at a vast distance from the supposed scene of proof be satisfactory or not, it is properly a the wonders.* cumulation of evidence, by no means a naked III. We lay out of the case transient ru- or solitary record. mours. Upon the first publication of an ex- V. A mark of historical truth, although ontraordinary account, or even of an article of ly a certain way, and to a certain degree, is extraordinary intelligence, no one who is not particularity, in names, dates, places, circumpersonally acquainted with the transaction, can stances, and in the order of events preceding know whether it be true or false, because any or following the transaction of which kind, man may publish any story. It is in the fu- for instance, is the particularity in the descripture confirmation, or contradiction, of the ac- tion of Saint Paul's voyage and shipwreck, in count; in its permanency, or its disappear- the 27th chapter of the Acts, which no man, ance; its dying away into silence, or its I think, can read without being convinced increasing in notoriety; its being followed that the writer was there; and also in the acup by subsequent accounts, and being re- count of the cure and examination of the blind peated in different and independent accounts; man, in the ninth chapter of Saint John's Gosthat solid truth is distinguished from fugitive pel, which bears every mark of personal knowlies. This distinction is altogether on the side ledge on the part of the historian. I do not of Christianity. The story did not drop. On deny that fiction has often the particularity of the contrary, it was succeeded by a train of truth; but then it is of studied and elaborate action and events dependent upon it. The fiction, or of a formal attempt to deceive, that accounts, which we have in our hands, were we observe this. Since, however, experience composed after the first reports must have sub-proves that particularity is not confined to sided. They were followed by a train of writ- truth, I have stated that it is a proof of truth ings upon the subject. The historical testi- only to a certain extent, i. e. it reduces the monies of the transaction were many and va- question to this, whether we can depend or rious, and connected with letters, discourses, not upon the probity of the relater? which is controversies, apologies, successively produced a considerable advance in our present arguby the same transaction. ment; for an express attempt to deceive, in IV. We may lay out of the case what I call which case alone particularity can appear withnaked history. It has been said, that if the out truth, is charged upon the evangelists by prodigies of the Jewish history had been found few. If the historian acknowledge himself to only in fragments of Manetho, or Berosus, we have received his intelligence from others, the should have paid no regard to them: and I particularity of the narrative shows, primâ faam willing to admit this. If we knew nothing cie, the accuracy of his inquiries, and the fulof the fact, but from the fragment; if we pos-ness of his information. This-remark belongs sessed no proof that these accounts had been to Saint Luke's history. Of the particularity credited and acted upon, from times, probably, which we allege, many examples may be found as ancient as the accounts themselves; if we in all the Gospels. And it is very difficult to had no visible effects connected with the his- conceive, that such numerous particularities, tory, no subsequent or collateral testimony to as are almost every where to be met with in the confirm it; under these circumstances, I think, Scriptures, should be raised out of nothing, that it would be undeserving of credit. But this or be spun out of the imagination without any certainly is not our case. In appreciating the fact to go upon.+ VI. We lay out of the case such stories of supernatural events, as require, on the part of the hearer, nothing more than an otiose as evidence of Christianity, the books are to be It is to be remarked, however, that this parcombined with the institution; with the pre- ticularity is only to be looked for in direct hisvalency of the religion at this day; with the tory. It is not natural in references or allutime and place of its origin, which are acknow- sions, which yet, in other respects, often afledged points; with the circumstances of its ford, as far as they go, the most unsuspicious rise and progress, as collected from external evidence. history; with the fact of our present books being received by the votaries of the institution from the beginning; with that of other books coming after these, filled with accounts of effects and consequences resulting from the transaction, or referring to the transaction, or built upon it; lastly, with the consideration of the +"There is always some truth where there are con number and variety of the books themselves, bear some proportion to one another. Thus there is a siderable particularities related; and they always seen to the different writers from which they proceed, great want of the particulars of time, place, and persons, the different views with which they were writ-sias's of the Assyrian Kings, and those which the techni in Manetho's account of the Egyptian Dynastics, Eteten, so disagreeing as to repel the suspicion of confederacy, so agreeing as to show that they were founded in a common original, i. e. in a story substantially the same. Whether this Douglas's Crit. p. 84. Both these chapters ought to be read for the sake of this very observation. cal chronologers have given of the ancient kingdoms of Greece; and, agreeably thereto, the accounts have much fiction and falsehood, with some truth: whereas