its talent and penetration :-the second as a diligent and candid investigation of the various principles which may be brought to bear on the subject. But Fleetwood's tract, though it bears the stamp of great ability, is certainly inaccurate in some of its parts, and the very object of Farmer's is an erroneous object, being no other than to prove that unless we exclude absolutely the supposition that evil spirits may be permitted to work miracles, or unless we deny it to be possible that any miracle can be worked by any being in behalf of a falsehood, we can have no evidence that any miracle comes from God, or is to be accounted, under any circumstances, an undeniable attestation of truth. Of this opinion it is enough for me to say here that Farmer's whole treatise is tinged with it, and that, therefore, though valuable for the fairness with which it is written, and

a

a I shall state the grounds of this opinion at length in the two first Sections of the Preliminary Dissertation which follows the Preface.

also for its justness on some particular points, it is still very liable to serious exception.

Many able observations on the true nature of miracles are to be found in an occasional sermon by Conybeare. But the compass of a sermon is scarcely adequate to the exposition of the principles to be considered in so extensive a question. This sermon, however, and another on the same subject by Powell', are the work of writers of very powerful understandings, and capable of appreciating whatever subjects they treated of.

But suppose all these principles fully explained yet the writer on miracles, who contents himself with merely stating the logical principles of their nature and cogency, may still stop short of that portion of the whole subject, in which he might hope to be of the most extensive utility. Besides the principles which show the cogency of miracles, we have to prove the performance of those recorded in

a Sermon at Oxford, December 24th, 1721, on Heb. ii. 4. b Discourse VII.

Scripture and we ought to prove this also, not merely in gross, and with a general reference to even the notorious facts of the question, but also with a sufficient detail of particulars to make the whole evidence felt and familiar.

The object, which I shall in this treatise try to accomplish, is to connect, by as accurate a process as possible, a statement of the nature of miraculous evidence, with a detailed enumeration of the various evidences which we possess for the real performance of the Scripture miracles. I am willing to believe also, that in thus tracing out the subject, step by step, and from beginning to end, some illustrations of the subject may arise, which do not often occur to those persons whose previous reading on the evidence of miracles has not extended farther than my own. The statement of the nature of miraculous evidence I shall attempt to comprise in a preliminary dissertation, in which it will be shown that, under certain conditions, the exertion of a power unequivocally superhuman

b

must be held conclusive of the divine authority. -This being proved, I shall be able to enter at once on the consideration or exposition of the practical evidence.—I should, perhaps, here add that in the preliminary dissertation, I transcribe two or three pages from a tract which I published two years ago, on the use of miracles in proving the truth of a revelation, the argument of which tract is here retraced and explained though in a somewhat different and more popular method.

The chief objection which I apprehend as likely to arise to this treatment of the great subject before me, is that it is unnecessary to encumber the practical part of the argument with the questions discussed in the preliminary dissertation. Wherefore, it will be asked, wherefore this proof that in the Scripture miracles we possess a certain sanction of truth: that they could not, under all circumstances, be performed by evil spirits, and that they must at least remotely imply a divine authority? Who doubts this, it will be said, in the present

age? What deist now imputes to magic, or to demoniacal agency, the miracles which we ascribe to Moses or Christ? Who is there who

does not allow them, if performed, to prove the agent's divine authority, or who questions anything of them except their real performance? Why attempt to prove what is not brought into question? Why beat the air by thus solving objections which no modern incredulity is found to propose ?

To this I answer, first, that the conversion of infidels is not, nor ought to be, the chief end of a treatise on the evidences of the Christian religion. Every treatise on the evidences, indeed, ought to be so constructed, that it may lead the infidel by a sound reasoning process, and independently of the authority of the revelation itself, to confess the truth of that revelation. But it does not hence follow that the conversion of infidels ought to be of such treatises the sole or principal end. Who would measure the utility of works on the being of God by the effect they may have had in the