The Collected Works of Theodore Parker/Volume 01/Book 3/Chapter 4

by Theodore Parker

CHAPTER IV.

THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS, ITS REAL AND PRETENDED SOURCE.

On what authority did Jesus teach? On that of the most high God, as he expressly states, and often. But to have the authority of God, is not that miraculous? How can man have God's authority in the natural way? Let us look at the matter.

I. The only Authority of a Doctrine is its Truth.

Truth is the relation of things as they are; falsehood, as they are not. No doctrine can have a higher condemnation than to be convicted of falsehood; none a higher authority than to be proved true. God is the author of things as they are; therefore of this relation, and therefore of Truth. He that delivers the Truth then has so far the authority of Truth's God. Then it will be asked. How do we know Christianity is true, or that it is our duty to love Man and God? Now when it is asked. How do I know that I exist; that doubting is doubting; that half is less than the whole; that it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be? the questioner is set down as a strange man. But it has somehow come to pass, that he is reckoned a very acute and Christian person, who doubts moral and religious axioms, and asks, How do I know that Right is right, and Wrong wrong, and Goodness good? Alas, there are men among the Christians who place virtue and religion on a lower ground than Aristippus and Democritus, men branded as Heathens and Atheists. Let us know what we are about.

It was said above,^[1] there are, practically, four sources of knowledge—direct and indirect, primary and secondary,—namely, Perception for sensible things; Intuition for spiritual things; Reflection for logical things; and Testimony for historical things. If the doctrines of Christianity are eternal truths, they are not sensible things, not historical things, and of course do not depend on sensual perception, nor historical testimony, but can be presented directly to the consciousness of men at one age as well as another, and thus if they are matters of reflection, may be made plain to all who have the reflective faculty and will use it; if they are matters of intuition, to all who have the intuitive faculty, and will let it act. Now the duty we owe to Man, that of loving him as ourselves; the duty we owe to God, that of loving him above all, is a matter of intuition; it proceeds from the very nature of Man, and is inseparable from that nature; we recognize the truth of the precept as soon as it is stated, and see the truth of it as soon as the unprejudiced mind looks that way. It is no less a matter of reflection likewise. He that reflects on the Idea of God as given by intuition, on his own nature as he learns it from his mental operations, sees that this twofold duty flows logically from these premises. The truth of these doctrines, then, may be known by both intuition and reflection. He that teaches a doctrine eternally true, does not set forth a private and peculiar thing resting on private authority and historical evidence, but an everlasting reality, which rests on the ground of all truth, the public and eternal authority of unchanging God. A false doctrine is not of God. It has no background of Godhead. It rests on the authority of Simon Peter or Simon Magus; of him that sets it forth. It is his private, personal property. When the Devil speaks a lie, he speaketh of his own; but when a Son of God speaks the truth, he speaks not his own word but the Father's. Must a man indorse God's word to make it current?

Again, if the truth of any doctrines rest on the personal authority of Jesus, it was not a duty to observe them before he spoke; for he, being the cause, or indispensable occasion of the duty, to make the effect precede the cause is an absurdity too great for modern divines. Besides, if it depends on Jesus, it is not eternally true; a religious doctrine that was not true and binding yesterday, may become a lie again by to-morrow; if not eternally true, it is no truth at all. Absolute truth is the same always and everywhere. Personal authority adds nothing to a mathematical demonstration; can it more to a moral intuition? Can authority alter the relation of things? A voice speaking from Heaven, and working more wonders than Æsop and the Saints, or Moses and the Sibyl, relate, cannot make it our duty to hate God, or Man; no such voice can add any new obligation to the law God wrote in us.

When it is said the doctrines of Religion, like the truth of Science, rest on their own authority, or that of unchanging God, they are then seen to stand on the highest and safest ground that is possible—the ground of absolute truth. Then if all the Evangelists and Apostles were liars; if Jesus were mistaken in a thousand things; if he were a hypocrite; yes, if he never lived, but the New Testament were a sheer forgery from end to end, these doctrines are just the same, absolute truth.

But, on the other hand, if these depend on the infallible authority of Jesus, then if he were mistaken in any one point his authority is gone in all; if the Evangelists were mistaken in any one point, we can never be certain we have the words of Jesus in a particular case, and then where is “historical Christianity?”

