10 Oct 1815

Jug True

3

Ch. Miracles

3

§. 1. Not so represented.

Numerous according to this account was the multitude not only of individual wonderworkers but even of classes of wonderworkers: and at least between every class and every other class of these wonder-workers a sort of competition had place: and to him who in numbers and value could exhibit the most extraordinary set of wonders the pre-eminence was assigned.

In this account as the reports made and written of the proceedings of any such wonder-worker who is such by profession, to every remarkable act stated as having been performed by him that colour and character which to the conception or imagination presented itself as most extraordinary would (in the description given of it) naturally and even without any formed intention to produce deception be employed: just as in the life of a military hero who is a warrior by profession, not only among any number of diversified accounts that by which the success is represented in the most brilliant colours is apt to be naturally employed in preference, to the rest, but every opportunity which presents itself as affording a chance of adding to the number, is readily embraced.

On the part of all followers, and in particular, on the part of the earliest and most zealous, a property similar to that which as above would be so apt to produce relations of wonders composed of real events either altogether ordinary or more or less extraordinary, with a varnish of the marvellous put upon them by the pen of the narrators, would naturally have place disposing them in any interpretation which it might be in their way to put upon it, to embrace with eagerness any such miracle, and to give to the colour contained in it, to perpetuate fasten upon it the appearance of a real miracle. Miracles were the things of all others for which, with the utmost anxiety they could not but be continually upon the look out for and, by such a disposition under such circumstances, may the faintest opportunity for making out a miracle so found, would not be provided as to be let go unimproved