Thucydides's History of the Peloponesian war, and Cæsar's or the War in Gaul, in both which, the particulars of time, place, and persons, are mentioned, are universally es teemed true to a great degree of exactness." Hartley, vol. ii. p. 100. vastness of an event, rather causes men to dis- sent; stories upon which nothing depends, in which no interest is involved, nothing is to be done or changed in consequence of believing them. Such stories are credited, if the careless assent that is given to them deserve that name, more by the indolence of the hearer, than by his judgment: or, though not much credited, are passed from one to another with-counts which require no more than a simple out inquiry or resistance. To this case, and assent; and we now also lay out of the case to this case alone, belongs what is called the those which come merely in affirmance of opilove of the marvellous. I have never known nions already formed. This last circumstance it carry men further. Men do not suffer per- is of the utmost importance to notice well. It secution from the love of the marvellous. Of has long been observed, that Popish miracles the indifferent nature we are speaking of, are happen in Popish countries; that they make most vulgar errors and popular superstition: no converts; which proves that stories are acmost, for instance, of the current reports of cepted, when they fall in with principles al-/ apparitions. Nothing depends upon their be- ready fixed, with the public sentiments, or with ing true or false. But not, surely, of this kind the sentiments of a party already engaged on were the alleged miracles of Christ and his the side the miracle supports, which would not apostles. They decided, if true, the most im- be attempted to be produced in the face of eneportant question upon which the human mind | mies, in opposition to reigning tenets or facan fix its anxiety. They claimed to regulate vourite prejudices, or when, if they be believ the opinions of mankind, upon subjects in ed, the belief must draw men away from their which they are not only deeply concerned, but preconceived and habitual opinions, from their usually refractory and obstinate. Men could modes of life and rules of action. In the fornot be utterly careless in such a case as this. mer case, men may not only receive a miraIf a Jew took up the story, he found his dar-culous account, but may both act and suffer ling partiality to his own nation and law wound- on the side, and in the cause, which the mied; if a Gentile, he found his idolatry and po-racle supports, yet not act or suffer for the lytheism reprobated and condemned. Who- miracle, but in pursuance of a prior persuasion. ever entertained the account, whether Jew or The miracle, like any other argument which Gentile, could not avoid the following reflec-j only confirms what was before believed, is ad-, tion:" If these things be true, I must give mitted with little examination. In the moral. up the opinions and principles in which I have as in the natural world, it is change which rebeen brought up, the religion in which my fa- quires a cause. Men are easily fortified in their thers lived and died." It is not conceivable old opinions, driven from them with great difthat a man should do this upon any idle report ficulty. Now how does this apply to the Chrisor frivolous account, or, indeed, without being tian history? The miracles, there recorded, fully satisfied and convinced of the truth and were wrought in the midst of enemies, under credibility of the narrative to which he trust- a government, a priesthood, and a magistracy, ed. But it did not stop at opinions. They decidedly and vehemently adverse to them, and who believed Christianity, acted upon it. Ma- to the pretensions which they supported. They ny made it the express business of their lives were Protestant miracles in a Popish country; to publish the intelligence. It was required of they were Popish miracles in the midst of Prothose who admitted that intelligence to change testants. They produced a change; they esforthwith their conduct and their principles, to tablished a society upon the spot, adhering to take up a different course of life, to part with the belief of them; they made converts; and their habits and gratifications, and begin a new those who were converted gave up to the tesset of rules, and system of behaviour. The timony their most fixed opinions and most fr apostles, at least, were interested not to sacri- vourite prejudices. They who acted and suffice their ease, their fortunes, and their lives, fered in the cause, acted and suffered for the for an idle tale; multitudes beside them were miracles: for there was no anterior persuasion induced, by the same tale, to encounter oppo-to induce them, no prior reverence, prejudice, sition, danger, and sufferings. or partiality to take hold of. Jesus had not If it be said, that the mere promise of a fu- one follower when he set up his claim. Ilis ture state would do all this; I answer, that the miracles gave birth to his sect. No part of mere promise of a future state, without any this description belongs to the ordinary evievidence to give credit or assurance to it, would dence of Heathen or Popish miracles. Even do nothing. A few wandering fishermen talk- most of the miracles alleged to have been pering of a resurrection of the dead, could produce formed by Christians, in the second and third no effect. If it be further said, that men ea- century of its era, want this confirmation. It sily believe what they anxiously desire; I constitutes indeed a line of partition between again answer, that, in my opinion, the very the origin and the progress of Christianity. contrary