Now it is a most notorious fact, that the Apostles and Evangelists were greatly mistaken in some points. It is easy to show, if we have the exact words of Jesus, that he also was mistaken in some points of the greatest magnitude—in the character of God, the existence of the Devil, the eternal damnation of men, in the interpretation of the Old Testament, in the doctrine of demons, in the celebrated prediction of his second coming and the end of the world, within a few years. If Religion or Christianity rest on his authority, and that alone, it falls when the foundation falls, and that stands at the mercy of a schoolboy. If he is not faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who shall commit to him the true riches?

II. Of the Authority derived from the alleged Miracles of Jesus.

Of late years it has been unpopular with theological writers to rest the authority of Christianity on its truth, and not its truth on its authority. It must be confessed there is some inconvenience in the case, for if this method of trusting Truth alone and not Authority be followed, by and by some things which have much Authority and no Truth to support them, may come to the ground. The same thing took place in the middle ages, when Abelard looked into Theology, explaining and defending some of the doctrines of the Church by Reason. The Church said, If you commend the Reasonable as such, you must condemn the Not-Reasonable, and then where are we? A significant question truly. So the Church “cried out upon him as a heretic, because he trusted Reason more than a blind belief in the traditions of men, which the Church has long had the impudence to call “Faith in God.” It is often said, in our times, that Christianity rests on miracles; that the authority of the miracle-worker authenticates his doctrine; if a teacher can raise the dead, he must have a commission from God to teach true doctrine; his word is the standard of truth. Here the fact and the value of miracles are both assumed outright.

Now if it could be shown that Christianity rested on Miracles, or had more or less connection with them, it yet proves nothing peculiar in the case, for other forms of Religions, fetichistic, polytheistic, and monotheistic, appeal to the same authority. If a nation is rude and superstitious, the claim to miracles is the more common; their authority the greater.^[2] To take the popular notion, the Jewish Religion began in miracles, was continued, and will end in miracles. The Mahometan tells us the Koran is a miracle; its author had miraculous inspiration, visions, and revelations. The writings of the Greeks, the Romans, the Scandinavians and the Hindoos, the Chinese and Persians, are full of miracles. In Fetichism all is miracle, and its authority, therefore, the best in the world. The Catholic Church and the Latter-day-Saints still claim the power of working them, and, therefore, of authenticating whatever they will, if a miracle have the alleged virtue.

Now in resting Christianity on this basis we must do one of two things: either, first, we must admit that Christianity rests on the same foundation with the lowest Fetichism, but has less divine authority than that, for if miracles constitute the authority, then that is the best form of Religion which counts the most miracles; or, secondly, we must deny the reality of all miracles except the Christian, in order to give exclusive sway to Christianity. But the devotees of each other form will retort the denial, and claim exclusive credence for their favourite wonders. The serious inquirer will ask, If such be the Evidence, what is Truth, and how shall I get at it? And if he does not stop for a time in scepticism, at best in indifference, why he is a very rare man. In this state of the case theologians have felt bound, in logic, either to prove the superiority of Christian miracles, or to deny all other miracles. The first method is not possible, the Hindoo Priest surpasses the Christian in the number and magnitude and antiquity of his miracles. The second, therefore, is the only method left. Accordingly, most ingenious attempts have been made to devise some test which will spare the Christian and condemn all other miracles. The Protestant saves only those mentioned in the Bible; the Catholic, more consistently, thinks the faculty immanent in the Church, and claims miracles down to the present day. But all these attempts to establish a suitable criterion have been fruitless, and even worse, often exposing more than the folly of their authors.^[3] However, they who argue from the miracles alone, assume two things; first, that miracles prove the divinity of a doctrine; secondly, that they were wrought in connection with the Christian doctrine. If one ask proof of these significant premises, it is not easy to come by. This subject of miracles demands a careful attention. Here are two questions to be asked. First, Are miracles possible? Second, Did they actually occur in the case of Christianity?

I. Are Miracles possible?

The answer depends on the definition of the term. The point we are to reason from is the idea of God, who must be the cause of the miracle. Now a miracle is one of three things:

1. It is a transgression of all law which God has made; or,

2. A transgression of all known laws, but obedience to a law which we may yet discover; or,

3. A transgression of all law known or knowable by man, but yet in conformity with some law out of our reach.

1. To take the first definition. A miracle is not possible, as it involves a contradiction. The infinite God must have made the most perfect laws possible in the nature of things; it is absurd and self-contradictory to suppose the reverse. But if his laws are perfect and the nature of things unchangeable, why should he alter these laws? The change can only be for the worse. To suppose he does this is to accuse God of caprice. If he be the ultimate cause of the phenomena and laws of the universe, to suppose in a given case he changes these phenomena and laws, is either to make God fickle and therefore not worthy to be relied on; or else inferior to Nature, of which he is yet the cause.

