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CHAPTER VI.

OF THE ATTENTION DUE TO ANY OTHER CLAIMS OF MIRACLES, BESIDES THOSE WHICH WE FIND RECORDED IN SCRIPTURE.

It has been proved sufficiently in the preceding chapter that the evidence of the Scripture miracles is not affected by our inability to draw a precise line of distinction between true and false miracles. As it would be unaffected by our admission of some miracles, even though false, which have nothing in them inconsistent with the Scriptural doctrines, so it would be unaffected also by the rejection of others, even though true, which are not recorded in Scrip

ture.

But though the truth of the Scripture miracles may be thus placed out of the question, yet there may be other claims which still remain undetermined. I do not suppose that any other claim of miracles can rival, in point of evidence, those of the Scripture: but still, because God

a P. 291.

has proved the truth of the Scripture by miracles so considerable, both in number and weight, that no other proof of the same kind can compete with them, it does not follow that He has shortened his arm", that He neither has worked, nor works at present any others, or that we may not possess at least credible evidence that other miracles have really been performed. Although not necessary in proving the truth of the Gospel miracles, it is yet a highly interesting subject of inquiry, whether miracles may not be often employed by Providence in the moral government of the world; and especially whether their sanction may not be given to some particular exposition of the Scripture doctrines, or to some one in particular out of those many societies into which the Christian church is divided. Thus, if any Protestant thinks that the pretensions perpetually set up by the Romanists to the continued existence of the power of miracles in their church, and in their church exclusively, are to be accounted worthy of serious attention, it must, I think, be his duty to look scrupulously into the evidence on which those pretensions are rested,

a Warburton's Julian, p. 3.

as being strong evidence, if those miracles should be genuine, of some superiority of their church to our own. It does not seem to me that their possessing exclusively this power would be a decisive argument of their having any just pretension to be the only true church, or even the church most favoured by God. Miracles alone, as we know on the highest authority, are by no means the most excellent among the gifts of the Spirit, and cannot be in absolute strictness appealed to as an infallible sanction of truth, except under circumstances which make their cogency manifest, and in cases in which the doctrines for which they are alleged are in themselves incapable of being disproved or refuted". still, under all circumstances, if the Romish church alone could be proved to be now gifted with miraculous powers, though I should hardly concede that its possession of them could imply altogether a preference of that church above all others, it yet appears to me that it might imply much which is of importance. It would imply, I think, that the members of that church are the

But

a Matt. vii. 22, 23. 1 Cor. xii. 28. 31. xiii. xiv. 1. et sqq. b Preliminary Dissertation, § 1.

sole possessors of that species, or if not that species, that degree of true faith, which has the power, under God's blessing, of working miracles; and the necessary consequences of such a conclusion would prove to be of great practical

moment.

The general question, therefore, whether any miracles have been performed, besides those of the Scripture, and the more particular one whether any have been performed, and under what circumstances, by the members of any one communion of Christians, or more than one, is a question deserving of a very serious consideration.

But can it be solved? Is it not a question too extensive to be ever examinable by any human knowledge, or exhausted in the course of the longest life? Does not all history teem with pretensions to miracles, which, as has already been seen, are not disproved by proving the truth of those of the Scripture; or even if it were otherwise, even if every claim of miracles which we find either in profane or ecclesiastical history could be minutely examined, and declared a forgery, how could this afford us sufficient ground to infer either that God has not worked any, of

a P. 291.

which we still may be ignorant, or that none may be worked now, either in the church, or out of it?

To this I answer that I am far from venturing to draw any such absolute or sweeping inference. As I do not venture to assign a criterion by which false and true miracles may be always discriminated, still less do I dare to affirm universally, that all claims of miracles excepting those of the Scripture, or that all claims, say for instance of the church of Rome, are absolutely and universally false and unfounded. But then this is not the question. The real question is to be narrowed very considerably within this more extensive one. The question is not whether we can put a general negative on all claims of miracles except those of the Scripture, or on any particular classes of such claims; but whether those claims assume a shape or a seriousness which reasonably entitles them to regard and attention. Till cause be shown why any subject should be examined, we are authorized to neglect, even though we should be unprepared to refute, the particular evidence or facts alleged in it. But the principles of the attention which may be due to all claims of mi

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