CHAP. IX. THE RATIONAL EVIDENCE OF THE TRUTH OF CHRISTIAN The repealing the I. The possibility of miracles appears from God and providence; No Christian СНАР. IX. BOOK II. I. 5 Hypoth. XXIII, XXIV. The weakness and simplicity of the instruments which preached the Gospel. From all which the great evidence of the power of miracles is proved. OF all rational evidences which tend to confirm the truth of a Divine testimony, there can be none greater than a power of working miracles for confirmation that the testimony which is revealed is infallible. The possibility of a power of miracles cannot be questioned by any who assert a Deity and a Providence; for by the same power that things were either at first produced, or are still conserved, (which is equivalent to the other,) the course of nature may be altered, and things caused which are beyond the power of inferior causes for though that be an immutable law of nature as to physical beings, that every thing remains in the course and order wherein it was set at the creation; yet that only holds till the same power which set it in that order shall otherwise dispose of it. Granting then the possibility of miracles, the subject of this hypothesis is: That a power of miracles is the clearest evidence of a Divine testimony, which will appear from these following considerations. 1. God alone can really alter the course of nature. I speak not of such things which are apt only to raise admiration in us, because of our unacquaintedness with the causes of them, or manner of their production, which are thence called wonders, much less of mere juggles and impostures, whereby the eyes of men are deceived; but I speak of such things as are in themselves either contrary to, or above the course of nature, i. e. that order which is established in the universe. The Devil, no question, may, and doth often deceive the world, and may, by the subtlety and agility of his nature, perform such things as may amuse the minds of men, and sometimes put them to it, to find a IX. difference between them and real miracles, if they only CHAP. make their senses judges of them. And such kind of wonders, though they are but sparingly done, and with a kind of secresy, (as though they were consulting with Catiline about the burning Rome,) yet the Devil would have some (especially when ignorance and superstition are ascendants) to keep up his interest in the world. Or else, when he is like to be dispossessed and thrown out of all, he tries his utmost to keep as many to him as may be thus when the Spirit of God appeared in the miracles of our Saviour and his apostles and the primitive Church, he then conjured up all the infernal powers to do something parallel, to keep possession of his idolatrous temples, as long as he could. Thus we find Simon Magus dogging the apostles (as it were) at the heels, that by his magic he might stagger the faith of people concerning the miracles wrought by the apostles: after him Apollonius appeared upon the stage; but his wonders are such pitiful things, compared with those wrought by Christ or his apostles, that it could be nothing but malice in Hierocles to mention him in competition with Christ. But those things, which seem a great deal more considerable than either of these, were, the cure of a blind man, by Vespasian in Egypt, mentioned by Tacitus and Suetonius, wherein Sueton. there was a palpable imitation of our Saviour's curing the blind man in the Gospel; for the man told Vespasian, restituturum oculos si inspuisset, that he should receive his sight by his spittle: so Spartianus tells us of a woman that was cured of her blindness by kissing the knees of the emperor Adrian; and Boxhornius Boxhorn. Qu. Rom. hath produced an old table, in the temple of Escula-qu. 7. pius at Rome, of several diseased persons that were cured there. A blind man, in the time of Antoninus, was cured by this oracle: he must come to the altar, Vesp. c. 7. BOOK and kneel there; from the right side he must turn to II. the left, and put five fingers upon the altar, and then Tertull. ed. Pame lius. lift up his hands and touch his eyes, and so was cured. Another, called Lucius, cured of the pain of his side, by mixing the ashes of the altar with the wine, and applying it to his side. Another cured of spitting of blood, by the kernel of a pine-apple and honey, used three days. A fourth cured of blindness, by the blood of a white cock and honey, used three days upon his eyes. These are the most considerable of all the pretended miracles done about that time, when the noise of the Christian miracles were spread so far and done so frequently, that they challenged the heathens again and again to bring forth any person possessed with a devil: if he did not confess to them that he was a devil, though he made the heathens believe that he was a god, they were contented to leave their blood in the place. For thus Tertullian speaks in his Apology to them. Apol. c. 23. Edatur hic aliquis sub tribunalibus vestris, quem dæmone agi constet: jussus a quolibet Christiano loqui spiritus ille, tam se dæmonem confitebitur de vero, quam alibi Deum de falso: æque producatur aliquis ex iis qui de Deo pati existimantur, qui aris inhalantes numen de nidore concipiunt, qui ructando curantur, qui anhelando profantur. Ista ipsa Virgo cœlestis pluviarum pollicitatrix, iste ipse Esculapius medicinarum demonstrator, alias de morituris scordii et denatii et Asclepiadoti subministrator, nisi se dæmones confessi fuerint, Christiano mentiri non audentes, ibidem illius Christiani procacissimi sanguinem fundite. Quid isto opere manifestius, quid hac probatione fidelius? simplicitas veritatis in medio est; virtus illi sua assistit; nihil suspicari licebit, magia aut aliqua fallacia fieri. Dictis non stetis, si oculi IX. Apol. c. 22. vestri et aures permiserint vobis. In these very dar- CHAP. ing words we see how the Christians appealed to their senses, even with the hazard of their own lives, that they would make even Esculapius himself confess what he was, and by whose power all the cures were wrought upon the dreamers in his temples. And for the manner of the Devil's cures, the same author explains it thus. Lædunt primo, dehinc remedia præcipiunt ad Tertull. miraculum nova, sive contraria, post que desinunt ed. Pamelædere et curasse creduntur. They first possess the lius. bodies themselves, (as demoniacs were common in those times,) and affect it with various distempers, afterwards, upon using the strange remedies prescribed by Esculapius, they forsake their station, and the person is cured. And for the cures performed by the emperors, those who consider what various artifices were about that time used to procure an opinion of divinity in the emperors, will not much wonder that such reports should be spread of them, or that any persons should feign these distempers to give themselves out to be cured by them. But granting somewhat wonderful in these, what are they, compared with those done by Christians? And who ever would lay down his life to attest any of them? So that though the Devil by his subtlety may easily impose upon spectators' eyes, yet it was impossible for him, by any power of his own, to alter the course of nature, or produce any real miracle. For every true miracle is a production of something out of nothing, (which cannot be done by less than an omnipotent arm,) and that either in the thing itself, or the manner of producing it. In the thing itself, when it is of that nature that it cannot be produced by any second causes, as the raising of the dead; in the manner of doing it, when though the thing lies within the possibility of second causes, yet |