defect of the above-cited topics of evidence, when applied to any other histories of the same subject.

their lives in labours, dangers, and sufferings, voluntarily undertaken and undergone in attestation of the accounts which they delivered, and solely in consequence of their belief of the truth of those accounts; and that they also submitted, from the same motives, to new rules of conduct."

Our second proposition, and which now remains to be treated of, is, "That there is not satisfactory evidence, that persons pretending to be original witnesses of any other similar miracles, have acted in the same manner, in attestation of the accounts which they delivered, and solely in consequence of their belief of the truth of those accounts."

These are strong arguments to prove, that the books actually proceeded from the authors whose names they bear, (and have always borne, for there is not a particle of evidence to show that they ever went under any other;) but the strict genuineness of the books is perhaps more than is necessary to the support of our proposition. For even supposing that, by reason of the silence of antiquity, or the loss of records, we know not who were the writers of the four Gospels, yet the fact, that they were received as authentic accounts of the transaction upon which the religion rested, and were received as such by Christians, at or near the age of the apostles, by those whom the apostles had taught, and by societies which apos- I ENTER upon this part of my argument, by tles had founded; this fact, I say, connected with declaring how far my belief in miraculous accounts the consideration, that they are corroborative of goes. If the reformers in the time of Wickliffe, each other's testimony, and that they are farther or of Luther; or those of England, in the time of corroborated by another contemporary history, Henry the Eighth, or of queen Mary; or the taking up the story where they had left it, and, in founders of our religious sects since, such as were a narrative built upon that story, accounting for Mr. Whitfield and Mr. Wesley in our own times; the rise and production of changes in the world, had undergone the life of toil and exertion, of the effects of which subsist at this day; connected, danger and sufferings, which we know that many moreover, with the confirmation which they re- of them did undergo, for a miraculous story; that ceive from letters written by the apostles them-is to say, if they had founded their public ministry selves, which both assume the same general story, upon the allegation of miracles wrought within and, as often as occasions lead them to do so, al- their own knowledge, and upon narratives which lude to particular parts of it; and connected also could not be resolved into delusion or mistake; with the reflection, that if the apostles delivered and if it had appeared, that their conduct really any different story, it is lost, (the present and no had its origin in these accounts, I should have other being referred to by a series of Christian believed them. Or, to borrow an instance which writers, down from their age to our own; being will be familiar to every one of my readers, if the likewise recognised in a variety of institutions, late Mr. Howard had undertaken his labours and which prevailed early and universally amongst the journeys in attestation, and in consequence of a disciples of the religion;) and that so great a clear and sensible miracle, I should have believed change, as the oblivion of one story and the sub-him also. Or, to represent the same thing under stitution of another, under such circumstances, a third supposition; if Socrates had professed to could not have taken place; this evidence would perform public miracles at Athens; if the friends be deemed, I apprehend, sufficient to prove con-of Socrates, Phædo, Cebes, Crito, and Simmias, cerning these books, that, whoever were the authors of them, they exhibit the story which the apostles told, and for which, consequently, they acted, and they suffered.

together with Plato, and many of his followers, relying upon the attestations which these miracles afforded to his pretensions, had, at the hazard of their lives, and the certain expense of their ease If it be so, the religion must be true. These and tranquillity, gone about Greece, after his men could not be deceivers.-By only not bearing death, to publish and propagate his doctrines: testimony, they might have avoided all these suf- and if these things had come to our knowledge, ferings, and have lived quietly. Would men in in the same way as that in which the life of such circumstances pretend to have seen what Socrates is now transmitted to us, through the they never saw; assert facts which they had no hands of his companions and disciples, that is, by knowledge of; go about lying to teach virtue; writings received without doubt as theirs, from and, though not only convinced of Christ's being the age in which they were published to the prean impostor, but having seen the success of his sent, I should have believed this likewise. And imposture in his crucifixion, yet persist in carry-my belief would, in each case, be much strengthing it on; and so persist, as to bring upon themselves, for nothing, and with a full knowledge of the consequence, enmity and hatred, danger and death?

ened, if the subject of the mission were of importance to the conduct and happiness of human life: if it testified any thing which it behoved mankind to know from such authority; if the nature of what it delivered, required the sort of proof which it alleged; if the occasion was adequate to the

OF THE DIRECT HISTORICAL EVIDENCE OF interposition, the end worthy of the means. In

CHRISTIANITY.

PROPOSITION II.

the last case, my faith would be much confirmed, if the effects of the transaction remained; more especially, if a change had been wrought, at the time, in the opinion and conduct of such numbers, as to lay the foundation of an institution, and of a system of doctrines, which had since overspread the greatest part of the civilized world. I should have believed, I say, the testimony in these cases; tory evidence that many, pretending to be origi-yet none of them do more than come up to the nal witnesses of the Christian miracles, passed

CHAPTER I.

Our first proposition was,

"That there is satisfac

apostolic history.

