Page:An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding - Hume (1748).djvu/204

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192
ESSAY X.

poses, that the Credit of two Witnesses, maintaining a Crime against any one, is destroy'd by the Testimony of two others, who affirm him to have been two hundred Leagues distant, at the same Instant when the Crime is said to have been committed.

One of the best attested Miracles in all prophane History is that which Tacitus reports of Vespasian, who cur'd a blind Man in Alexandria, by Means of his Spittle, and a lame Man by the mere Touch of his Foot; in Obedience to a Vision of the God, Serapis, who had enjoin'd them to have recourse to the Emperor, for these miraculous and extraordinary Cures, The Story may be seen in that fine Historian[1]; where every Circumstance seems to add Weight to the Testimony, and might be display'd at large with all the Force of Argument and Eloquence, if any one were now concern'd to enforce the Evidence of that exploded and idolatrous Superstition. The Gravity, Solidity, Age, and Probity of so great an Emperor, who, thro' the whole Coarse of his Life, convers'd in a familiar Way with his Friends and Courtiers, and never affected those extraordinary Airs of Divinity, assum'd by Alexander and Demetrius. The Historian, a contemporary Writer, noted for Candour and Veracity, and withal, the greatest and most penetrating Genius, perhaps, of all Antiquity; and so free from

  1. Hist. Lib. 4. Cap. 8.

any