of this is nearer to the truth. Anxi-Frauds and fallacies might mix themselves ety of desire, earnestness of expectation, the with the progress, which could not possibly take place in the commencement of the reli- | If bad men, what could have induced them gion; at least, according to any laws of human to take such pains to promote virtue? It conduct that we are acquainted with. What good men, they would not have gone about should suggest to the first propagators of Chris- the country with a string of lies in their tianity, especially to fishermen, tax-gatherers, mouths. and husbandmen, such a thought, as that of IN APPRECIATING the credit of any mira changing the religion of the world? what could culous story, these are distinctions which rebear them through the difficulties in which the late to the evidence There are other distincattempt engaged them? what could procure tions, of great moment in the question, which any degree of success to the attempt ? are ques-relate to the miracles themselves. Of which tions which apply with great force, to the set-latter kind the following ought carefully to be ting out of the institution, with less, to every retained. future stage of it. I. It is not necessary to admit as a miracle, To hear some men talk, one would suppose what can be resolved into a false perception. the setting up of a religion by miracles to be a Of this nature was the demon of Socrates; thing of every day's experience; whereas the the visions of Saint Anthony, and of many whole current of history is against it. Hath others; the vision which Lord Herbert of any founder of a new sect amongst Chris- Cherbury describes himself to have seen; Cotians pretended to miraculous powers, and lonel Gardiner's vision, as related in his life, succeeded by his pretensions ? "Were these written by Dr. Doddridge. All these may be powers claimed or exercised by the founders accounted for by a momentary insanity; for of the sects of the Waldenses and Albigenses? the characteristic symptom of human madness Did Wickliffe in England pretend to it? Did is the rising up in the mind of images not disHuss or Jerome in Bohemia? Did Luther tinguishable by the patient from impressions in Germany, Zuinglius in Switzerland, Cal-upon the senses. The cases, however, in vin in France, or any of the Reformers, ad- which the possibility of this delusion exists, vance this plea ?" The French prophets, in are divided from the cases in which it does not the beginning of the present century,+ventured exist, by many, and those not obscure marks. to allege miraculous evidence, and iminediate- They are, for the most part, cases of visions ly ruined their cause by their temerity. "Con- or voices. The object is hardly ever touched. cerning the religion of ancient Rome, of Tur- The vision submits not to be handled. One key, of Siam, of China, a single miracle can-sense does not confirm another. They are not be named, that was ever offered as a test likewise almost always cases of a solitary witof any of those religions before their establishment."+ ness. It is in the highest degree improbable, and I know not, indeed, whether it hath ever We may add to what has been observed of been the fact, that the same derangement of the distinction which we are considering, that, the mental organs should seize different per where miracles are alleged merely in affirmance sons at the same time; a derangement, I mean, of a prior opinion, they who believe the doc- so much the same, as to represent to their trine may sometimes propagate a belief of the imagination the same objects. Lastly, these miracles which they do not themselves enter-are always cases of momentary miracles; by tain. This is the case of what are called pious which term I mean to denote miracles, or frauds; but it is a case, I apprehend, which which the whole existence is of short duratakes place solely in support of a persuasion tion, in contradistinction to miracles which already established. At least it does not hold are attended with permanent effects. The apof the apostolical history. If the apostles did pearance of a spectre, the hearing of a super not believe the miracles, they did not believe natural sound, is a momentary miracle. The the religion; and, without this belief, where sensible proof is gone, when the apparition or was the piety, what place was there for any sound is over. But if a person born blind be thing which could bear the name or colour of restored to sight, a notorious cripple to the use piety, in publishing and attesting miracles in of his limbs, or a dead man to life, here is a its behalf? If it be said that many promote permanent effect produced by supernatura! the belief of revelation, and of any accounts means. The change, indeed, was instantaneous, which favour that belief, because they think but the proof continues. The subject of the them, whether well or ill founded, of public miracle remains. The man cured or restored and political utility; I answer, that if a cha- is there: his former condition was known, and racter exist, which can with less justice than his present condition may be examined. This another be ascribed to the founders of the can by no possibility be resolved into false perChristian religion; it is that of politicians, or ception; and of this kind are by far the greater of men capable of entertaining political views. part of the miracles recorded in the New TesThe truth is, that there is no assignable cha-tament. When Lazarus was raised from the racter which will account for the conduct of dead, ho did not merely move, and speak, and the apostles, supposing their story to be false. die again; or come out of the