23 Jan y 1814

Jug True

Ch.4. Miracles

(1)

Hard indeed is the task of him who has to defend the sort of proof afforded by reports of miracles. The fact as reported must have in it neither too little of the marvellous nor too much: too little the report is not that of a miracle: too much it is indeed the report of a miracle but of a miracle for which credence is not to be found.

Narrow enough from the first, the interval between the miraculous and the incredible grows narrower and narrower, proportionate in mens minds judgment grows stronger and stronger, and the faculty of swallowing marvels weaker and weaker. As the swallow contracts, miracles of too large a dimension are strained out and put aside.

Till comparatively speaking of late years the systems of diabolism had formed a capital part of every Christian creed. Weak to the last degree in itself, and attacked by the many with encreasing vigour, the necessity of abandoning it became at last indisputable. To every man who had eyes, every day as many liars, also have presented themselves as men: to no man alone so much as one single devil. The existence of four liars was found easier to believe than that of four thousand or nobody could say how many more than four thousand devils. The devils vanished, and diseases took their place. Not but that among those things which were done with such facility by devils, there were many who exceeded by far all the known powers of disease. But details on that head belong not to this place.

In the article of miracles not strength only but number has a claim to notice. In an article of such delicacy excess is no less dangerous than deficiency. In the interval that had elapsed between the days of Jesus to the middle of the last century reports of miracles had accumulated in so vast a multitude the sham[?] of them broke with its own weight. In comes D r Midddleton, and at one stroke lopt off the whole length of it reckoning from the death of Jesus, or a few years after it.