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sible for us, therefore, to pronounce of any act whatever, whether it indicate in itself a power strictly divine, or only some evidently superhuman power.

But if this be impossible, it is no less impossible, also, to contend, that no beings who are inferior to God can be permitted to work miracles without his special direction. If there be evil spirits, as the Scripture assures us, it is sufficiently clear, from what has already been said, that the powers of those spirits must be by us illimitable. We cannot deny to them, therefore, the power of working miracles. We cannot say of them, that, while engaged in doing evil, they act under the special direction of God: nor can we deny to good spirits, or, rather, speaking more strictly, we cannot deny to any superhuman being the same natural powers, or the permission of acting in the same degree, independently of any power but their own.

A mere miracle, therefore, cannot in itself, cannot as a mere act of some superhuman power, the only power we can affirm to subsist in it, be accounted decisive of a strictly divine authority. Its possessing that authority must be matter of inference from some other condi

tion or conditions possessed by it. It remains to be seen, therefore, whether we can assign such conditions, and whether the Scripture miracles may be found to possess them.

Here, then, we have to observe, that though the mere power which is exemplified in any miracle whatsoever can prove directly only a superhuman authority, yet, if that authority cannot be any way invalidated, it may prove remotely, also, the divine sanction. Any declaration which a superhuman being may make to us, must, in the absence of all contradictory evidence, stand on the highest possible ground of credit. Error is inevitable, if such a being deceives us on points on which we can oppose nothing to his authority. But it is, I believe, a law of nature, that in all practical questions we are bound to credit the best evidence we can procure; and this especially when all the evidence is on one side, and nothing but scepticism or surmise on the other. At all events it is a law both of revelation and reason, that the Father of the universe will not allow us to be deceived by any inevitable or invincible error. In all intellectual, as in all moral difficulties, we may be fully assured that He "will not suffer

us to be tempted above that we are able to bear; but will, with the temptation, also make a way to escape, that we may be able to bear it." a

I assume, therefore, unhesitatingly, that if an erroneous doctrine be taught on the authority of a superhuman agent or agents, we shall yet have means given us of discerning that error so taught, or of discerning that the doctrine is not credible. Those means, if any, must be either the means of discerning some inconsistency of the doctrine taught with the truths which we know by nature or reason, or with the doctrines of some admitted revelation; or, if not this, must be some express refutation of that authority for which the miracle is claimed, by some other equal or superior authority. None will contend that the authority of a miracle can possibly be disputed on other grounds than on these.

Though as mere acts of power, therefore, we cannot affirm of miracles that they are necessarily the sole act of God, or that they cannot be performed by any subordinate beings, even

a 1 Cor. x. 13.

beings of whose nature we may have no right to affirm that it is wholly incapable of deception or error, the proof which they afford may be still complete and decisive. God still sanctions, if he does not refute them:-that is, if he does not afford to man the necessary means of refutation. If there be no such means, it follows indubitably that the performance of a miracle, or the real exertion of any unequivocally superhuman power, is conclusive of a strictly divine authority, in any revelation which it may be brought to attest".

See Note A at the end of the volume.

SECTION II.

OF THE OBJECTION THAT MIRACLES JUSTLY REQUIRE AN ABSOLUTE, NOT A QUALIFIED CONFIDENCE, OR THAT IT IS UNNECESSARY AND IMPROPER TO INTERPOSE THOSE CONDITIONS WHICH HAVE BEEN LAID DOWN IN THE PRECED

ING SECTION.

NOTHING, as it appears to me, can be in itself more clearly irrefragable than the argument which has been advanced in the preceding Section. Nothing can be plainer than that, if a superhuman power be exerted in attestation of a doctrine, it stamps on that doctrine a superhuman authority. Nothing can be plainer than that, if we grant the existence of any other superhuman beings besides God, it is impossible for man to draw any distinction between the powers which those beings may possess, and power which may be accounted strictly divine. Nothing can be plainer than that man cannot deny that such beings may possibly exist, and may be permitted to interfere in human affairs, or than that their authority must always be irresistible, unless either alleged for untenable doctrines, or expressly refuted by some

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