12 Jan y 1814

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Ch.5. II Prophecies [...?]

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§.2. Prophecies

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If in itself a miracle at large—meaning always a report made of a miracle, a report made or supposed to be made at an anterior and very remote point of time, is in its MS alt. ‘not’. own nature incapable of affording any sufficient proof of the verity of any religious system, no less incapable of serving in that character is every thing that has ever been brought forward in that character under the name of a prophecy—i.e. a miraculous prediction a prediction of the miraculous kind.

Not miraculous or miraculous—to one or other of these classes will every discourse be seen to belong which ever has been or ever can be held up to view in the character of a prophecy. If it be not miraculous, it then amounts to nothing: the condition in which its probative force depends is altogether wanting. If it be miraculous, then by this its alledged miraculousness a more strongly probative proof is afforded of its spuriousness than any that can be found to operate in favour of its genuineness. In the supposition of its spuriousness —i.e. of its not having been in fact delivered at the time when (as alledged)/ it was delivered, by the person by whom (as alledged) it was delivered—there can not be any thing in any degree unconformable to the notoriously ordinary course of nature: whereas in the supposition of its genuineness, it being by the same supposition of the miraculous cast in this supposition is included ex [...?] that of no unconformableness to the ordinary course of nature.