16 Jan y 1814

Jug. True

Ch.5. Prophecies [...?]

§.2. Prophecies [...?]

[rubbed out]

3

Bt the mere circumstance of coincidence—viz. between some event or state of things which has actually had place and the fact of one assertion uttered at some anterior point of time affirming that an event of that description will at the time in question be seen actually to have taken place, there is no such probative force or tendency. In a multitude of instances coincidences of this sort are continually seen to take place: in any such coincidence there is nothing more miraculous, nothing more unconformable to the ordinary course of nature than in this or that tickets being that one out of thirty thousand which is the first drawn of the whole.

To the miraculousness of the concurrence of these two conditions will be seen to be absolutely necessary.

1. That the event foretold be of such a description that the probability of its taking place at the time in question should be a state of things such as no human reason could not at the time in question have been capable of presenting to itself.

2. That it be itself of the miraculous cast i.e. not capable of being made to take place but in virtue of an arrangement in a momentous degree unconformable to the ordinary course of nature: for if in itself it have not any thing in it of the miraculous character, the coincidence between the fact and the antecedent discourse by which it is predicted may be in any degree remarkable, but as above observed is not in that account any more of the miraculous account, than any of those coincidences which every day may be seen to take place.