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If any one choose to call assent to its evidence credulity, it is at least incumbent upon him to produce examples in which the same evidence hath turned out to be fallacious. And this contains the precise question which we are now to agitate.

In stating the comparison between our evidence, and what our adversaries may bring into competition with ours, we will divide the distinctions which we wish to propose into two kinds,-those which relate to the proof, and those which relate to the miracles. Under the former head we may lay out the case.

1. Such accounts of supernatural events as are found only in histories by some ages posterior to the transaction, and of which it is evident that the historian could know little more than his reader. Ours is contemporary history. This difference alone removes out of our way, the miraculous history of Pythagoras, who lived five hundred years before the Christian era, written by Porphyry and Jamblicus, who lived three hundred years after that era; the prodigies of Livy's history; the fables of the heroic ages; the whole of the Greek and Roman, as well as of the Gothic mythology; a great part of the legendary history of Popish saints, the very best attested of which is extracted from the certificates that are exhibited during the process of their canonization, a ceremony which seldom takes place till a century after their deaths. It applies also with considerable force to the miracles of Apollonius Tyaneus, which are contained in a solitary history of his life, published by Philostratus, above a hundred years after his death; and in which, whether Philostratus had any prior account to guide him, depends upon his single unsupported assertion. Also to some of the miracles of the third century, especially to one extraordinary instance, the account of Gregory, bishop of Neocesarea, called Thaumaturgus, delivered in the writings of Gregory of Nyssen, who lived one hundred and thirty years after the subject of his panegyric.

story was published in the place in which it was acted. The church of Christ was first planted at Jerusalem itself. With that church, others corresponded. From thence the primitive teachers of the institution went forth; thither they assembled. The church of Jerusalem, and the several churches of Judea, subsisted from the beginning, and for many ages;* received also the same books and the same accounts, as other churches did.

This distinction disposes, amongst others, of the above-mentioned miracles of Apollonius Tyaneus, most of which are related to have been performed in India; no evidence remaining that either the miracles ascribed to him, or the history of those miracles, were ever heard of in India. Those of Francis Xavier, the Indian missionary, with many others of the Romish breviary, are liable to the same objection, viz. that the accounts of them were published at a vast distance from the supposed scene of the wonders.t

III. We lay out of the case transient rumours. Upon the first publication of an extraordinary account, or even of an article of ordinary intelligence, no one, who is not personally acquainted with the transaction, can know whether it be true or false, because any man may publish any story. It is in the future confirmation, or contradiction, of the account; in its permanency, or its disappearance; its dying away into silence, or its increasing in notoriety; its being followed up by subsequent accounts, and being repeated in different and independent accounts; that solid truth is distinguished from fugitive lies. This distinction is altogether on the side of Christianity. The story did not drop. On the contrary, it was succeeded by a train of action and events dependent upon it. The accounts, which we have in our hands, were composed after the first reports must have subsided. They were followed by a train of writings upon the subject. The historical testimonies of the transaction were many and various, and connected with letters, discourses, controversies, apologies, successively produced by the same transaction.

The value of this circumstance is shown to have been accurately exemplified in the history of Igna- IV. We may lay out of the case what I call tius Loyola, founder of the order of Jesuits.* His naked history. It has been said, that if the prolife, written by a companion of his, and by one of digies of the Jewish history had been found only the order, was published about fifteen years after in fragments of Manetho, or Berosus, we should his death. In which life, the author, so far from have paid no regard to them: and I am willing to ascribing any miracles to Ignatius, industriously admit this. If we knew nothing of the fact, but states the reasons why he was not invested with from the fragment; if we possessed no proof that any such power. The life was republished fifteen these accounts had been credited and acted upon, years afterward, with the addition of many cir- from times, probably, as ancient as the accounts cumstances which were the fruit, the author says, themselves; if we had no visible effects connected of farther inquiry, and of diligent examination; with the history, no subsequent or collateral testibut still with a total silence about miracles. When mony to confirm it; under these circumstances, I Ignatius had been dead nearly sixty years, the think that it would be undeserving of credit. But Jesuits, conceiving a wish to have the founder of this certainly is not our case. In appreciating their order placed in the Roman calendar, began, the evidence of Christianity, the books are to be as it should seem, for the first time, to attribute to combined with the institution; with the prevahim a catalogue of miracles, which could not then lency of the religion at this day; with the time be distinctly disproved; and which there was, in and place of its origin; which are acknowledged those who governed the church, a strong disposi-points; with the circumstances of its rise and protion to admit upon the slenderest proofs. gress, as collected from external history; with the II. We may lay out of the case, accounts pub-fact of our present books being received by the lished in one country, of what passed in a distant country, without any proof that such accounts were known or received at home. In the case of Christianity, Judea, which was the scene of the transaction, was the centre of the mission. The

* Douglas's Criterion of Miracles, p. 74.

votaries of the institution from the beginning; with that of other books coming after these, filled

lem in the first three centuries, is distinctly preserved; * The succession of many eminent bishops of Jerusa as Alexander, A. D. 212, who succeeded Narcissus, then

116 years old.