grave, and vanish away. He returned to his home and fa Campbell on Miracles, p. 120, ed. 1766. The eighteenth. Adams on Mir. p Batty on Lunacy. mily, and there continued; for we find him, Beside the risk of delusion which attaches some time afterwards in the same town, sit-upon momentary miracles, there is also much ting at table with Jesus and his sisters; visited more room for imposture. The account canby great multitudes of the Jews as a subject not be examined at the moment: and, when of curiosity; giving by his presence so much that is also a moment of hurry and confusion, uneasiness to the Jewish rulers as to beget in it may not be difficult for men of influence to them a design of destroying him. No de- gain credit to any story which they may wish lusion can account for this. The French pro- to have believed. This is precisely the case phets in England, some time since, gave out of one of the best attested of the miracles of Old that one of their teachers would come to life Rome, the appearance of Castor and Pollux again; but their enthusiasm never made them in the battle fought by Posthumius with the believe that they actually saw him alive. The Latins at the lake Regillus. There is no blind man, whose restoration to sight at Jeru- doubt but that Posthumius, after the battle, salem is recorded in the ninth chapter of Saint spread the report of such an appearance. No John's Gospel, did not quit the place, or con- person could deny it, while it was said to last. ceal himself from inquiry. On the contrary, No person, perhaps, had any inclination to dishe was forthcoming, to answer the call, to sa-pute it afterwards; or, if they had, could say tisfy the scrutiny, and to sustain the brow- with positiveness, what was or what was not beating of Christ's angry and powerful ene-seen, by some or other of the army, in the dismies. When the cripple at the gate of the may and amidst the tumult of a battle. temple was suddenly cured by Peter, † he did In assigning false perceptions as the origin not immediately relapse into his former lame- to which some miraculous accounts may be ness, or disappear out of the city; but boldly referred, I have not mentioned claims to in and honestly produced himself along with the spiration, illuminations, secret notices or di apostles, when they were brought the next day rections, internal sensations, or consciousnes. before the Jewish council. Here, though the ses of being acted upon by spiritual influences, miracle was sudden, the proof was permanent. good or bad; because these, appealing to no The lameness had been notorious, the cure external proof, however convincing they may continued. This, therefore, could not be the be to the persons themselves, form no part of effect of any momentary delirium, either in what can be accounted miraculous evidence. the subject or in the witnesses of the transac. Their own credibility stands upon their allition. It is the same with the greatest number ance with other miracles. The discussion, of the Scripture miracles. There are other therefore, of all such pretensions, may be omit cases of a mixed nature, in which, although|ted. the principal miracle be momentary, some II. It is not necessary to bring into the circumstance combined with it is permanent. comparison what may be called tentative mira. Of this kind is the history of Saint Paul's cles; that is, where, out of a great number of conversion. § The sudden light and sound, trials, some succeed; and in the accounts of the vision and the voice, upon the road to Da- which, although the narrative of the successful mascus, were momentary: but Paul's blindness cases be alone preserved, and that of the un. for three days in consequence of what had successful cases sunk, yet enough is stated to happened; the communication made to Ana- show that the cases produced are only a few out nias in another place, and by a vision inde- of many in which the same means have been pendent of the former; Ananias finding out employed. This observation bears, with conPaul in consequence of intelligence so receiv-siderable force, upon the ancient oracles and ed, and finding him in the condition described, and Paul's recovery of his sight upon Ananias' laying his hands upon him: are circumstances, which take the transaction, and the principal miracle as included in it, entirely out of the case of momentary miracles, or of such as may be accounted for by false perceptions. Exactly the same thing may be observed of Peter's vision preparatory to the call of Cornelius, and of its connexion with what was imparted in a distant place to Cornelius himself, and with the message dispatched by Cornelius to Peter. The vision might be a dream; the message could not. Either communication, taken separately, might be a delusion; the concurrence of the two was impossible to happen without a supernatural cause. auguries, in which a single coincidence of the event with the prediction is talked of and magnified, whilst failures are forgotten, or suppressed, or accounted for. It is also applica ble to the cures wrought by relics, and at the tombs of saints. The boasted efficacy of the king's touch, upon which Mr. Hume lays some stress, falls under the same description. Nothing is alleged concerning it, which is not alleged of various nostrums, namely, out of many thousands who have used them, certified proofs of a few who have recovered after them. No solution of this sort is applicable to the mira. cles of the Gospel. There is nothing in the narrative, which can induce, or even allow, us to believe, that Christ attempted cures in many instances, and succeeded in a few; or that he ever made the attempt in vain. He did