1817 Nov. 7

Not Paul

Ch Quasi Miracles &c

§ Least improbability Paul &c

Applied to the facts of religion―of revealed religion this rule or at any rate one branch of it may be thus expressed. Whatever effect may with probability be referred to and accounted for by natural causes for the accounting of it, forbear to have recourse to supernatural ones to any cause of a supernatural cast―to any cause by the existence of which in that character if admitted, the effect in the event or state of things would be referred to the class of miraculous ones.

In a heathen poet may be found a rule which though applied to a very different / light / subject, may help to place and fix in the mind the important and serious rule here in question

Nec Deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus

Inciderit.― i.e. ‘nor should a god be introduced unless a knot arises which requires a deliverer’; Horace, Ars poetica, 192-2.