† Douglas's Crit. p. 84.

with accounts of effects and consequences result- | rest is involved, nothing is to be done or changed ing from the transaction, or referring to the trans-in consequence of believing them. Such stories action, or built upon it; lastly, with the consider- are credited, if the careless assent that is given to ation of the number and variety of the books them deserve that name, more by the indolence of themselves, the different writers from which they the hearer, than by his judgment: or, though not proceed, the different views with which they were much credited, are passed from one to another written, so disagreeing as to repel the suspicion of without inquiry or resistance. To this case, and confederacy, so agreeing as to show that they were to this case alone, belongs what is called the love founded in a common original, i. e. in a story sub- of the marvellous. I have never known it carry stantially the same. Whether this proof be satis- men farther. Men do not suffer persecution from factory or not, it is properly a cumulation of evi- the love of the marvellous. Of the indifferent nadence, by no means a naked or solitary record. ture we are speaking of, are most vulgar errors and popular superstitions: most, for instance, of the current reports of apparitions. Nothing depends upon their being true or false. But not, surely, of this kind were the alleged miracles of Christ and his apostles. They decided, if true, the most important question upon which the human mind can fix its anxiety. They claimed to regulate the opinions of mankind, upon subjects in which they are not only deeply concerned, but usually refractory and obstinate. Men could not be utterly careless in such a case as this. If a Jew took up the story, he found his darling partiality to his own nation and law wounded; if a Gentile, he found his idolatry and polytheism reprobated and condemned. Whoever entertained the account, whether Jew or Gentile, could not avoid the following reflection :-" If these things be true, I must give up the opinions and principles in which I have been brought up, the religion in which my fathers lived and died." It is not conceivable that a man should do this upon any idle report or frivolous account, or indeed, without being fully satisfied and convinced of the truth and credibility of the narrative to which he trusted. But it did not stop at opinions. They who believed Christianity, acted upon it. Many made it the express business of their lives to publish the intelligence. It was required of those who admitted that intelligence, to change forthwith their conduct and their principles, to take up a different course of life, to part with their habits and gratifications, and begin a new set of rules, and system of behaviour. The apostles, at least, were interested not to sacrifice their ease, their fortunes, and their lives, for an idle tale; multitudes besides them were induced, by the same tale, to encounter opposition, danger, and sufferings.

V. A mark of historical truth, although only in a certain way, and to a certain degree, is particularity, in names, dates, places, circumstances, and in the order of events preceding or following the transaction: of which kind, for instance, is the particularity in the description of Saint Paul's voyage and shipwreck, in the 27th chapter of the Acts, which no man, I think, can read without being convinced that the writer was there; and also in the account of the cure and examination of the blind man, in the ninth chapter of Saint John's Gospel, which bears every mark of personal knowledge on the part of the historian. I do not deny that fiction has often the particularity of truth; but then it is of studied and elaborate fiction, or of a formal attempt to deceive, that we observe this. Since, however, experience proves that particularity is not confined to truth, I have stated that it is a proof of truth only to a certain extent, i. e. it reduces the question to this, whether we can depend or not upon the probity of the relater which is a considerable advance in our present argument; for an express attempt to deceive, in which case alone particularity can appear without truth, is charged upon the evangelists by few. If the historian acknowledge himself to have received his intelligence from others, the particularity of the narrative shows, prima facie, the accuracy of his inquiries, and the fulness of his information. This remark belongs to Saint Luke's history. Of the particularity which we allege, many examples may be found in all the Gospels. And it is very difficult to conceive, that such numerous particularities, as are almost every where to be met with in the Scriptures, should be raised out of nothing, or be spun out of the imagination without any fact to go upon.t

It is to be remarked, however, that this particularity is only to be looked for in direct history. It is not natural in references or allusions, which yet, in other respects, often afford, as far as they go, the most unsuspicious evidence.

