PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
Counterfeit Miracles
B. B. Warfield, 1851–1921 · 119,298 words · 159 reading sections
THE PRIMITIVE CHARISMATA 5
BT 97 .W3 1918 Warfield, Benjamin Breckinridge, 1851-1921 Counterfeit miracles Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library http://www.archive.org/details/counterfeitmirOOwarf COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES V w* Vl rnww^ COUNTERFEIT i f; iq o/i MIRACLES . BY BEN…
808 wordsSECTION 2THEIR DISAPPEARANCE 7
ulous gift to exercise, "a revelation, a tongue, an inter- pretation," as well as "a psalm or a teaching." There is no reason to believe that the infant congregation at Cor- inth was singular in this. The Apostle does not write as if he were describing a marvellous state of affairs peculiar to that church. He even make…
846 wordsSECTION 3THE CURRENT THEORY 9
Middleton supports this statement with instances which bring out so clearly the essential elements of the opinion that they may profitably be quoted here. Archbishop John Tillotson represents "that on the first planting of the Chris- tian religion in the world, God was pleased to accompany it with a miraculous power; b…
736 wordsSECTION 4INDEFINITE TESTIMONY 11
This, then, is the theory: that, miracles having been given for the purpose of founding the church, they con- tinued so long as they were needed for that purpose ; grow- ing gradually fewer as they were less needed, and ceasing altogether when the church having, so to speak, been firmly put upon its feet, was able to s…
797 wordsSECTION 514 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
This beginning of testimony is followed up to precisely the same effect by Irenaeus, except that Irenaeus speaks somewhat more explicitly, and adds a mention of two new classes of miracles — those of speaking with tongues and of raising the dead, to both of which varieties he is the sole witness during these centuries,…
785 wordsSECTION 616 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
period speaks of raisings of the dead at all, and that he speaks of them after a fashion which suggests that he has in mind not contemporary but past instances — doubtless those recorded in the narratives of the New Testament.24 Eusebius does no doubt narrate what he calls "a wonder- ful story," told by Papias on the a…
758 wordsSECTION 718 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
When we come to think of it, it is rather surprising that the Christians had no raisings from the dead to point to through all these years. The fact is striking testimony to the marked sobriety of their spirit. The heathen had them in plenty.33 In an age so innocent of real medical knowledge, and filled to the brim and…
857 wordsSECTION 820 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
For the literary form exemplified in the Wanderings of the Apostles was not an innovation of the Christian heretics, but had already enjoyed a vast popularity in the heathen romances which swarmed under the empire, and the best known names of which are Antonius Diogenes's Incredible Tales of Beyond Thule, Jamblicus's B…
697 wordsSECTION 922 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
It may be justly asked, how it can be accounted for that so large a body of students of history can have committed themselves to a view which so clearly runs in the face of the plainest facts of the very history they are setting them- selves to explain. The answer is doubtless to be found in the curious power which pre…
546 wordsSECTION 1024 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
the laying on of the hands of Apostles.47 There is no in- stance on record of their conference by the laying on of the hands of any one else than an Apostle.48 The case of the Samaritans, recorded in the eighth chapter of Acts, is not only a very instructive one in itself, but may even be looked upon as the cardinal in…
732 wordsSECTION 1126 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
frequent, and ceased entirely at the death of the last in- dividual on whom the hands of the Apostles had been laid. That event would, in the natural course of things, take place before the middle of the second century — at a time when Christianity, having obtained a footing in all the provinces of the Roman Empire, th…
702 wordsSECTION 1228 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
belong to revelation periods, and appear only when God is speaking to His people through accredited messengers, declaring His gracious purposes. Their abundant display in the Apostolic Church is the mark of the richness of the Apostolic age in revelation ; and when this revelation period closed, the period of miracle-w…
855 wordsSECTION 1330 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
At this point we might fairly rest. But I cannot deny myself the pleasure of giving you some account in this con- nection of a famous book on the subject we have been dis- cussing— to which indeed incidental allusion has been made. I refer to Conyers Middleton's A Free Inquiry into the Mi- raculous Powers which are sup…
580 wordsSECTION 1436 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
is intimated, and this proves to be only a modification of the current Anglican opinion — that miracles subsisted until the church had been founded in all the" chief cities of the empire, which, he held, had been accomplished in the Apostolic times. It is interesting to observe thus that Middleton reached his correct c…
