like nature, which have already been spoken of. Since the Divine manifestation was arbitrary, the testimony would necessarily be casual. What else could be expected in the case of occurrences of which there was no notice beforehand, and often no trace after, and where we are obliged to be contented with such witnesses as happened to be present, or, if they cannot be found, with the mere report which has circulated from them? and when perhaps, as was noticed in the last paragraph, the principal parties felt it to be wrong to court publicity, after our Lord's pattern, and perhaps shrank from examination? "There is no man," said His brethren to Him, "that doeth anything in secret, and he himself seeketh to be known openly; if Thou do these things, show Thyself to the world." In our Lord's own case there was a time for concealment and a time for display; and, as it was a time for evidence when miracles were wrought by the Apostles, so afterwards there was a time for other objects and other uses, when miracles were wrought through the Church; and as our Lord's miracles were true, though the Jews complained that He "made them so long to doubt," so it is no disproof of the miracles of the Church, that those who do not wish them true have {223} room to criticise the character or the matter of the testimony which at this day is offered in their behalf. 8. 104. One more remark is in point. Middleton, in the extract above quoted, finds fault with the Fathers for "declaring only in general" that miracles continued, that they had seen them themselves, and that any one else might see them who would, while they made no attempt to specify the names, conditions, and characters of the persons working them. Yet surely this is but natural, if such miracles were as frequent as ecclesiastical history represents. Instead of its being an objection to them, it is just the state or things which must necessarily follow, supposing they were such and so wrought as is described. When we are speaking of what is obvious, and allowed on all hands, we do not go about to prove it. We only argue when there is doubt; we only consult documents, and weigh evidence, and draw out proofs, when we are not eye-witnesses. If the Fathers had seen miracles of healing or exorcisms not unfrequently, and were writing to others who had seen the like, they would use the confident yet vague language which we actually find in their accounts. The state of the testimony is but in keeping with the alleged facts. 105. For instance, St. Justin speaks of the Incarnation {224} as having taken place "for the sake of believers, and for the overthrow of evil spirits;" and "you may know this now," he continues, "from what passes before your eyes; for many demoniacs all over the world, and in your own metropolis, whom none other exorcists, conjurers, or sorcerers have cured, these have many of our Christians cured, adjuring by the Name of Christ, and still do cure." Again: "With us even hitherto are prophetical gifts, from which you Jews ought to gather that what formerly belonged to your race is transferred to us;" and soon after, quoting the passage from the prophet Joel, he adds, "and with us may be seen females and males with gifts from the Spirit of God." And St. Irenæus: "In His Name His true disciples, receiving the grace from Himself, work for the benefit of other men, as each has received the gift from Him. For some cast out devils certainly and truly, so that oftentimes the cleansed persons themselves become believers, and join the Church. Others have foreknowledge of things future, visions, and prophetical announcements. Others by imposition of hands heal the sick, and restore them to health. Moreover, as I have said, before now even the dead have been restored to life, and have continued with us for many years. Indeed, it is not possible to tell the number of gifts which the Church throughout the world has received from God in the Name of Christ Jesus, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and {225} exercises day by day for the benefit of the nations, neither seducing nor taking money of any." Shortly before he observes, that the heretics could not raise the dead, "as our Lord did, and the Apostles by prayer; and in the brotherhood frequently for some necessary object, (the whole Church in the place asking it with much fasting and supplication,) the spirit of the dead has returned, and the man has been granted to the prayers of the Saints." And again, he speaks of his "hearing many brothers in the Church who had prophetical gifts, and spoke by the Spirit in all tongues, and brought to light the hidden things of men for a profitable purpose, and related the mysteries of God." And in like manner Tertullian: "Place