not profess to heal every where all that were sick; on the contrary, he told the Jews, evidently his victory, and the escape of the standard. bearer; perhaps also the imagined appearance of the cross in the heavens, though this last circumstance is very deficient in historical evidence. It is also the case with the modern annual exhibition of the liquefaction of the blood of Saint Januarius at Naples. It is a doubt, likewise, which ought to be excluded by very special circumstances, from these narrahypochondriacal and nervous complaints, and of all diseases which are much affected by the imagination. The miracles of the second and third century are, usually, healing the sick, and casting out evil spirits, miracles in which there is room for some error and deception We hear nothing of causing the blind to see, the lame to walk, the deaf to hear, the lepers to be cleansed. There are also instances in Christian writers, of reputed miracles, which were natural operations, though not known to be such at the time; as that of articulate speech after the loss of a great part of the tongue. meaning to represent his own case, that, "although many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land, yet unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow:" and that “many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet, and none of them was cleansed saving Naaman the Syrian.' "tives which relate to the supernatural cure of By which examples, he gave them to understand, that it was not the nature of a Divine interposition, or necessary to its purpose, to be general; still less to answer every challenge that might be made, which would teach men to put their faith upon these experiments.Christ never pronounced the word, but the ef- | fect followed. It was not a thousand sick that received his benediction, and a few that were benefited; a single paralytic is let down in his bed at Jesus's feet, in the midst of a surrounding multitude; Jesus bid him walk, and he did so. A man with a withered hand is in the synagogue; Jesus bid him stretch forth his hand, in the presence of the assembly, and it was "restored whole like the other." There was nothing tentative in these cures; nothing that can be explained by the power of accident. We may observe also that many of the cures which Christ wrought, such as that of a person blind from his birth, also many miracles beside cures, as raising the dead, walking upon the sea, feeding a great multitude with a lew loaves and fishes, are of a nature which does not in anywise admit of the supposition of a fortunate experiment. IV. To the same head of objection nearly, may also be referred accounts, in which the va riation of a small circumstance may have transformed some extraordinary appearance, or some critical coincidence of events, into a miracle; stories, in a word, which may be resolved into exaggeration. The miracles of the Gospel can by no possibility be explained away in this manner. Total fiction will account for any thing but no stretch of exaggeration that has any parallel in other histories, no force of fancy upon real circumstances, could produce the narratives which we now have. The feeding of the five thousand with a few loaves and fishes surpasses all bounds of exaggeration. The raising of Lazarus, of the widow's son at Nain, as well as many of the cures which Christ wrought, come not within the compass of misrepresentation. I mean that it is impossible to assign any position of circumstances, however peculiar, any accidental effects however extraordinary, any natural singularity, which could supply an origin or foundation to these III. We may dismiss from the question all accounts in which, allowing the phenomenon to be real, the fact to be true, it still remains doubtful whether a miracle were wrought. This is the case with the ancient history of what is called the thundering legion, of the extraordinary circumstances which obstructed the rebuilding of the temple at Jerusalem by Julian, the circling of the flames and fragrant smell at the martyrdom of Polycarp, the sud-accounts. den shower that extinguished the fire into which the Scriptures were thrown in the Diocletian persecution; Constantine's dream; his inscribing in consequence of it the cross upon his standard and the shields of his soldiers; • Luke iv. 25. + One, and only one, instance may be produced in which the disciples of Christ do seem to have attempted a cure, and not to have been able to perform it. The story is very ingenuously related by three of the evange lists. The patient was afterwards healed by Christ himself; and the whole transaction seems to have been intended, as it was well suited, to display the superiority of Christ above all who performed miracles in his name, a distinction which, during his presence in the world, it might be necessary to inculcate by some such proof as Matt. xn. 10. this. ↑ Mark ii. 3. Matt. xvii. 14. Mark ix. 14 Luke ix. 33. Having thus enumerated several exceptions, which may justly be taken to relations of miracles, it is necessary when we read the Scriptures, to bear in our minds this generalremark; that, although there be miracles recorded in the New Testament, which fall within some or other of the exceptions here assigned, yet that they are united with others, to which none of the same exceptions extend, and that their credibility stands upon this union. Thus the visions and revelations which Saint Paul asserts to have been imparted to him, may not, in their separate evidence, be distinguishable from the visions and revelations which many others have alleged. But here is the difference. Saint Paul's Jortin's Remarks, vol ii. p. 51. |