2. To take the second definition. It is no miracle at all, but simply an act, which at first we cannot understand and refer to the process of its causation. The most common events, such as growth, vitality, sensation, affection, thought, are miracles. Besides, the miracle is of a most fluctuating character. The miracle-worker of to-day is a matter-of-fact juggler to-morrow. The explosion of gunpowder, the production of magnified images of any object, the phenomena of mineral and animal magnetism, are miracles in one age, but common things in the next. Such wonders prove only the skill of the performer. Science each year adds new wonders to our store. The master of a locomotive steam-engine would have been thought greater than Jupiter Tonans or the Elohim thirty centuries ago.

3. To take the third hypothesis. There is no antecedent objection, nor metaphysical impossibility in the case. Finite Man not only does not, but cannot understand all the modes of God's action; all the laws of His Being. There may be higher beings, to whom God reveals himself in modes that we can never know, for we cannot tell the secrets of God, nor determine à priori the modes of his manifestation. In this sense a miracle is possible. The world is a perpetual miracle of this sort. Nature is the Art of God; can we fully comprehend it? Life, Being, Creation, Duration, do we understand these actual things? How then can we say to the Infinite, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further; there are no more ways wherein thy Being acts?^[4] Man is not the measure of God. Let us use the word in this latter sense.

II. Did Miracles occur in the case of Jesus?

This question is purely historical; to be answered, like all other historical questions, by competent testimony. Have we testimony adequate to prove the fact?

Antecedent to all experience one empirical thing is probable as another. To the first man, with no experience, birth from one parent is no more surprising than birth from two; to feed five men with five ship-loads of corn, or five thousand with five loaves; the reproduction of an arm, or a finger nail; the awakening from a four days' death, or a four hours' sleep; to change water into wine, or mineral coal into burning gas; the descent into the sea, or the ascent into the sky; the prediction of a future or the memory of a past event;—all are alike, one as credible as the other. But to take our past experience of the nature of things, the case wears a different aspect. We demand more evidence for a strange than a common thing. From the very constitution of the mind a prudent man supposes that the Laws of Nature continue; that the same cause produces always the same effects, if the circumstances remain the same. If it were related to us, by four strangers who had crossed the ocean in the same vessel, that a man, now in London, cured diseases, opened the blind eyes, restored the wasted limb, and raised men from the dead, all by a mere word; that he himself was born miraculously, and attended by miracles all his life,—who would believe the story? We should be justified in demanding a large amount of the most unimpeachable evidence. This opinion is confirmed by the doubt of scientific men in respect of “animal magnetism” and “spiritualism”—where no law is violated, but a faculty hitherto little noticed is disclosed.

Now if we look after the facts of the case, we find the evidence for the Christian miracles is very scanty in extent, and very uncertain in character. We must depend on the testimony of the epistolary and the historical books of the New Testament. It is a notorious fact that the genuine Epistles, the earliest Christian documents, make no mention of any miracles performed by Jesus; and when we consider the character of Paul, his strong love of the marvellous, the manner in which he dwells on the appearance of Jesus to him after death, it seems surprising, if he believed the other miracles, that he does not allude to them. To examine the testimony of the Gospels; two profess to contain the evidence of eye-witnesses. But we are not certain these books came in their present shape from John and Matthew; it is certain they were not written till long after the events related. The Gospel ascribed to John is of small historical value if of any at all. But still more, each of them relates what the writers could not have been witness to; so we have nothing but hearsay and conjecture. Besides, these authors shared the common prejudice of their times, and disagree one with the other. The Gospels of Mark and Luke—who were not eye-witnesses—in some points corroborate the testimony of John and Matthew; in others add nothing; in yet others they contradict each other as well as John and Matthew. But there are still other accounts—the Apocryphal Gospels—some of them perhaps older than the Gospel of Matthew, certainly older than John, and these make the case worse by disclosing the fondness for miracles that marked the Christians of that early period.^[5] Taking all these things into consideration, and remembering that in many particulars the three first Gospels are but one witness, adding the current belief of the times in favour of miracles, the evidence to prove their historical reality is almost nothing, admitting we have the genuine books of the disciples; it at least is such evidence as would not be considered of much value in a court of justice. However, the absence of testimony does not prove that miracles were not performed, for a universal negative of this character cannot be proved.^[6]