some possessed person before your tribunals; any Christian shall command that spirit to speak, who shall as surely confess himself to be a devil with truth, as elsewhere he will call himself a god with falsehood ... What work can be clearer? ... there will be no room for suspicion; you would say that it is magic, or some other deceit, if your eyes and ears allowed you, for what is there to urge against that which is proved by its naked sincerity?" Again Origen speaks of persons healing, "with no invocation over those who need a cure, but that of the God of all and the Name of Jesus, with some narrative concerning Him. By these," he adds, "we, too, have seen many set free from severe complaints, and loss of {226} mind, and madness, and numberless other such evils, which neither men nor devils had cured." [Note 40] 106. This is the very language which we are accustomed to use, when facts are so notorious that the onus dubitandi may fairly be thrown upon those who question them. All that can be said is, that the facts are not notorious to us; certainly not, but the Fathers wrote for contemporaries, not for the eighteenth or nineteenth century, not for modern notions and theories, for distant countries, for a degenerate people and a disunited Church. They did not foresee that evidence would become a science, that doubt would be thought a merit, and disbelief a privilege; that it would be in favour and condescension to them if they were credited, and in charity that they were accounted honest. They did not feel that man was so self-sufficient, and so happy in his prospects for the future, that he might reasonably sit at home closing his ears to all reports of Divine interpositions till they were actually brought before his eyes, and faith was superseded by sense; they did not so disparage the Spouse of Christ {227} 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. Notes1. "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.) 2.
Page 25. 3.
Page 26. 4.
How much more cautious is Jortin! "Though miracles," he says, "may
be wrought in secret, and cannot be disproved only because they were
seen by few, yet they often afford motives for suspicion, and a
wise inquirer would perhaps suspend his assent in such cases,
and pass no judgment about them." (Eccl. History, Works, vol.
ii. p. 3, ed. 1810.) Again, "As far as the subsequent miracles
mentioned by Christian writers fall short of the distinguishing
characters belonging to the works of Christ and His Apostles, so
far they must fail of giving us the same full persuasion and
satisfaction." (P. 20.) 5.
Page 27. 6.
Page 50. 7.
Page 228. 8.
[Meta tauta prosopopoiei Ioudaion autoi dialegomenon
toi 'Iesou kai elenchonta auton … hos
plasamenon autou ten ek parthenou genesin ... phesi
de auten kai hypo tou gemantos, tektonos ten
technen ontos, exeosthai, elenchtheisan hos
memoicheumenen eita legei, hos ekbletheisa
hypo
tou andros, kai planomene atimos skotion egennese
ton Iesoun]. Orig. contr. Cels. i. 28. 9.
"Men will be inclined to determine this controverted question
according to their preconceived notions and their accustomed way of
thinking; for there appears to be a sort of fatality in opinions of
this kind, which, when once taken up, are seldom laid down." (Jortin,
ibid. p. 24.) Yet he says elsewhere of Theophilus, an Arian
missionary, "I blame not Tillemont for rejecting all these miracles,
which seem to have been rumours raised and spread to serve a party;
but the true reason of his disbelief is, that they were Arian
miracles; and if they had been reported concerning Athanasius, all
difficulties would have been smoothed over and accounted of small
moment." (P. 219.) As if a miracle wrought by Athanasius was not more
likely than miracles wrought by an Arian, though a missionary. 10.
[N. 30, supra.] 11.
Page 233-236. 12.
Page 146. Douglas is speaking here primarily of the Church of Rome;
afterwards he apparently refers to the passage when speaking of the
Primitive Church, p. 236. 13.
Defecere etiam mortuorum excitationes. Certe Autolyco roganti ut vel
unum ostenderet qui fuisset è mortuis revocatus, ita respondit
Theophilus quasi vel unum demonstrare minime potuerit. Dodw. in Iren.
Dissert. ii. 44. Jortin is more cautious. "It is probable," he says, "from
his [Theophilus's] silence, that he had heard of no instance of such a
miracle in his days; probable, I say, but not certain; because, though
he had heard of it, he might possibly have thought it to no purpose to
tell his friend that there were Christians who affirmed such
things, and he might suspect that Autolycus would not have admitted
the testimony of persons with whom he had no acquaintance, and for
whom he had little regard." Eccl. Hist. (Works, vol. ii. p. 92, ed.