815 wordsSECTION 1538 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
admit that the miracles of the first three centuries happened, slightly and only generally witnessed as they are, we should in all reason go on and admit that the much more numerous and much better attested miracles of the fourth century happened too— and those of the fifth, and of the sixth, and of every subsequent ce…
827 wordsSECTION 1640 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
Augustine no doubt will serve our purpose here as well as another. In the twenty-second book3 of the City of God, he has circumstantially related to us a score or more of miracles which had come under his own observation, and which he represents as only a tithe of those he could relate. A considerable number of these w…
688 wordsSECTION 1742 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
Not all the miracles which Augustine includes in this anthology were wrought, however, by the bones of Stephen. Even before these bones had been discovered, miracles of the most astonishing character had occurred within his own personal knowledge. He tells us, for example, of the restoration of a blind man to sight at …
719 wordsSECTION 1844 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
A sufficiently odd passage in one of his letters — written in 404 — seems to illustrate at once the Milanese origin of his miracle-faith and the process of its growth to maturity.11 There had been a scandal in the household; one member of it had accused another of a crime, and Augustine was in doubt which of the two wa…
823 wordsSECTION 1946 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
We should perhaps note at the outset that the marvellous stories do not seem to have met with universal credence when first published. They seem indeed to have attracted very little attention. Augustine bitterly complains that so little was made of them.15 Each was known only in the spot where it was wrought, and even …
546 wordsSECTION 2048 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
It is a very disturbing fact further that the very Fathers who record long lists of miracles contemporary with them- selves, yet betray a consciousness that miracles had never- theless, in some sense or other, ceased with the Apostolic age. When Ambrose, for example, comes to speak of the famous discovery of the bodies…
743 wordsSECTION 2150 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
but he restores believing Timothy when ill, not by prayer, but by medicine; so that you may clearly perceive that miracles were wrought for unbelievers and not for be- lievers." Even in the thirteenth century, Bernard, com- menting on Mark 16 : 17, asks:29 "For who is there that seems to have these signs of the faith, …
716 wordsSECTION 2252 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
Tours or a Gregory Thaumaturgus as "tentative," or as attempted with incomplete confidence. It is equally lu- dicrous to represent incomplete assurance on the part of a saint with respect to his miracles before they were wrought as prolonging itself throughout his life, after they were wrought. Meanwhile the fact remai…
725 wordsSECTION 2354 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
charistic bread of the Macedonians, found it turned to a stone.40 Gregory the Great narrates that a young monk who had gone to visit his parents without permission, died on the day of his return, but could not rest quiet in his grave until Benedict, his superior, had the host laid on it.40 In the time of Justinian, we …
736 wordsSECTION 2456 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
those who have been instructed in it, and in order to the instruction of multitudes; but the miracles which follow have sometimes no discoverable or direct object, or but a slight object; they happen for the sake of individuals and of those who are already Christians, or for purposes already effected, as far as we can …
704 wordsSECTION 2558 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
The disposition of matter in this famous essay is as fol- lows. First, the antecedent probability of the ecclesiastical miracles is estimated; then, their internal character is in- vestigated; then, the argument in their behalf in general is presented; and finally the major portion of the essay is given to a detailed a…
688 wordsSECTION 2660 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
cally, but soon returns to the main point, namely that the case is to be settled on the ground of antecedent probability. This is then at once resolved into the question of the doc- trine of the church. Newman, it is true, expresses himself as if what he was handling was the reality of Christianity. He warns us that sc…
787 wordsSECTION 2762 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
Perhaps I ought to mention before leaving Newman's book that it has been subjected to a very thorough examina- tion, and has been given a very complete refutation by Edwin A. Abbott, in a volume devoted wholly to it, pub- lished under the significant title of Philomythus.50 And, having mentioned this book, perhaps I ou…
778 wordsSECTION 2864 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
