probable that the person should either deceive, or be deceived, or that the fact he relates should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other, and according to the superiority which I discover I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle." In perfect accordance with this axiom, the magazines, the Record, and we regret to be obliged to include the Christian Observer, also say it is more probable that Mr. Greaves and the whole Fancourt family should have been deceived, than that God should have granted the prayer that was put up to him. The latter being the greater miracle, they reject it. Thus, with the doctrine of Spinoza for their theory, and the maxims of Hume for their practice, we have the code of the Religious World in the year 1830 on the subject of miracles; the creed of the most religious part of this most religious nation in this most religious age! Well may the Edinburgh Review say, "We are not the first of nations perhaps in all qualities; but in that of self-praise, self-complacency, self-exaltation, we surely far excel every people that ever existed." (ciii. 12.)

Paley endeavoured with his usual acuteness to overthrow this position of Hume; but he failed, by shifting the ground from the proposition itself to an a priori argument, which, however good, ingenious, and well worked out, does not touch Hume's position. Had Paley been better instructed in theology, he would have closed with Hume at once upon another point, in which he says, that whoever "believes the Christian religion is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience." We now turn disciples of Hume in our turn, and fully admit the truth of this proposition. It is abundantly clear, and now made doubly so by all our ablest metaphysicians, that we have, and can have, no knowledge, but such as is communicated to us through the medium of our senses. This is what we take to be the meaning of Hume's phrase, "the principles of our understanding." We admit, to the fullest extent, that to believe all that is declared in the Bible is a continuous miracle operated in the person of him who so believes: they in whom this continued miracle is worked, find no difficulty in believing the other miracles also: and the converse of the proposition is, that they who find difficulty in believing that Miss Fancourt's cure was miraculous, shew they disbelieve the greater part of the Bible also.

A Christian we define to be a man into whom, at some period subsequent to his ordinary generation, and prior to his leaving this world, the Holy Ghost-that is, a Person of the Godheadhas entered, to take up his permanent abode for ever and ever. This, we presume, must, under every definition, be admitted to

be a miracle. It will be seen whether any organ of the religious world will be hardy enough to deny our definition of a Christian. This miracle, then, having taken place, every thing else that can be called a miracle (the alteration of certain forms and modifications of matter, the change of a planet out of its course, a bush burning but not consumed, iron swimming, or dead men rising, dislocated bones reset, contracted muscles expanding, &c. &c.) sinks into comparative insignificance in comparison with it. We can shew to a countryman a bar of solid iron burning like a candle; an appearance quite as marvellous as its floating on the surface of the water. To tell him that water was composed of the most inflammable substance in nature, would be received with quite as much justifiable incredulity as that a man who had died four days preceding was now walking about strong and well. To be a miracle, it is not only necessary that it should not be possible to account for the phenomenon, but that it should not be in our power to produce it ad libitum. The half-learned man thinks he can account for many things, and, amusing himself with the words cause and effect, flatters himself that he can decide upon what is according to the laws of nature, and what is contrary to them. The more learned he becomes, the more he knows that he can really account for nothing; that the utmost reach of human science is to mount up one more step of an ever-ascending scale the summit of which seems to recede the higher we rise, or to get hold of one more link of an interminable chain.

The first writer of any eminence who called in question the existence of miraculous powers in the primitive church was Dr. Middleton. His "Letter from Rome," in which he shewed in a very masterly manner the identity of the Popish worship of saints with the old Pagan worship of demi-gods and heroes,gained him great credit for his learning; but his arguments tended not only to the subversion of Popery, but to the overthrow of Christianity itself. Hence he was accused of scepticism, and with difficulty escaped censure from the University of Cambridge. In his "Free Enquiry into the Miraculous Powers" he evinced the same opinions as those of Hume; and though he defended himself from the charge of infidelity in his "Letter to Dr. Waterland," the reader may judge with what validity, when he avows, says his biographer, that "his faith is not of that kind which can easily digest incredibilities, but only a principle grounded upon the perception of truth, and claiming no other merit than that of being a slave to his reason, to whose dictates it paid an absolute and unreserved submission." There is probably no fact in history for which there is more unequivocal testimony than for the existence of miracles. Dr. Middleton was conscious of this, and accordingly sets himself busily to work

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to deny the testimony of all the witnesses upon the subject. The last resort of a desperate advocate of a worthless cause is to excite the odium of the court against the witnesses. It was immediately perceived that, if the Fathers were all a set of worthless designing knaves and liars, as Dr. Middleton asserted, we could place no dependence upon their testimony in handing down to us the canon of Scripture. If they were capable of wilfully, and for dishonourable purposes, asserting falsehoods with respect to extraordinary facts which were capable of instant refutation, how much more likely is it that they should foist upon the world pretended Epistles of the Apostles, the validity of which it was impossible to disprove? Dr. Middleton could not deny the force of this objection, and therefore admits it as boldly and recklessly as Hume, or our modern Carlile. "He is not scrupulous about the consequences of his opinion: whereever he perceives a glimmering of truth before him, he readily pursues, and endeavours to trace it to its source, without any reserve, or caution of pushing the discovery too far, or opening too great a glare of it to the public; that if the canon of Scripture is hurt by his argument it will give him no concern; he, as an ingenuous and diligent searcher after truth, does not trouble his head about the extent of consequences." Now we take it that every man who entertains the idea of judging of the canon of Scripture according as it shall square with deductions from a process of reasoning upon another subject, is a pure infidel, however much he may assert that he has "a general belief of the Divine origin and inspiration of the books of the Old and New Testament."