1810). Vid. the striking statement of Origen. contr. Cels. i. 46.
Greg. Nyss. tom. ii. p. 1009. 14.
Page 82. 15.
Page 104. 16.
Page 107. 17.
Page 102. 18.
Page 106. 19.
Ibid. 20.
Page 101. 21.
Page 236. 22.
Page 79. 23.
Page 82. 24.
Page 109. 25.
"Nec enim prædicantes illa secutura signa pollicetur, sed credentes;
nec eos qui jam antea credidissent, sed qui essent postea deinde
credituri. Responditque eventus accuratissimè; conversis enim, non
conversoribus, gratias illas donatas esse constat de quibus legimus in
primis Ecclesiarum conversionibus." Dodw. in Iren. Dissert. ii. 28.
This is so fully taken for granted by St. Bernard, that he thinks it
necessary to answer the objection why "credentes" did not work
miracles in his day: "Quis enim ea, quæ in præsenti loco scripta
sunt, signa videtur habere credulitatis, sine quâ nemo poterit
salvari? quoniam qui non crediderit condemnabitur, et sine fide
impossibile est placere Deo." Serm. i. de Ascens. 2. He answers to the
question as St. Gregory does in the passage quoted, supra, n.
40, making the miracles now wrought by the faithful to be moral ones.
Kuinoel says: "Per [tous pisteuontas] non omnes Christi
sectatores intelligendi sunt, nam non omnes Christiani ejusmodi
miracula patrabant, qualia hoc loco describuntur, sed agit Christus
hoc loco ut locis parallelis, Luc. 24, 48. John 20, 19, cum legatis
suis, atque adeo significantur imprimis Apostoli, et præter eos
alii tunc temporis præsentes, qui haud dubiè è numero septuaginta
discipulorum erant. Vid. Luc. 24, 33, coll. Luc. 10, 1; 9, 17, Etiam
infra v. 20, disertè commentorantur [ekeinoi], illi Christi
discipuli, quibus ea dixit, quæ hoc loco leguntur, et ad hos [semeia]
referuntur. Monuit præterea Storrius articulum [tous] sæpe certos,
quosdam, non omnes universos significare. Vid. Luc. 18, 15.
Coll. Marc. 10, 13. Matt. 21, 34. 36. 27, 62. 28, 12. Insignivit autem,
ut opinor, Christus discipulos suos, futuros religionis suæ doctores,
tunc temporis præsentes, voce [tois pisteusasi], quoniam paulo
ante eorum incredulitatem vituperarat:" in loc. This is such strange
reasoning, that it is the best argument for showing how futile the
attempt is to wrest our Lord's words from their plain meaning. The
elder school of Protestants was more candid. "Non omnibus omnia," says
Grotius, "ita tamen ut cuilibet, ut oportet, credenti, aliqua tunc
data sit admirabilis facultas, quæ se non semper quidem, sed datâ
occasione, explicaret." 26.
Sulpicius almost grounds his defence of St. Martin's miracles on the
antecedent force of this text. He says of those who deny them, "Nec
Martino in hac parte detrahitur, sed fidei Evangelii derogatur. Nam
cum Dominus ipse testatus sit istiusmodi opera, quæ Martinus implevit,
ab omnibus fidelibus esse facienda, qui Martinum non credit ista
fecisse, non credit Christum ista dixisse." Dial. i. 18. 27.
[Semeia tauta parakolouthesei]. "Stephanus in
Thes. hæc citat ex Dioscoride in præf. lib. 6. [ta
parakolouthounta semeia hekastoi ton pharmakon]."
Raphel. Annot. in loc. Vid. ibid. in Luc. i. 3. In the last words of
the Gospel, where the "signs following" are wrought by the Apostles,
and in confirmation the word is [epakolouthounton]. 28.