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 assent; stories upon which nothing depends, in which no inte

Both these chapters ought to be read for the sake of this very observation.

†There is always some truth where there are considerable particularities related; and they always seem to bear some proportion to one another. Thus there is a great want of the particulars of time, place, and persons, in Manetho's account of the Egyptian Dynasties, Ctesias's of the Assyrian Kings, and those which the technical chronologers have given of the ancient king. doms of Greece: and agreeably thereto, the accounts have much fiction and falsehood, with some truth: whereas, Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War, and Cesar's of the War in Gaul, in both which the particulars of time, place, and persons, are mentioned, are universally esteemed true to a great degree of exactness."-Hartley, vol. ii. p. 109.

If it be said, that the mere promise of a future state would do all this; I answer, that the mere promise of a future state, without any evidence to give credit or assurance to it, would do nothing. A few wandering fishermen talking of a resurrection of the dead, could produce no effect. If it be farther said, that men easily believe what they anxiously desire; I again answer that, in my opinion, the very contrary of this is nearer to the truth. Anxiety of desire, earnestness of expectation, the vastness of an event, rather cause men to disbelieve, to doubt, to dread a fallacy, to distrust, and to examine. When our Lord's resurrection was first reported to the apostles, they did not believe, we are told, for joy. This was natural, and is agreeable to experience.

VII. We have laid out of the case those accounts which require no more than a simple assent; and we now also lay out of the case those which come merely in affirmance of opinions already formed. This last circumstance is of the utmost importance to notice well. It has long been observed, that Popish miracles happen in

Popish countries; that they make no converts: | land, Calvin in France, or any of the reformers, which proves that stories are accepted, when they advance this plea?" The French prophets, in fall in with principles already fixed, with the pub- the beginning of the present century,+ ventured lic sentiments, or with the sentiments of a party to allege miraculous evidence, and immediately already engaged on the side the miracle supports, ruined their cause by their temerity. "Concernwhich would not be attempted to be produced in ing the religion of ancient Rome, of Turkey, the face of enemies, in opposition to reigning of Siam, of China, a single miracle cannot be tenets or favourite prejudices, or when, if they be named, that was ever offered as a test of any of believed, the belief must draw men away from those religions before their establishment." their preconceived and habitual opinions, from We may add to what has been observed of the their modes of life and rules of action. In the distinction which we are considering, that, where former case, men may not only receive a miracu- miracles are alleged merely in affirmance of a lous account, but may both act and suffer on the prior opinion, they who believe the doctrine may side and in the cause, which the miracle supports, sometimes propagate a belief of the miracles which yet not act or suffer for the miracle, but in pur- they do not themselves entertain. This is the suance of a prior persuasion. The miracle, like case of what are called pious frauds; but it is a any other argument which only confirms what case, I apprehend, which takes place solely in was before believed, is admitted with little ex- support of a persuasion already established. At amination. In the moral as in the natural world, least it does not hold of the apostolical history. If it is change which requires a cause. Men are the apostles did not believe the miracles, they did easily fortified in their old opinions, driven from not believe the religion; and, without this belief, them with great difficulty. Now how does this where was the piety, what place was there for any apply to the Christian history? The miracles, thing which could bear the name or colour of there recorded, were wrought in the midst of ene- piety, in publishing and attesting miracles in its mies, under a government, a priesthood, and a behalf? If it be said that any promote the belief magistracy, decidedly and vehemently adverse to of revelation, and of any accounts which favour them, and to the pretensions which they support that belief, because they think them, whether well ed. They were Protestant miracles in a Popish or ill founded, of public and political utility; I country; they were Popish miracles in the midst answer, that if a character exist, which can with of Protestants. They produced a change; they less justice than another be ascribed to the founestablished a society upon the spot, adhering to ders of the Christian religion;it is that of politicians, the belief of them; they made converts; and those or of men capable of entertaining political views. who were converted gave up to the testimony The truth is, that there is no assignable character their most fixed opinions and most favourite pre- which will account for the conduct of the apostles, judices. They who acted and suffered in the supposing their story to be false. If bad men, cause, acted and suffered for the miracles: for what could have induced them to take such pains there was no anterior persuasion to induce them, to promote virtue? If good men, they would not no prior reverence, prejudice, or partiality, to take have gone about the country with a string of lies hold of Jesus had not one follower when he set in their mouths. up his claim. His miracles gave birth to his sect. No part of this description belongs to the ordinary evidence of Heathen or Popish miracles. Even most of the miracles alleged to have been performed by Christians, in the second and third century of its era, want this confirmation. It constitutes indeed a line of partition between the origin and the progress of Christianity. Frauds and fallacies might mix themselves with the progress, which could not possibly take place in the commencement of the religion; at least, according to any laws of human conduct that we are acquaint ed with. What should suggest to the first propalated in his life, written by Dr. Doddridge. All gators of Christianity, especially to fishermen, tax-gatherers, and husbandmen, such a thought as that of changing the religion of the world; what could bear them through the difficulties in which the attempt engaged them; what could procure any degree of success to the attempt; are questions which apply, with great force, to the setting out of the institution, with less, to every future stage of it.

