Church; while, as to the more stupendous miracles of raising the dead, giving sight to the blind, cleansing lepers and the like, of these she makes profession also, but very rarely, as if after the manner of Scripture. This surely is a remarkable coincidence; and is the rather to be dwelt upon, because those who consider the vagueness of language with which the Ecclesiastical miracles are attested, as a proof 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. 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 events related in Scripture 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 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 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 prima facie appearance of the Gospel miracles does not 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. And now, if this representation has any truth in it, if our Lord, in the passage of St. Mark which has led to these observations, 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, multi"tudes 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, "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? So much is evident at once, that had they been the persons addressed by such 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. Douglas, for instance, observes, that the circumstance that the Fathers allow that "cures of diseases, particularly of de"moniacs 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 upon "the same footing of credibility with the works ascribed to "Christians." Why not with the works ascribed to Apostles? Again he urges, that "the cures ascribed to the "6 prayers of Christians, to the imposition of their hands, &c. "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 Douglas would have taught them that "a few grimaces, "wild gestures, disordered agitations, and blasphemous ex clamations, 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 na Page 236. turally account for it in this manner, rather than by sup"posing that any supernatural cause intervened'." 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 a proof that such a miracle was utterly unknown in his days, as if resurrections abounded in the Acts m. Again, St. Peter cured Æneas of the palsy, "and all that "dwelt at Lydda and Saron saw him and turned to the "Lord;" but Douglas would have 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 im"peded; or from obstructions of the arterious blood. No"thing more, therefore, was required here, than to remove "that obstruction "." "days; probable, I say, but not cer"tain: 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 ad"mitted 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. n Page 82. We read in Scripture of the sudden cure of the dropsy; but Douglas observes, "That enthusiasm should warm its "votaries to a holy madness, and excite the wildest trans ports 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 "." 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 likely to excite such copious per"spiration, than the enthusiastic transport with which they prayed and the convulsive struggles which shook their "whole frame P?" 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 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 9;" for "in this case the nervous system "is strongly acted upon, and fresh and violent motions are "communicated to the fluids";" and "such agitations necessarily suppose that the velocity of the fluids" is "greatly "accelerated ;" and "gouts, palsies, fevers of all kinds, and even ruptures have been thus cured." It certainly does not appear why a class of miracles which were, in matter of fact, the principal means of the conversion of the world in |