Vindic. p. 32, as quoted by Douglas, p. 224. 29.
Inquiry, p. 9. 30.
Introd. Disc. init.; but in Pref. p. xxxii. he speaks more to the
purpose. 31.
Page 224. 32.
Page 216. 33.
Kaye's Tertull. p. 104. 34.
Vol. i. pp. 221, 222, ed. 1828. 35.
Dodwell has a theory (which agrees with what is said in the text,
except that he applies it only to the first ages) that miracles
abounded or became scarce according to the need, the conversion of the
nations being the chief object. "Promisit Dominus majora editurum, qui
in illum postea crediderit, miracula quam quæ ipse Dominus ediderit.
Quod ego facile moderandum esse concessero, ut et de certis Evangelii
propagandi temporibus promissio illa fuerit intelligenda ... Sed nec
ita adimpleta est quin superesset adhuc satis amplus locus futuris
postea conversionibus, futurisque adeo miraculis … Trajano Imperante
novas Evangelii propagandi causâ susceptas expeditiones memorat
Eusebius, et quidem id novâ Dei comitante gratiâ atque [synergeiai]
... Ortis jam sub Hadriano Hæreticis, ... factum est ut miracula
infidelium hæreticorum causâ præstanda fuerint etiam et ipsa
frequentiora ... A Marci temporibus deficere cœperunt, … cum nullas
aut raras admodum per ea sæcula expeditiones obirent Christiani ad
gentes ex professo convertendas; ... satis tamen liberalem adhuc
fuisse Deum multa ostendunt," etc., etc. Dissert. in Iren. ii. 28-45,
etc. 36.
Page 22. 37.
Ch. xv. note s. 38.
"Hoc intercedit discrimen inter sanctos antiqui et Novi Testamenti, quòd
Deus, intercessione Sanctorum V. T., miracula operari dignatus est sæpius
in vitâ, et rarius post obitum corum; et quoad Sanctos N. T. sæpius
post obitum et rarius in vitâ ipsorum; cùm Sancti V. T. utpote a Deo
ipso canonizati, miraculis post obitum non indigerent; sancti autem N.
T. ab Ecclesiâ canonizandi, miraculis post obitum indigeant ... Cùm
nulla [S. Joannes B.] in vitâ miracula fecisset, putavit Herodes eum
post suam in Christo resurrectionem miracula fuisse editurum, 'Ait
pueris suis, Hic est Joannes Baptista, etc., et ideo virtutes
operantur in eo.'" Bened. xiv de Canon. Sanct. iv. i. § 26. 39.
The present Bishop of London argues from Origen's expression, [ous
ho theos bouletai], (Contr. Cels. ii. 33), "that the attempts,
which no doubt were made to effect miraculous cures, were not always
successful;" vid. Athan. Vit, Ant. 56, where this very thing is
confessed: then he continues: "and if so, we may safely infer
that where they did succeed, they were to be ascribed to the ordinary
means of healing under the Divine blessing." Bishop Blomfield's
Sermons, p. 434. I cannot follow his Lordship in calling this
inference a safe one. 40.
Justin, Apol. ii. 6. Tryph. 82, 88. Iren. Hær. ii. 32, § 4, 31, §
2, v. 6, § 1. Tertull. Apol. 23. Origen, contr. Cels. iii. 24. Vid.
also Justin, Apol. 1, 40. Tryph. 30, 39, 76, and 85. Tertull. Apol.
37, 43. Scorp. 1. Test. Anim. 3 Ad. Scap. 4. Minuc. F. 27. Theoph. ad
Autol. ii. 8. Origen, contr. Cels. i. 46, 67, ii. 33, iii. 36.
Cyprian, Ep. 76, fin. ad. Magn. circa fin. vid. supr. n. 32. [Vid.
also note and passages in Murdoch's Mosheim, t. i. p. 128.] Newman Reader — Works of John Henry Newman |