If one were to look carefully at the evidence in favour of the Christian miracles, and proceed with the caution of a true inquirer, he must come to the conclusion, I think, that they cannot be admitted as facts. The Resurrection—a miracle alleged to be wrought upon Jesus, not by him,—has more evidence, though of the same inferior kind, than any other, for it is attested by the Epistles, as well as the Gospels, and was one corner-stone of the Christian church. But here, is the testimony sufficient to show that a man thoroughly dead as Abraham and Isaac were, came back to life; passed through closed doors, and ascended into the sky? I cannot speak for others—but most certainly I cannot believe such monstrous facts on such evidence.^[7]

There is far more testimony to prove the fact of miracles, witchcraft, and diabolical possessions in times comparatively modern, than to prove the Christian miracles. It is well known, that the most credible writers among the early Christians, Irenæus, Origen, Tertullian, Cyprian, Augustine, Chrysostom, Jerome, Theodoret, and others, believed that the miraculous power continued in great vigour in their time.^[8] But to come down still later, the case of St Bernard of Clairvaux is more to the point. He lived in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. His life has been written in part by William, Abbot of St Thierry, Ernald, Abbot of Bonnevaux, and Geoffrey, Abbot of Igny, “all eye-witnesses of the saint's actions.” Another life was written by Alanus, Bishop of Auxerre, and still another by John the Hermit, not long after the death of Bernard, both his contemporaries. Besides, there are three books on his miracles, one by Philip of Clairvaux, another by the monks of that place, and a third by the above-mentioned Geoffrey. He cured the deaf, the dumb, the lame, the blind, men possessed with devils, in many cases before multitudes of people: he wrought thirty-six miracles in a single day, says one of these historians; converted men and women that could not understand the language he spoke in. His wonders are set down by the eye-witnesses themselves, men known to us by the testimony of others.^[9] I do not hesitate in saying that there is far more evidence to support the miracles of St Bernard than those mentioned in the New Testament.^[10]

But we are to accept such testimony with great caution. The tendency of men to believe the thing happens which they expect to happen; the tendency of rumour to exaggerate a real occurrence into a surprising or miraculous affair, is well known. A century and a half have not gone by since witches were tried by a special court in Massachusetts; convicted by a jury of twelve good men and true; preached against by the clergy, and executed by the common hangman. Any one who looks carefully and without prejudice into the matter sees, I think, more evidence for the reality of those “wonders of the invisible world” than for the Christian miracles. Here is the testimony of scholars, clergymen, witnesses examined under oath, jurymen, and judges; the confession of honest men, of persons whose character is well known at the present day, to prove the reality of witchcraft and the actual occurrence of miraculous facts; of the interference of powers more than human in the affairs of the world.^[11] The appearance of spectres and ghosts, of the Devil as “a little a black man;” the power of witches to ride through the air, overturn a ship, raise storms, and torture men at a distance, is attested by a cloud of witnesses, perfectly overshadowing to a man of easy faith.^[12] In the celebrated case of Richard Dugdale, the “Surey Demoniack,” or “Surey Impostor,”^[13]—which occurred in the latter part of the seventeenth century, in England, and was a most notorious affair,—we have the testimony of nine dissenting clergymen, to prove his diabolical miracles, all of them familiar with the “Demoniack;” and also the depositions of many “credible persons,” sworn to before two magistrates, to confirm the wonder. Yet it turned out at last that there was no miracle in the case.^[14] It it needless to mention the “miracles” wrought at the tomb of the Abbé de Paris, during the last century,^[15] or, in our own time, those of father Matthews in Ireland, and the Mormonites in New England. A miracle is never looked for but it comes.^[16]

No man can say there was not something at the bottom of the Christian “miracles,” and of witchcrafts and possessions; I doubt not something not yet fully understood; but to suppose, on such evidence, that God departed from the usual law of the world, in these cases, is not very rational, to say the least; to make such a belief essential to Christianity is without warrant in the words of Christ.

