21 Jan y 1814

Jug. Util.

Ch.3. Natural Evidence

10

In this perpetual inconsistency this undiscontinued habit of forming extraordinary designs, and at the same time of employing, and successfully employing extraordinary means for the frustrating of those same extraordinary designs is found a solvent for all difficulties. Miracles have been wrought and prophecies have been delivered. By the miracles no credence—the prophecies no attention is obtained: as constantly as they are delivered, the miracles are disbelieved, as for any effect they produce might as well be disbelieved, the prophecies are misinterpreted. By the very persons before whose eyes they are wrought, the miracles are disbelieved: disbelieved, and why? even because their hearts are hardened. By the very people in whose country and to whose forefathers the prophecies were delivered, these prophecies were misinterpreted, misinterpreted and why? even because their eyes were blinded. By them to whose eyes the whole of that body of whatsoever evidence the case afforded was present the prediction or supposed prediction was interpreted one way, one sense was put upon it: by us to whose eyes but a fragment of that same body of evidence is present, the same prediction is required to be interpreted another way: another sense is required to be put upon it: why? even because their eyes were blinded. blinded? yes, that in the same occasion some eyes have some how or other been blinded seems not improbable, but which eyes? those to which the nearest and clearest or those [to] which the remotest and obscurest view had been presented?