Section 3. The Miracle wrought on the course of the River Lycus by St. Gregory Thaumaturgus{261} 135. DOUGLAS, in his great earnestness to prove that no real miracles were wrought by the Fathers and Saints of the second and third centuries, tells us that the miracles of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, some of which have been detailed above, "are justly rejected as inventions of a later age, and can be believed by those only who can admit the miracles ascribed to Apollonius, or those reported so long after his death to Ignatius. Gregory of Nyssa," the biographer of Thaumaturgus, "according to Dr. Cave's character of him, was apt to be too credulous. No wonder, therefore, he gave too much credit to old women's tales, as the anecdotes of the Wonder-worker must be allowed to be, when related, as we learn from St. Basil, by his aged grandmother Macrina." [Note 1] This is not respectful either to St. Macrina or to St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, to say nothing of his treatment {262} of St. Gregory Nyssen; plainly, it can mean nothing else but that St. Gregory did no miracles, and that it is weak, nay, even heathenish, to believe he did. Otherwise thinks a very careful and learned writer, not a member of our Church, and his statement may fitly be placed in contrast with the opinion of one who was a Bishop in it. "His history," says Lardner, speaking of Thaumaturgus, "as delivered by authors of the fourth and following centuries, particularly by Nyssen, it is to be feared, has in it somewhat of fiction; but there can be no reasonable doubt made but he was very successful in making converts to Christianity in the country of Pontus about the middle of the third century; and that, beside his natural and acquired abilities, he was favoured with extraordinary gifts of the Spirit, and wrought miracles of surprising power. The plain and express testimonies of Basil and others, at no great distance of time or place from Gregory, must be reckoned sufficient grounds of credit with regard to these things. Theodoret, mentioning Gregory, and his brother, and Firmilian, and Helenus, all together, ascribes miracles to none but him alone. They were all Bishops of the first rank; nevertheless Gregory had a distinction even among them. It is the same thing in Jerome's letter to Magnus; there are mentioned Hippolytus, Julius Africanus, Dionysius of Alexandria, and many others, of great note and eminence for learning and piety. But Theodore, {263} afterwards called Gregory, is the only one who is called a man of Apostolical signs and wonders." [Note 2] 135. These remarks of Lardner should be kept in mind by those who would examine the miracles attributed to St. Gregory. For it is obvious to reflect, that if we once believe that he did work miracles, it is the height of improbability that in the course of a century all of these should be forgotten, and a set of pretended miracles substituted in their place, and that among a people who are noted for a particular attachment to their old customs, and especially to the rites and usages introduced by St. Gregory. "The people of Neocęsarea," says Lardner, "retained for a long while remarkable impressions of religion; and they had an affection for the primitive simplicity, very rare and uncommon, almost singular, at that time, when innovations came into the Church apace." [Note 3] And if reasons can be given for believing one of the miracles, a favourable hearing will be gained for the rest, which belong to one family with it, and are conveyed to us through the same channels. All are of the romantic kind, all come to us on tradition committed to writing by St. Gregory Nyssen. That is, we shall have reason for believing his narrative in its substance, for still there is nothing to prevent misstatement in its detail. Against this, indeed, inspiration alone could secure us. {264} 137. This absence of a perfection which only attaches to inspired documents, has often been made an objection to receiving the miracles which ecclesiastical history records [Note 4]. But there is another peculiarity about its existing materials, which applies in particular to Nyssen's Life of Thaumaturgus. That Life does not answer the purpose for which critics and controversialists require it at this day; it is very unsatisfactory as an attestation of miracles, and would not read well in a process of canonization. For in truth the author did not set himself to attest them at all; he wrote a sacred panegyrical discourse, and from the nature of the composition he left out names, dates, places, particulars, all of them necessary indeed for critical proof, had he been engaged in furnishing evidence. But, on the contrary, he was only an encomiast of a departed Saint; and why not, if he found it fitting for his people? He even omits particulars which he certainly knew well, and every one else; as the name of Gregory's see, and of the Emperor {265} under whose persecution he fled from it; why then need we be suspicious of other omissions, as if they necessarily reflected on the general authenticity of his narrative? why may he not put off a secular style and manner, when he is treating a religious subject? Why is he to be compelled to turn the Church into a court of law, and to introduce a prosaic phraseology into the hymns, the anthems, and the lessons of the Euchology? He wrote for the faithful and devout, and he had a right to do so. 138. Dr. Lardner, a calm and impartial critic, as we have seen, here loses himself. He seems to forget that a Bishop may, if he pleases, write homilies and panegyrics, and read martyrologies, and that inspired Scripture itself is not over-careful in dating, locating, and naming the sacred persons and sacred things which it introduces. Would not then St. Gregory's simple answer to such criticism as the following be, that he did not write for Dr. Lardner? That candid writer seems to forget this, when he makes the following additional remarks on his Oration:—"It is plain it is a panegyric, not a history. Nyssen is so intent upon the marvellous, that he has scarce any regard to common things; he relates distinctly the mysterious faith which Gregory received one night from John the Evangelist, but he despatches in a very few words the instructions which Gregory received from Origen, though he was five years under his tuition, and had before him excellent {266} materials to enlarge upon concerning that part of our Bishop's history. Then he takes little or no notice of circumstances of time and place, or the names of persons; these he omits as things of no