But now admitting in argument that Jesus wrought all the miracles alleged; that his birth and resurrection were both miraculous; that he was the only person endowed with such miraculous power—it does not thence follow that he would teach true doctrine. Must a revealer of transient miracles to the sense necessarily be a revealer of eternal truth to the soul? It follows no more than the reverse. But admit it in argument. Then he must never be mistaken in the smallest particular. But this is contrary to fact; for if we may trust the record, he taught that he should appear again after his alleged ascension, and the world would end in that age.

Practically speaking, a miracle is a most dubious thing; in this case its proof the most uncertain. But on the supposition that our conviction of the truth of Religion must rest wholly or mainly on the fact, that Jesus wrought the alleged miracles, then is Religion itself a most uncertain thing, and we in this age can never be sure thereof, though our soul testify to its truth, as the old Jews, who rejected him, and yet had their senses to testify to the miracles. If the proof of Religion be the sensations of the evangelists, then we can be no more certain of its truth than of the fact that Jesus had no human father!

But this question of miracles, whether true or false, is of no religious significance. When Mr Locke said the doctrine proved the miracles, not the miracles the doctrine, he silently admitted their worthlessness. They can be useful only to such as deny our internal power of discerning truth.^[17] Now the doctrine of Religion is eternally true. It requires only to be understood to be accepted. It is a matter of direct and positive knowledge, dependent on no outside authority, while the Christian miracles are, at best, but a matter of testimony, and therefore of secondary and indirect knowledge. The thing to be proved is notoriously true; the alleged means of proof notoriously uncertain. Is it not better, then, to proceed to Religion at once? for when this is admitted to be as true as the demonstrations and axioms of science, as much a matter of certainty as the consciousness of our existence, then miracles are of no value. They may be interesting to the historian, the antiquary, or physiologist, not to us as religious men. They now hang as a mill-stone about the neck of many a pious man, who can believe in Religion, but not in the transformation of water to wine, or the resurrection of a body.