If any one choose to call assent to its evidence | story was published in the place in which it was credulity, it is at least incumbent upon him to acted. The church of Christ was first planted at produce examples in which the same evidence Jerusalem itself. With that church, others corhath turned out to be fallacious. And this con- responded. From thence the primitive teachers tains the precise question which we are now to of the institution went forth; thither they assemagitate. bled. 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.

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 bistorian 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.

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.

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

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.

* The succession of many eminent bishops of Jerusa lem in the first three centuries, is distinctly preserved;

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 consideration of the number and variety of the books themselves, the different writers from which they proceed, the different views with which they were written, so disagreeing as to repel the suspicion of confederacy, so agreeing as to show that they were founded in a common original, ie in a story substantially the same. Whether this proof be satisfactory or not, it is properly a cumulation of evidence, by no means a naked or solitary record.

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 kingJoms of Greece: and agreeably thereto, the accounts have much fiction and falsehood, with some truth: whereas, Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War, and Cæsar'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.

are credited, if the careless assent that is given to them deserve that name, more by the indolence of the hearer, than by his judgment: or, though not much credited, are passed from one to another without inquiry or resistance. To this case, and to this case alone, belongs what is called the love of the marvellous. I have never known it carry men farther. Men do not suffer persecution from the love of the marvellous. Of the indifferent nature we are speaking of, are most vulgar errors and popular superstitions: most, for instance, of the current reports of apparitions. Nothing de pends 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 hu man 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 par tiality 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.

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 expecta tion, 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

land, Calvin in France, or any of the reformers, advance this plea ?" The French prophets, in the beginning of the present century, † ventured to allege miraculous evidence, and immediately ruined their cause by their temerity. "Concerning the religion of ancient Rome, of Turkey, of Siam, of China, a single miracle cannot be named, that was ever offered as a test of any of those religions before their establishment."‡

We may add to what has been observed of the distinction which we are considering, that, where miracles are alleged merely in affirmance of a prior opinion, they who believe the doctrine may sometimes propagate a belief of the miracles which they do not themselves entertain. This is the case of what are called pious frauds; but it is a case, I apprehend, which takes place solely in

least it does not hold of the apostolical history. If the apostles did not believe the miracles, they did not believe the religion; and, without this belief, where was the piety, what place was there for any thing which could bear the name or colour of piety, in publishing and attesting miracles in its behalf? If it be said that any promote the belief of revelation, and of any accounts which favour that belief, because they think them, whether well or ill founded, of public and political utility; I answer, that if a character exist, which can with less justice than another be ascribed to the founders of the Christian religion;it is that of politicians, or of men capable of entertaining political views. The truth is, that there is no assignable character which will account for the conduct of the apostles, supposing their story to be false. If bad men, what could have induced them to take such pains to promote virtue? If good men, they would not have gone about the country with a string of lies in their mouths.

Popish countries; that they make no converts: which proves that stories are accepted, when they fall in with principles already fixed, with the puble sentiments, or with the sentiments of a party already engaged on the side the miracle supports, which would not be attempted to be produced in the face of enemies, in opposition to reigning tenets or favourite prejudices, or when, if they be believed, the belief must draw men away from their preconceived and habitual opinions, from their modes of life and rules of action. In the former case, men may not only receive a miraculous account, but may both act and suffer on the side and in the cause, which the miracle supports, yet not act or suffer for the miracle, but in pursuance of a prior persuasion. The miracle, like any other argument which only confirms what was before believed, is admitted with little ex-support of a persuasion already established. At amination. In the moral as in the natural world, it is change which requires a cause. Men are easily fortified in their old opinions, driven from them with great difficulty. Now how does this apply to the Christian history? The miracles, there recorded, were wrought in the midst of enemies, under a government, a priesthood, and a magistracy, decidedly and vehemently adverse to them, and to the pretensions which they support ed. They were Protestant miracles in a Popish country; they were Popish miracles in the midst of Protestants. They produced a change; they established a society upon the spot, adhering to the belief of them; they made converts; and those who were converted gave up to the testimony their most fixed opinions and most favourite prejudices. They who acted and suffered in the cause, acted and suffered for the miracles: for there was no anterior persuasion to induce them, no prior reverence, prejudice, or partiality, to take hold of Jesus had not one follower when he set 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 I. It is not necessary to admit as a miracle, the progress of Christianity. Frauds and falla- what can be resolved into a false perception. Of cies might mix themselves with the progress, this nature was the demen of Socrates; the visions which could not possibly take place in the com- of Saint Anthony, and of many others; the vision mencement of the religion; at least, according to which Lord Herbert of Cherbury describes himany laws of human conduct that we are acquaint-self to have seen; Colonel Gardner's vision, as reed 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.

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

Campbell on Miracles, p. 120. ed. 1766.
The eighteenth.

Adams on Mir. p. 75. § Batty on Lunacy.

laying his hands upon him; are circumstances, 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 connexion 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, 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 momentary 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 mistory 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. No 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, † 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

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