1

even penetrating understandings, are undoubtedly unbecoming, if not in reality, injurious.

"It would be hard, indeed, upon Christians," says a liberal prelate," if they were compelled to receive, as apostolical traditions, the wild reveries of ancient enthusiasm, or such crude conceptions of ignorant fanaticism, as nothing but the rust of antiquity can render venerable. Cast your eye upon the church of Rome, and ask yourself, whether her absurd pretensions to miraculous powers have not converted one half of her members to protestantism, and the other half to infidelity? Neither the sword of the civil magistrate, nor the possession of the keys of heaven, nor the terrors of her spiritual thunder, has been able to keep within her pale, even those who have been bred up in her faith." But we may be asked, in what particular link, then, shall we break the chain of traditionary powers? Every age bears testimony to wonderful events. Christians continued to support their pretensions long after they had lost their power, and thus credulity performed the office of faith; fanaticism was permitted to assume the language of inspiration; and the effects of accident C 3

or

Bishop Watson.

or contrivance, were ascribed to supernatural

causes. *

The influence of surperstition is, indeed, considerable; and credulous devotion acts most powerfully on the uninformed mind: and thus. Hume's observation is just, touching the agreeable emotion produced by the passion of wonder and surprize, and the strong propensity there is in men to the extraordinary, and the marvellous. "It even forms," says he, " a very strong presumption against all supernatural relations, that they are always found chiefly to abound among ignorant and barbarous nations; or if a civilized people have ever given admission to any of them, they have received them from ignorant or barbarous ancestors."

But no presumption, as I think I have already proved, can be drawn from this circumstance, to the prejudice of Christianity; which did not make its appearance in either an ignorant, or a barbarous age, but, on the contrary, at a time when the world was highly civilized, and among nations where arts and learning had made a very considerable progress. Let me further remark, that it had not only the inveterate prejudices of

• Gibbon.

+ Philosophical Essays.

the

the Romans and Jews, their darling passions, and inclinations, to contend with; but also their pretended miracles, or, as Hume would call them, their extraordinary facts, received from their ancestors, to encounter, facts which had come handed down with all that inviolable sanction and authority, which always attend ancient and received opinions.

"There is not to be found in all history, however," says the same writer, "any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestionable good sense, education, and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves; of such undoubted integrity, as to place them beyond all suspicion of any design to deceive others; of such credit and reputation in the eyes of mankind, as to have a great deal to lose, in case of being detected in any falsehood ; and, at the same time attesting facts performed in such a public manner, and in so celebrated a part of the world, as to render the detection unavoidable: all which circumstances are requisite to produce a full confidence in human testimony." "A miracle," continues he, " is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience hath established those laws, the proof against it, from the very nature

of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined. It is experience alone which gives authority to human testimony; and the same experience that assures us of the law of nature. When, therefore, these two kinds of experience are contrary, we have nothing to do but to subtract the one from the other. And this subtraction, with regard to all popular religions, amounts to an entire annihilation. Nay, whoever by faith is moved to assent to a miracle, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe whatever is most contrary to custom and experience."

Thus conclusive and dictatorial is Mr. Hume, whose unpresuming, and unoffending genius, you will remember, hath even merited a deathbed eulogium from himself. But let us for a moment examine how far this argument can support such a peculiar strain of confidence. I call it confidence, for no talents, no equanimity of mind, no suavity of manners, can authorize any man so far to deviate from decency and good sense, as to consign to contempt those who have ventured to declare a belief in God; or to hold up to ridicule the sole source of

happiness

happiness to millions, and the pride and glory of men of learning and science, who, in point of understanding, have at least been equal, if not superior to all libertine philosophers. There is one observation which cannot but strike you. The proof arising from experience, though it is Mr. Hume's main pillar, amounts to this, and nothing more, that we learn from it what is conformable to the ordinary course and order of things; but we cannot learn from it that it is impossible things or events should happen, in any particular instance, contrary to that course. An event may happen, for instance, though it be contrary to the usual course of things, which cannot certainly, without absurdity, be said to be impossible, though there be no testimony whatever to support it. If it be possible, then, there is place for testimony. This testimony ought, indeed, to be so strong, and so circumstanced, as to make it reasonable for us to believe it yet, if we have sufficient evidence to cor.vince us, that such an event hath actually happened, however extraordinary or miraculous, surely no argument, drawn from experience, can prove it hath not happened.*

* Leland.

Miraculous