1. Book III. ch. ii.
2. See a curious story respecting an Eastern Calif and his decision between the conflicting claims of the Christians and Mahometans, in Marco Polo, ed. Marsden, Book I. ch. viii. p. 67–69. See also Book II. ch. ii. p. 275, et seq.; Book III. ch. xx. § 4, p. 648, et seq. See the numerous miracles collected by Valerius Maximus in his treatise, De Prodigiis, Opp. ed. Hase, Vol. I. Lib. i. ch. vi.; De Somniis, ch. vii.; De Miraculis, ch. viii.: Julius Obsequens, Prodigiorum, Liber imperfectus: Jo. Laurenti Lydi, De Ostentis, Fragmenta, passim, ad calc. Opp. Val. Max. See the Incarnation and Ascension of Budha, in Upham, The Mahávansi, the Raja Ratnacari, and the Rajavali, Lond. 1833, Vol. I. p. 1, et seq.; for miracles and marvels, passim. See Špencer's Discourse concerning Prodigies, Lond. 1665. But see Trenck, Notes on the Miracies, &c., N. Y. 1850, p. 25, et seq, p. 75, et seq.
3. See Douglas's Criterion, or Miracles Examined, Lond. 1754, and Leslie's Short Method with the Deists. See an ingenious illustration of the folly of one of Leslie's canons in Palfrey, Academical Lectures, &c. Vol. II. p. 150, note 11. See Fehmelius, De Criteriis Errorum circa Religionem communibus, Lips. 1713, 1 Vol. 4to.
4. See Babbage, Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, Phila. 1841, p. vii. xxvi. and Sir John Herschel's Letter to Mr Lyell therein, p. 212; Vestiges of Nat. Hist. of Creation, p. 145, et seq. Pascal has some remarkable speculations on Miracles; Pensées, P. II. Art. 16, ed. Paris, 1839, p. 323, et seq. He defines a miracle as an effect which exceeds the natural force of the means employed to bring it about. The non-miracle is an effect which does not exceed the force, p. 342. He adds, they who effect cures by the invocation of the Devil, work no miracle, for that does not exceed the Devil's natural power! A fortiori, it is impossible for God to work a miracle. Leibnitz has some strange remarks on this subject scattered about in his disorderly writings. See what he says in reply to M. Bayle, Théodicée, Pt. III. § 248-9. See too p. 776, ed. Erdmann. See the acute remarks of Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiæ, Pt. I. qu. 101, et seq. See Theol. Quartal Schrift (Tübig.) for 1845, p. 265, et seq.; C. F. Ammon, Nova Opuscula theologica, Gött. 1803, p. 157, et seq. See Gazzaniga, Praelections theologicæ, &c., Venet. 1803, 9 vols. 4to., Vol. I. Diss. ii. c. 7, p. 71, et seq.
5. See these Apocryphal Works referred to in note on p. 163. Also Jones, Method of settling the canonical Authority of the N. T., Oxford, 1797, 3 vols.; The Apoc. N. T., Boston, 1832; Wake, Epistles of the Apostolic Fathers, &c., Oxford, 1840. See Mosheim's Dissertation on the causes which led to the composition of supposititious works among the early Christians, in his Diss. ad H. E. pertinentes, Alt. 1743, Vol. I. p. 221, et seq. Mr Norton, ubi sup., Vol. III. Ch. xi., treats of the subject but not with his usual learning.
6. See some just remarks in Hennel, ubi sup., Ch. VIII.; Strauss, Leben Jesu, § 1-15, § 90-103, 132-139; Glaubenslehre, § 17, and on the other hand Neander and Tholuck. See De Wette, Wesen des Glaubens, § 60; Flügge, Gesch. theol. Wissenschaften, Halle, 1796, Vol. I. p. 97, et seq. For the value early set on miraculous evidence, see the Treatise of Theophilus, (Bp of Antioch, in the 2d cent.,) address to Autolycus, Lib. I. C. 13, et al.; Treack, ubi sup.
7. But see Furness, ubi sup. ch. VII. VIII. XIII. See the candid remarks of De Wette, ubi sup. § 61. He admits the difficulties of the case, and only saves the general fact of the resurrection, by rejecting the authenticity of the 4th and part of the 3d Gospel (p. 315, et seq.), for he thinks the details of their accounts are inadmissible.
8. On this subject of the miraculous power in the early church, see the celebrated treatise of Middleton, A Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers in the Christian Church, &c., Lond. 1749, in his works, Lond. 1752, Vol. I. See Mosheim's Eccles. Hist. Pt. I. ch. i. § 8, and Murdock’s note. The testimony of Chrysostom is fluctuating. See Middleton, Vol. I. p. 105, et seq. See Newman's defence of the Cath. miracles in the dissertation prefixed to Vol. I. of the Tr. of Fleury's History of the Church; Conrad Lycosthenes, Prodigiorum ac Ostentorum Chronicon, Basil, 1557, 1 Vol. Fol.; The treatise of St Ephraim of Cherson on the miracle wrought by Clement, at the end of Cotelerius, Pat. Apost., Ant. 1698, Vol. I. p. 811, et seq. The story of Simon Magus shows the credulity of the early Church. See it in Hegesippus, Lib. III. C. ii. See too Leo, Ep. ad Constant. Imp.; Augustinus, Ep. 86, and Const. Apost. VI. 9; Bernino, Istoria, de tuttel, Heresie, Venet. 1711, 4 vols. 4to, Sec. I. Ch. i. See the curious Miracles related by Victor Vitensis and Aeneas Gazaeus, in Gibbon, Hist. ch. XXXVII.
9. See these books in Mabillon's edition of Bernard, Paris, 1721, Vol. II. p. 1071, et seq. See Fleury, Histoire Ecclesiastique, Liv. LXVI. et seq., and especially LXIX. ch. xvii., ed. Nismes, 1779, Vol. X. p. 147, et seq., where is a summary of some of his most important miracles. See likewise Les Vies des Saints, Paris, 1701, Vol. II. p. 288—326; Butler's Lives of the Saints, Lond. 1815, Vol. VIII. p. 227–274; Milner’s History of the Church of Christ, &c., Vol. III., Christian Examiner for March, 1841, Art. I. At the recent exhibition of the “holy Robe of Jesus” at Tréves, no less than eleven miraculous cures were effected, so it is said. Miracula Stultis! See Marx, History of the Holy Robe of J. C., with an account of the miraculous cures performed by the said Robe from 18th August to 6th October, 1844, Phil. 1845. Numerous Bishops attended the exhibition, and more than 1,100,000 persons, says the book. See p. 97, et seq. See too John Ronge, the Holy Coat of Tréves and the new German Catholic Church, New York, 1845. See an account of the miracle wrought by Vespasian, in Tacitus, Hist. Lib. IV. C. 81, Opp. ed. Paris, 1819, III. p. 490, et seq. See several similar wonders in Ammon, ubi sup. p. 165, et seq.