It was very properly replied to Middleton, that, "if any two things can make a man unfit to bear his testimony to truth, it must be the weakness of his head and the badness of his heart; and the poor Fathers, according to Dr. Middleton's account of them, had both. Yet, malignant as this conjunction of these two qualities may be, it seems we have nothing else to depend upon for the very existence of our religion; and the canon of Scripture itself is derived to us from this source, than which nothing can be more corrupt. For if such witnesses are not to be believed in regard to facts which appeared before them, and which they could not easily be deceived in; how are they to be believed in regard to the genuineness of certain books, which it required penetration to judge of, industry to examine, and fidelity to transmit? But the fact in regard to the genuineness of these books was, the Doctor says, matter of notoriety. Notoriety! How does it appear? from the testimony of the Fathers? We have just now seen what that testimony was. From their inability to impose these books upon us, though they were ever so well inclined? But how is this inability made out? were

not these writers as much, or more, concerned about the foundation of Christianity as the superstructure; and if so, would they not naturally have taken the same pains to give false accounts of the one as the other? Was it not as much their interest that the miracles of Christ and his Apostles should be true, as their own? and would not they of consequence endeavour as much to transmit those books to posterity which recorded the former, as such writings of their own, which recorded the latter?"

We have before observed, that Middleton did in fact hold the same opinion upon the subject of miracles as Hume. "Dr. Middleton," says Dr. Key, as quoted by the Bishop of Bristol, "does not seem to fall far short of Mr. Hume on miracles:" neither can any one who denies their existence after the Apostolic times. 66 Ordinary facts," says the Doctor, "related by a credible person, furnish no cause of doubting, from the nature of the thing; but if they be strange and extraordinary, doubts naturally arise; and in proportion as they approach towards the marvellous those doubts still increase and grow stronger." This maxim destroys the credibility of any testimony whatever to the truth of a miracle: and this is the common point of Middleton, Hume, Spinoza, Morgan, Chubb, and the present Religious World.

We have stated repeatedly, and warned the professors of Evangelical Religion upon the subject, that whatever principles pervade the world at any given epoch, the same principles pervade, and therefore become the peculiar temptation of, the church at that epoch also. The denial by Middleton of the existence of facts declared by the testimony of all contempora ries, and therefore of all competent authority, was an instance of sceptical hardihood that appalled even the promulgator himself at the commencement of his undertaking: the disgust with which his work was received by the pious, was only equalled by the completeness of the refutation with which he was replied to by the learned. But, lo! that which was then confined to a few sceptics now turns out to be the creed of the majority of the religious periodicals of the day! yet we are informed that there has been a great increase of religion! Out of their own mouths will we judge them. They have pretended to be exceedingly pained at the Neology of Milman, and the infidelity of Niebuhr. Now the infidelity of Niebuhr differs in no one point, either in principle, argument, or application, from that of Middleton and the Evangelical periodicals on the subject of the continuation of miraculous powers in the church. It is true, indeed, that Middleton and Niebuhr are honest in avowing their universal scepticism, because they are sufficiently learned to perceive that they could not maintain their position without it; while the organs of Evangelicalism think they can retain a profession for orthodoxy

with one hand, while they cut away the supports of Revelation with the other. Niebuhr sees the absolute necessity of destroying the authority of the ancients in order to support his views, and he cares not how much falls with them: he, however, at least, can see that many other things, held by the whole Christian world as most dear, must be overthrown also. As Middleton sets down the only possible witnesses in the cause of miracles as impostors or fools, so does Niebuhr as unceremoniously reject all the ancient historians. "Tacitus is not the authority on which we can credit what is extremely improbable"-Plutarch is "weak in judgment, and scanty in information"-" It is not worth while to speak of Dionysius as an historian"-" I may at once reject Livy as authority"-" Appian is an author of very little weight, spiritless, ignorant, and superficial."

As the vice of this age is infidelity, the vice of former ages was credulity. In order to receive the testimony of the ancient historians and fathers of the church, it is not necessary to believe every particle of what they relate from hearsay. But we will venture to affirm, that there is a moral impossibility in a great and universal belief existing upon any one subject without some fact to serve for the basis of that belief: so that if the Fathers had done nothing more than repeat that there was a general belief amongst Christians in their days of the existence of miraculous powers, that would be sufficient evidence of the existence of the thing, although it might be impossible to name any one place or person in whom it was displayed.

They who deny the evidence of miraculous powers after the Apostolic age, require us to believe a fact still more extraordinary than any which they dispute; for they require us not only to believe that all the Fathers are fools or knaves for propagating such silly stories, but likewise that the enemies of the Fathers, to whom such assertions were made, were so bewitched as not to charge their folly or imposture upon them. "To suppose," says West on the Resurrection, "that any men, who firmly believed that God would punish them for speaking an untruth, though for the advancement of a good cause, should at the hazard of their lives, and without any provocation from their enemies, without any prospect of gain and advantage, assert facts which at the same time they knew to be false; to suppose that any man, or set of men, in their senses, should venture to appeal to their enemies for the truth of facts which they themselves knew to be the effects of fraud and imposture, especially when those enemies had not only the means of detecting them, but the inclination and power to punish them for their frauds and fictions; is too improbable a thing to gain credit with any but but those great believers of absurdities, the infidels and sceptics."

There is one mode of contending with "those great believers of