inspiration to record them. Were it not that the Evangelists were divinely guided, doubtless we should have in Scripture that confused mass of truth and fiction together, which the apocryphal gospels exhibit, and to which St. Luke seems to allude. I repeat, the character of facts is not changed, because they are incorrectly reported; distance of time and place only does injury to the record of them. The Christian miracles were in themselves what they are to us now, at the very time that the world was associating them with the prodigies of Jewish strollers, heathen magicians and astrologers, and idolatrous rites; they would have been thus associated to this day, had not inspiration interposed; yet, in spite of this, they would have been deserving our serious attention as now, so far as we were able to separate the truth from the falsehood. And such is the state in which Ecclesiastical miracles actually do come to us, because inspiration was not continued; they are dimly seen in twilight and amid shadows; let us not quarrel with a circumstance which is but the consequence of the acknowledged absence of the necessary cause.

SECTION IV.

ON THE STATE OF THE ARGUMENT IN BEHALF OF THE

ECCLESIASTICAL MIRACLES.

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 it directly, but rather superseding the necessity of considering it; for what is proved to be true, need not be proved to be possible. Hume scruples not to use "miracle" and "impossibility" as convertible terms"; Leslie before him, and Douglas after him, seem to answer, "Would you believe a miracle, if you saw it? "Now we are prepared to offer evidence, if not as strong, "still as convincing, as ocular demonstration." Thus they escape from the abstract argument by a controversial method of a singularly practical, and as it may be called, English character.

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 overcandid towards objections which they think they have outrun; they admit as facts or truths what they have shewn to be irrelevant as arguments. Thus,

66

"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.

even were there nothing of a kindred tone of mind in Hume who has assailed the Scripture miracles and in some of ourselves 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 mode of reasoning 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 tell against all others. They tacitly grant that the antecedent improbability of miracles is 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 treated altogether as fictions, till they are clearly proved to be truths.

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 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 to be 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.

In estimating statements of fact, it is usual to allow that 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 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 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 that such a ground does exist, and that it is conclusive against Ecclesiastical miracles even antecedent to the evidence.

In the title to his Dissertation, Douglas promises us a cri"terion by which the true miracles recorded in the New "Testament are distinguished from the spurious miracles of

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 pub"lished to the world of miracles in general," are concerned with events which are supernatural either in themselves or under their circumstances, while the 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." But how does insufficiency in the evidence create a positive prejudice against an alleged fact? How can things depend on our knowledge of them?

* Page 25.

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.

He 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 in"sufficient, as justly to warrant our rejecting them as idle tales "that never happened, and the inventions of bold and interested "deceivers y." 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 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 author 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.

But the writer 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 y Page 26.