converting of atheists? The greatest use which all such works can possess, and also of works on the evidences of Christianity, is not to multiply converts, but rather to guide the Theist and the Christian, respectively, to their strongest and most rational grounds of conviction; to supply the science of what they already believe, to throw the sunshine on objects previously discernible only by the light diffused in the atmosphere. The influence of such works on the Deist and Atheist is, at least in the main, an indirect influence; is not gained by putting personally to them the strongest refutations of their several errors, but by giving precision to the popular faith, and to that tone of religious argument and opinion with which the Deist and the Atheist have to contend.-It may also be remarked that the objections which will be alleged against the unprofitableness of some parts of my argument, are the very same objections which are alleged by the ignorant against the exposition of the first great proofs of God's being, the proofs derived from the marks of de

sign in creation. Why this proof? they say: we knew this before.-But they did not know it on the same rational evidence, nor with the same security against those sceptical doubts, of which ignorance is the readiest victim.

Hence it follows that though those principles, which will be discussed in the preliminary dissertation prefixed to this volume, may not be the principles of any modern incredulity, they still may not be misplaced in a treatise on miracles. Those principles still constitute to the believer a necessary part of his entire series of proof: and they are the rather to be accounted a valuable part of that proof, because the notion that real miracles may be performed, and yet not be decisive of a divine authority, has certainly been the persuasion, if not of the present age, yet of most ages of which we have any historical record. The examination of an opinion which has been so widely extended cannot but be at all times a matter of moment, and of the greater moment because the influence of this opinion was notoriously consi

derable in the age of the Gospel, the religious history of which is of far greater importance to us than that of any other age since the creation; and because its influence did then affect materially the reception given to our Saviour's miracles.

These chiefly are the reasons which induce me to examine particularly those questions, which have been and may be proposed, concerning the nature and import of miracles. I have, in fact, not counted on any actual hesitation, in the present state of human opinions, to allow the conclusiveness of all miraculous authority: nor do I think that the existence of any such actual hesitation is necessary to the propriety of the plan which I follow.

Yet though I have not counted on the exist ence of such a hesitation as giving any value to this part of the argument, other than it derives from its natural importance, or its connection with the opinions either of the ancient world in general, or of the Gospel age in particular, I may be permitted to add that even some modern

objections to the strength of the evidence of the Christian religion do take root in that very hesitation. In a recent publication, for which we are indebted to Dr. Lee, the present Arabic Professor at Cambridge, it appears that the Mahometans do now actually apply, in their disquisitions on the evidence of the Scripture micles, the same or nearly the same principles of hesitation as to the conclusiveness of even real miracles, which will be found discussed in the following pages. Like the well-known controversy between Orobio and Limborch, this publication consists of a real correspondence, written originally in the Persian language, between the late lamented Rev. Henry Martyn and two very acute Mahometan disputants: and what is most valuable in it is, that it sets distinctly before us the present views of well educated Mahometans as to the claims both of Christianity

a Controversial Tracts on Christianity and Mahommedanism, by the late Rev. Henry Martyn, B.D. and some of the most eminent writers of Persia, translated and explained by the Rev. S Lee, A.M. &c. Cambridge, 8vo. 1824.

and of their own religion, and particularly the grounds on which they attempt to sustain their own pretension of the standing miracle of the Koran. With this end in view, it is of course the business of these writers, not to deny indeed the Scripture miracles, but still to accumulate such surmises against them, as shall show the supposed strength of their own miracle in the stronger light. And their way to this end is to make to miracles in general those very objections, to which even the most pertinent answers are thought by many persons mere idle answers to mere fanciful objections. These Mahometan writers urge expressly the objection refuted in Chap. v. of this treatise, that before any act can be accounted a miracle, it must be necessary to prove that it exceeds universal experience, and that "as the world is in a state of improvement, it cannot be known till the day of judgment that such an act is a miracle." a The whole jet of their argument is to raise so high the real or the imaginable powers of

a Controversial Tracts, pp. 194. 215.