To hear some men talk, one would suppose the setting up of a religion by miracles to be a thing of every day's experience; whereas the whole current of history is against it. Hath any founder of a new sect amongst Christians pretended to miraculous powers, and succeeded by his pretensions? "Were these powers claimed or exercised by the founders of the sects of the Waldenses and Albigenses? Did Wickliffe in England pretend to it? Did Huss or Jerome in Bohemia? Did Luther in Germany, Zuinglius in Switzer

IN APPRECIATING the credit of any miraculous story, these are distinctions which relate to the evidence. There are other distinctions, of great moment in the question, which relate to the miracles themselves. Of which latter kind the following ought carefully to be retained.

I. It is not necessary to admit as a miracle, what can be resolved into a false perception. Of this nature was the demon of Socrates; the visions of Saint Anthony, and of many others; the vision which Lord Herbert of Cherbury describes himself to have seen; Colonel Gardner's vision, as re

these may be accounted for by a momentary insanity; for the characteristic symptom of human madness is the rising up in the mind of images not distinguishable by the patient from impressions upon the senses. The cases, however, in which the possibility of this delusion exists, are divided from the cases in which it does not exist, by many, and those not obscure marks. They are, for the most part, cases of visions or voices. The object is hardly ever touched. The vision submits not to be handled. One sense does not confirm another. They are likewise almost always cases of a solitary witness. It is in the highest degree improbable, and I know not, indeed, whether it hath ever been the fact, that the same derangement of the mental organs should seize

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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 con nexion 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 hap pen without a supernatural cause.

afterward; or, if they had, could say with positiveness, what was or what was not seen, by some or other of the army, in the dismay and amidst the tumult of a battle.

different persons at the same time; a derangement, | laying his hands upon him; are circumstances, I mean, so much the same, as to represent to their imagination the same objects. Lastly, these are always cases of momentary miracles; by which term I mean to denote miracles, of which the whole existence is of short duration, in contradistinction to miracles which are attended with permanent effects. The appearance of a spectre, the hearing of a supernatural sound, is a moment ary miracle. The sensible proof is gone, when the apparition or sound is over. But if a person born blind be restored to sight, a notorious cripple to the use of his limbs, or a dead man to life, here is a permanent effect produced by supernatural means. The change indeed was instantaneous, Beside the risk of delusion which attaches upon but the proof continues. The subject of the mira- momentary miracles, there is also much more cle remains. The man cured or restored is there: room for imposture. The account cannot be his former condition was known, and his present examined at the moment; and, when that is also condition may be examined. This can by no a moment of hurry and confusion, it may not be possibility be resolved into false perception: and difficult for men of influence to gain credit to any of this kind are by far the greater part of the mi- story which they may wish to have believed. This racles recorded in the New Testament. When is precisely the case of one of the best attested of Lazarus was raised from the dead, he did not the miracles of Old Rome, the appearance of Casmerely move, and speak, and die again; or come tor and Pollux in the battle fought by Posthumius out of the grave, and vanish away. He returned with the Latins at the lake Regillus. There is to his home and family, and there continued; for no doubt but that Posthumius after the battle, we find him, some time afterward in the same spread the report of such an appearance. Νο town, sitting at table with Jesus and his sisters; person could deny it whilst it was said to last. No visited by great multitudes of the Jews, as a sub-person, perhaps, had any inclination to dispute it ject of curiosity; giving by his presence so much uneasiness to the Jewish rulers as to beget in them a design of destroying him. No delusion can account for this. The French prophets in England, some time since, gave out that one of their teachers would come to life again; but their enthusiasm never made them believe that they actually saw him alive. The blind man, whose restoration to sight at Jerusalem is recorded in the ninth chapter of St. John's Gospel, did not quit the place or conceal himself from inquiry. On the contrary, he was forthcoming, to answer the call, to satisfy the scrutiny, and to sustain the brow-beating of Christ's angry and powerful enemies. When the cripple at the gate of the temple was suddenly cured by Peter, f he did not immediately relapse into his former lameness, or disappear out of the city; but boldly and honestly II. It is not necessary to bring into the compaproduced himself along with the apostles, when rison what may be called tentative miracles; that they were brought the next day before the Jewish is, where, out of a great number of trials, some council. Here, though the miracle was sudden, succeeded; and in the accounts of which, although the proof was permanent. The lameness had the narrative of the successful cases be alone prebeen notorious, the cure continued. This there- served, and that of the unsuccessful cases sunk, fore, could not be the effect of any momentary de- yet enough is stated to show that the cases prolirium, either in the subject or in the witnesses of duced are only a few out of many in which the the transaction. It is the same with the greatest same means have been employed. This observanumber of the Scripture miracles. There are tion bears, with considerable force, upon the other cases of a mixed nature, in which, although ancient oracles and auguries, in which a single the principal miracle be momentary, some circum- coincidence of the event with the prediction is stance combined with it is permanent. Of this talked of and magnified, whilst failures are forkind is the history of St. Paul's conversion. § gotten, or suppressed, or accounted for. It is also The sudden light and sound, the vision and the applicable to the cures wrought by relics, and at voice, upon the road to Damascus, were moment- the tombs of saints. The boasted efficacy of the ary: but Paul's blindness for three days in conse-king's touch, upon which Mr. Hume lays some quence of what had happened; the communica-stress, falls under the same description. Nothing tion made to Ananias in another place, and by a vision independent of the former; Ananias finding out Paul in consequence of intelligence so received, and finding him in the condition described, and Paul's recovery of his sight upon Ananias's

