dence of the truth of all the Scriptural miracles, that they are all wrought in attestation of that one and only system of religion, which, in point of character, or of inherent probability, can approve itself to the judgment of any rational mind as entitled to claim a divine origin. For that the Jewish and the Christian are the same religion is a point on which I presume, all but Jews are agreed. Each of these revelations has, indeed, its own separate proof, proofs which combine with united force to prove both, but internally they both harmonize into one.

And this great peculiarity of the Scripture miracles, namely, their being worked in behalf of a probable religion, is assuredly, a very strong feature in the case. For, if the religion for which these miracles are alleged, a religion of which, unquestionably, the evidence has been deemed convincing by the largest portion of by much the ablest men, who have lived since the age of its first establishment, be not, notwithstanding this, altogether unworthy attention, equally unworthy of it as are the common superstitions of Paganism, this discriminates immediately the Jewish and Christian miracles from Pages 160, 161.

a

all those which have been or are alleged anywhere for any insignificant or improbable purpose. If Judaism and Christianity, whether true or false, be not futile: if Judaism, the oldest religion on record; if Christianity, a religion which has long overspread all the more civilized and intellectual world; cannot be pronounced fables of the same incredible class with the fables related of Osiris, or Jupiter: it is certain that the mere fact that the Scripture miracles are brought to attest that only religion which is so discriminated from all other religions, gives a probability to the miracles brought to attest it, in which other miracles must be ever deficient. For in whatever degree it be even supposable, that God may have interfered to attest a religion, it is equally supposable that those miracles may be true, which are brought to attest, and may be the only means of attesting it. And this consideration, though it does not disprove any miracles which may be alleged to have taken place on other, however trifling, occasions, yet confers on the miracles of Judaism and Christianity, a probability of which all others are destitute. So entirely absurd is the

P

strange assertion of Hume', that though other miracles may be capable of proof, it is still reasonable to reject all those miracles which are alleged in evidence of any system of religion. But these are pre-eminently the most entitled to credit, the evidence of a religion being, perhaps, the only knot which can be accounted worthy of this solution.

That the Christian religion does possess in reality this superiority over every other; or at least that a system, of which it is the distinguishing character, that God was in the world, even while the world knew him not, and that for corrupt man he has appointed a method of reconciliation, and such a method as that which the Scripture details to us, cannot seriously be affirmed to be so absurd a system that no evidence can render it credible; is a proposition which must be referred to doctrinal expositions of the reasonableness and consistency of the faith we profess. In a treatise on miracles it is a proposition assumed.

Essay on Miracles, pp. 178, 179. Essays, Vol. 111. Ed. 1770. See the whole passage.

b See Note K at the end of the volume.

In assuming this proposition, we assume one of those points which was stated originally as a preliminary condition of our just reliance on all miraculous authority". The other of those points was, that the authority of the miracle be not met by any express refutation on any other equal or superior authority. But any express authority which may be set against miracles must of necessity be the authority of opposite miracles. And since it will not be pretended that there are any real miracles, which are both opposed to ours, and also compete with them in evidence, we thus establish rigidly the whole proof of our case. We have shown it to be certain that the miracles of Scripture are works which carry with them a superhuman authority; and we now take them out of the range of that objection which, if either the doctrine were inconsistent with reason, or the authority expressly refuted, might justly deny even to a superhuman agent the credit of a sanction truly divine. Indeed we do more: for in whatever degree we prove our doctrine to be more than credible, or to be probable, in the same degree

Chap. 1. p. 52, and also p. 194 of this Section.

we also increase the facility with which it is sustained by its miraculous evidence.

This last point may require some farther illustration, and the rather because we may perhaps here meet with the objection, that to introduce in any degree the probability of the thing taught, as an element of the credibility of the miracles brought to attest it, is an incorrect and illogical process; that it is a proving of the doctrine by the miracle first, and then of the miracle by the doctrine afterwards.

But I answer to this, that we do not thus adopt any such illogical process that we do not adduce the probability of the doctrine as affecting in any degree the proper strength of that testimony which we allege for the truth of the performance of the miracle; but only as increasing the capability of the thing taught to be sustained or supported by that same testimony.

Nor is this mode of proceeding by any means peculiar to this particular case, in which the question is that of the evidences of religion, but