moment. Indeed, he has been so good as to inform us of Gregory's native city and country, and that he studied some time, as he says, at Alexandria; but he does not let us know where Gregory was acquainted with Origen, whether at Alexandria or at Cęsarea. He does not inform us of the Temple where Gregory lodged and silenced the demon; neither where it stood, nor to what god it was dedicated. He has not so much as once mentioned the name of the Priest who was converted in so extraordinary a manner; nor has he mentioned the name of any one of the many persons, subjects of Gregory's miraculous works." "Possibly it will be said," he continues, "that it was contrary to the rules of rhetoric to be more particular in an oration. If that be so, and all that Nyssen aimed at was to entertain his hearers or readers with a fine piece of oratory, we must consider it as such; but then, though it may afford us some good entertainment, it will hardly be a ground for much faith; for a story to be amusing is one thing, to be credible is another." But is there no refuge from the rostrum on the one hand, and the witness-box on the other? Must a style be either rhetorical or controversial? May it not be ecclesiastical? However, Lardner grants that the miracle {267} wrought upon the Lycus is at least particularized by the name of the river; and as some may think that it even approaches to fulfil Leslie's celebrated criterion of a miracle, a few words shall be given to it here. 139. Leslie's tests of the truth of a miracle are these: that it should be sensible; public; verified by some monument and observance; and that set up at the very time when it was wrought. Now St. Gregory is said by his biographer, as we have seen above [Note 5], to have restrained a mountain-stream within its mounds, which had been accustomed to flood the plain country into which it descended. He tells us the place, as well as the river, and the mountains from which it flowed; he describes its impetuosity as recurring, according as it was swollen by the waters from the mountains, and its ravages as very serious. But he adds, that, after Gregory had visited the spot and prayed, the calamity was stopped once for all, though the stream descended with fury as before, and came up to the very place which St. Gregory had marked as its limit. He specifies this place by referring his readers to a monument standing upon it, and that from the time of the miracle, and moreover, a monument which in its history involves an additional miracle. He says that the Saint took his staff, and fixed it at the opening of the mound which the current had forced; that the staff grew into a tree, and that the {268} waters swept it, but never passed it, and that it remained to his own day, being known by the people of the country as "the staff." Moreover, it may be said there was an observance, as well as a monument, which dates from the time of the miracle; for surely the conversion of the people benefited, upon their receipt of the benefit, is, in its results, of the nature of a standing observance, and well fitted to preserve and continue the knowledge of the supernatural act. And further, as some immediate extraordinary occurrence is necessary to enable us to account for so extraordinary an event as the conversion of a whole people, but the success of St. Gregory's restraint upon the stream could not be known till after an interval, or rather only in a course of years, some probability is thereby added to the idea that in the manner or circumstances of his action itself there was something impressive and convincing, and such the miracle wrought upon the staff would have been in an eminent way. 140. Further, Nyssen not only lived too near the times to allow of a spurious tradition fastening itself on the history, whether of the tree or of the people, but he was a native and inhabitant of that part of Asia Minor, and his family before him. His grandmother, Macrina, was brought up at Neocęsarea, Gregory's see, by his immediate disciples. Should the account be false, it will be somewhat of a parallel to suppose a person, at this day, in high ecclesiastical {269} station, born and educated and writing in the Isle of Man, and assuring us that Bishop Wilson once laid a storm in behalf of the fishermen, and that a lighthouse was built at the time, and still remains, in commemoration of the event; and writers, moreover, of this day, in England, Scotland, and Ireland, confirming the testimony, by incidentally observing, without allusion to the particular story, that Bishop Wilson had the gift of miracles. We should say it was impossible that such evidence could be offered in behalf of a fiction now; and why not say the same of a similar case then? "But a fiction was possible then," it may be argued, "because the age was more superstitious than now." I answer, "And so was a miracle possible, because Christendom was more Catholic and Apostolic." 141. Of course, an objection may be raised, on the score of the miracle not being of such a kind as to preclude the possibility of our referring it to physical causes, in a country where earthquakes were not uncommon. But miracles of degree, which admit abstractedly and hypothetically of being explained by the joint operation of nature and of exaggeration in the informant, are among the most common in Scripture, and may nevertheless be cogent and convincing in the particular case, as has been already observed. No east wind could raise the waters of the Red Sea, as Scripture describes them to be raised at the time of the Exodus; no supposition of earthquake {270} or other physical disturbance will suffice to deprive Nyssen's narrative, as it stands, of its miraculous character. Nor may we take on ourselves to mutilate or deface either it or the Book of Exodus, or any other professed statement of fact, without first assigning reasons for our proceeding. Notes1. Page 327, note. 2.
Credib. ii. 42, § 5. 3.
Vid. also above, n. 20. 4.
"The miracles of Christ and His Apostles have not escaped the
adulterations of monkery; and if this were sufficient to discredit
truth, there is not a fact in civil history that would stand its
ground. As to those who expect a certain innate virtue in it, of force
to extrude all heterogeneous mixture, they expect a quality in truth
which was never yet found in it, nor, I fear, ever will. Nay, the more
notorious a fact of this kind is, that is to say, the more
eye-witnesses there are of it, the more subject it is to undesigned
depravation," etc. Warburton, Julian, § 2, n. 3, p. 96, ed. 1750. 5. n. 23. Newman Reader — Works of John Henry Newman |