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In assigning false perceptions as the origin to which some miraculous accounts may be referred, I have not mentioned claims to inspiration, illuminations, secret notices or directions, internal sensations, or consciousnesses of being acted upon by spiritual influences, good or bad; because these, appealing to no external proof, however convincing they may be to the persons themselves, form no part of what can be accounted miraculous evidence. Their own credibility stands upon their alliance with other miracles. The discussion, therefore, of all such pretensions may be omitted.

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 miracles 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. | ples. It is a doubt likewise, which ought to be He did not profess to heal every where all that excluded by very special circumstances, from these were sick; on the contrary, he told the Jews, narratives which relate to the supernatural cure evidently meaning to represent his own case, that, of hypochondriacal and nervous complaints, and "although many widows were in Israel in the of all diseases which are much affected by the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up three imagination. The miracles of the second and years and six months, when great famine was third century are, usually, healing the sick, and throughout all the land, yet unto none of them casting out evil spirits, miracles in which there is was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, room for some error and deception. We hear unto a woman that was a widow:" and that nothing of causing the blind to see, the lame to many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eli- walk, the deaf to hear, the lepers to be cleansed.* seus the prophet, and none of them was cleansed There are also instances in Christian writers of saving Naaman the Syrian."* By which exam- reputed miracles, which were natural operations, ples he gave them to understand, that it was not though not known to be such at the time; as that the nature of a divine interposition, or necessary of articulate speech after the loss of a great part to its purpose, to be general; still less to answer of the tongue. every challenge that might be made, which would teach men to put their faith upon these experiments. Christ never pronounced the word, but the effect 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."'s 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 few loaves and fishes, are of a nature which does not in any wise admit of the supposition of a fortunate experi

ment.

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 sudden 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; 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 St. Januarius at Na

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 evangelists. The patient was afterward 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 this.

! Mark ii. 3.

§ Matt. xii. 10. | Matt. xvii. 14. Mark ix. 14. Luke ix. 33.

IV. To the same head of objection nearly, may also be referred accounts, in which the variation 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 accounts.

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 general remark; 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 inparted 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 pretensions were attested by external miracles wrought by himself, and by miracles wrought in the cause to which these visions relate; or, to speak more properly, the same historical authority which informs us of one, informs us of the other. This is not ordinarily true of the visions of enthusiasts, or even of the accounts in which they are contained. Again, some of Christ's own miracles were momentary; as the transfiguration, the appearance and voice from Heaven at his baptism, a voice from the clouds on one occasion afterward, (John xii. 28,) and some others. It is not denied, that the distinction which we have proposed concerning miracles of this species, applies, in diminution of the force of the evidence, as much to these instances as to others. But this is the case, not with all the

* Jortin's Remarks, vol. ii. p. 51.

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