10. Bernino, ubi sup. Vol. I. p. 204, gives a very dramatic account of a scene between St Macarius and a Heretic, in which, to prove the truth of the catholic doctrine, the saint raises from the dead a monk who had been buried about a month! For other confirmatory miracles, see Bernino, passim. It is well known that Petrarch, in the 14th century, believed the miracles of Pope Urban his own contemporary; and de Sade his biographer, writing in 1767, will have us believe that the Pope actually performed 80 miracles, besides raising two girls from the dead in the city of Avignon. Junker, in his Ehrengedächtnitz Lutheri, (p. 276-289, ed. 1707,) says that a portrait of Luther at Ober-Rossla in Weimar, at three different times, was covered with a profuse sweat while the preacher was speaking of the sad state of the schools and churches. See Reformation Almanach für 1817, p. xxvi. See the story of Spiridion, and his numerous miracles, in Sozomen, Hist. Eccles. Lib. I. C. xi., ed. Par. 1544, p. 14, et seq. See Wright's Essay on the Lit. and Superstitions of England in the Middle Ages, Lond. 1846, Vol. II. Essay x. xii.
11. See, who will, Cotton Mather's Wonders of the Invisible World, Boston, 1693; Increase Mather's Cases of Conscience, &c., and the learned authors in Diabology therein cited. See also Hale’s Modest Inquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft, &c., Boston, 1702; Calef, More Wonders from the Invisible World, London, 1700; Upham's Lectures on Witchcraft, &c.; Stone's History of Beverley, Boston, 1843, p. 213, et seq.; Mather's Magnalia, passim; Chandler's Criminal Trials, p. 65, et seq.; Bancroft, ubi sup. ch. XIX. See many curious particulars in Hutchinson's Essay concerning Witchcraft, &c., second edition, London, 1720. See Remigius, Demonolatriæ, Libri III., Col. 1576, 1 vol. 12mo. I have not seen the book, but it is said to contain matter derived from the cases of about 900 persons executed for witchcraft in 15 years at Lorraine. See a contemporary Narrative of the Proceedings against Dame Alice Kyteler, prosecuted for sorcery in 1324 by the Bp of Ossory, Lond. 1843, 1 vol. 4to, Introduction. See Account of the Trial, Confession, &c., of Six Witches at Maidstone, &c., 1652, and the Trial of Three Witches, &c., 1645, Lond. 1837. In the 13th century the Cath. Church declared a disbelief of witchcraft to be Heresy, See, who will, the Bulls of the Popes relative to this from Greg. IX. down to the famous Bull of Innoc. VIII. (1484), Summis desiderantes. The celebrated work of Sprenger and Kramer, Malleus Malleficarum (1484 at Saesse), may be consulted by the curious. In 1487 this infamous work was approved by the theological faculty at Cologne, and acquired a great reputation in the church. It is remarkable that in 1650, when two Jesuits in Germany wrote against trials for witchcraft, the most famous Protestant divines—as Pott at Jena and Carpzov at Leipsic—defended the prosecution, and wished men punished for disbelieving in witchcraft. See Gazzaniga, ubi sup. Vol. IV. Diss. I. C. 20, p. 44, et seq.
12. Henry More has made a pretty collection of cases out of authors now forgotten, in Antidote against Atheism, Book III. ch. i.—xiv., Appendix, ch. xii. xiii.; Immortalitas Animæ, Lib. II. ch. xv.-xvii.; Lib. III. ch. iv. See his Enchiridion Metaphysicum, Pars I ch. xxvi. W. G. Solden has written a Geschichte der Hexen-Processe, &c., Stuttgart, 1843. See too Hauber's Zauberbibliothek, 3 vols. 8vo; Horst, Zauberbibliothek, 6 vols. 8vo; and Grässe, Bibliotheca Magica, &c., Leip. 1843.
13. “The Surey Demoniack, or an Account of Satan's Strange and Dreadful Actings in and about the Body of Richard Dugdale,” &c. &c., London, 1697.
14. See Taylor's “The Devil turned Casuist,” &c., London, 1697; “Lancashire Levite Rebuked,” 1698; and “The Surey Impostor.” The latter I copy from citations in “A Vindication of the Surey Demoniack,” &c., London, 1698. Such as wish to see melancholy specimens of human folly may consult also Barrows, “The Lords Arm stretched out,” &c. &c., London, 1664; “The Second Part of the Boy of Bilson,” &c. &c., London. 1698; “A Relation of the Diabolical Practices of above twenty Witches of Renfreu, &c., contained in their Tryals, &c., and for which several of them have been executed the present Year,” 1697, London, 1697; “Sadducismus Debellatus, Narrative of the Sorceries and Witchcraft of the Devil upon Mrs Christian Shaw, &c., of Renfreu,” &c., London, 1698. See Glanvill, a Blow at Modern Sadducism, in some considerations about Witchcraft, &c. &c., 4th ed., London, 1668; Essays, &c., London, 1676, Essay VI. Against Modern Sadducism in the matter of Witches and Apparitions; Sadducismus triumphatus, or Evidence concerning Witches and Apparitions, &c., &c., 4th ed. London, 1726. Yet the Author was a highly intelligent man, who appreciated Bacon and applauded Descartes, and contended for free inquiry and against Superstition and Fanaticism, with wit and argument (see Essay VII.). Howell estimates that thirty thousand suffered death for Witchcraft, in England, during one hundred and fifty years. State Trials, Vol. II. p. 1051, as cited by Chandler, ubi sup. p. 69.
15. See the celebrated work of M. de Montgéron, La Vérité des Miracles de M. de Paris, demontrée, &c., Utrecht, 1737, 1 vol. 4to. The Author was a Conseiller au Parlement, and himself converted by these miracles. See too the Avertissement of this ed., and the “consequens qu'on doit tirer des Miracles, &c.,” with the remarkable “Piéces justificatives,” at the end of the volume. See Mosheim Dissert. on this subject, ubi sup. Vol. II. p. 309, et seq.

    It is instructive to find Irenæus (II. 57) declaring that the true disciples of Christ could work miracles in his time, and that the Dead were raised and remained alive some years. Eusebius, H. E. IV. 3, cites Quadratus, who lived half a century before Irenæus, to prove that men miraculously raised from the dead lived a considerable time, ed. Heinichen, Vol. I. p. 292. See the curious papers on Folk-Lore, in the Athenæum (London) for 1846.

16. Well says Livy, XXIV. 10, Quæ [Miracula] quo magis credebant simplices et religiosi homines, eo plura nunciabantur! See the remarkable literature connected with what is called “Spiritualism,” already so copious, especially the works of Edmunds, Rogers, Ballou, Bell, and Hare. The writings of A. J. Davis seem to be one of the most remarkable literary phenomena in the world, but it would be absurd to call them miraculous.
17. “Let us see how far inspiration can enforce on the mind any opinion concerning God or his worship, when accompanied with a power to do a miracle, and here too, I say, the last determination must be that of reason. 1. Because reason must be the judge what is a miracle, and what is not, which—not knowing how far the power of natural causes do extend themselves, and what strange effects they may produce—is very hard to determine. 2. It will always be as great a miracle that God should alter the course of natural things, as overturn the principles of knowledge and understanding in a man, by setting up anything to be received by him as a truth which his reason cannot assent to, as the miracle itself; and so at best it will be but one miracle against another, and the greater still on reason's side; it being harder to believe God should alter and put out of its ordinary course some phenomenon of the great world for once, and make things act contrary to their ordinary rule, purposely, that the mind of man might do so always afterwards, than that this is some fallacy or natural effect, of which he knows not the cause, let it look never so strange. … I do not hereby deny in the least, that God can do, or hath done, miracles for the confirmation of truth; but I only say that we cannot think he should do them to enforce doctrines or notions of himself or any worship of him not conformable to reason, or that we can receive such for truth for the miracle's sake; and even in those books which have the greatest proof of revelation from God, and the attestation of miracles to confirm their being so, the miracles are to be judged by the doctrine, and not the doctrine by the miracle.” King's Life of Locke, Vol. I. p. 231, et seq. See the remarks of Calvin, Institutes, Dedication to Francis I., Allen's Tr., Lond. 1838, Vol. I. p. xix. Gerhard, in his Common Places, says, “Miracles prove nothing, unless they have a doctrinal Truth connected with them.”