It has been much disputed of late, whether the work which stands at the head of this literature, Athanasius' Life of Antony, is really Athanasius' or is a work of fiction. Perhaps we do not need to treat the alternative as absolute. The book can scarcely be denied to Athanasius, and if we conceive it as a work of ficti…
600 wordsSECTION 2966 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
An admirable summary of what took place in the church itself, parallel with this literary development, is drawn up by Robert Rainy in the course of his general description of the effects of the introduction of monasticism into the church. "The stimulus which was applied to the fancy and to nervous tendencies," says he,…
831 wordsSECTION 3068 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
As the miraculous stories of the populace thus took on a Christian complexion when the people who produced them became Christian, and became now the vehicles of Christian faith in Providence and of hope in the God who is the maker and ruler of the whole earth; so they reflect also the other currents of popular belief a…
571 wordsSECTION 3174 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
A more entertaining incident of the same kind occurred in France in the first half of the eighteenth century. The Jansenists had their miracles, you will understand, as well as the Jesuits. A young Jansenist cleric, Francois de Paris, was a particularly warm opponent of Clement XIV's bull Unigenitus. This did not preve…
726 wordsSECTION 3276 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
We had occasion in a previous lecture to point out that this great stream of miracle-working which has run thus through the history of the church was not original to the church, but entered it from without.5 The channel which we then indicated was not the only one through which it flowed into the church. It was not eve…
784 wordsSECTION 3378 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
Are we then to discredit out of hand the teeming mul- titudes of wonders which fill the annals of the church despite their attestation in detail by men of probity and renown? What credit can be accorded the testimony of men even of probity and renown in matters in which they show them- selves quite color-blind? Take Au…
883 wordsSECTION 34THE CREDIT OF THE SAINTS 81
We are not yet, however, at the end of the matter. The same story is related by the heathen satirist Lucian,15 writing as far back as the third quarter of the second cen- tury— two hundred and fifty years before Augustine, and three hundred and fifty years before Gregory. Only, Lucian has this advantage over his Christ…
810 wordsSECTION 35SPOILING THE EGYPTIANS 83
of romancing? R. Reitzenstein is not so tender of the honor of the saints as Delehaye, and has theories of his own to consider. The close agreement of the details of the story as Augustine tells it with Lucian's version, as well as the use which Augustine makes of it, "leave no doubt," he thinks,19 " that Augustine has…
699 wordsSECTION 36STIGMATIZATION 85
which is in question. But the process went on on the largest scale. Every religious possession the heathen had, indeed, the Christians, it may be said broadly, transferred to themselves and made their own. As one of the results, the whole body of heathen legends, in one way or another, reproduced themselves on Christia…
720 wordsSECTION 37PATHOLOGICAL PHENOMENA 87
five wounds In 1899, those of the crown of thorns being added in 1900, and of the scourging in 1901 — the external signs, in her case too, being subsequently removed in answer to her prayers.34 A. Imbert-Gourbeyre35 has noted 321 in- stances in all, only 41 of which have been men, along with 280 women; the nineteenth c…
741 wordsSECTION 38SUFFRAGAN SAVIOURS 89
and for many others who have dared to attempt to efface it where it was." "We have not greatly advanced the ques- tion of the stigmata/' he confesses in closing,41 "but if any of our readers, affected by an inclination to attribute all these phenomena to natural causes, has come in the end to doubt this conclusion or t…
757 wordsSECTION 39NATURAL EXPLANATIONS 91
"In suffering thus the mystics persuade themselves not only that they draw near to Jesus, but that they are ad- mitted by a kind of divine grace to perpetuate the sacrifice of their God, to expiate like Him sins of which they are personally innocent. These sharp pains of the thorns, these piercing sufferings of the nai…
690 wordsSECTION 40HEATHEN AND CHRISTIAN RELICS 93
body, and may perhaps begin to understand what can be meant when it is said:54 "That I should be able to hold my pen because I wish to do it, is ultimately just as great a mystery as that I should develop stigmata from medi- tating on the Crucifixion." To do them justice, there were not wanting Catholic writers before …
841 wordsSECTION 41THE MILK OF THE VIRGIN 95
There are no doubt differences to be traced between the Christian and the heathen cult of relics. And these differ- ences are not always to the advantage of the Christians. There is the matter of the partition of relics, for example, and the roaring trade which, partly in consequence of this, has from time to time been…
607 wordsSECTION 42LIQUEFACTION OF BLOOD 97
told that not all of this milk need be that with which the Virgin nourished her divine Son. The Virgin, it seems, has been accustomed all through the ages to give nourish- ment to her children in their times of deadly need, and even her statues and paintings may, on occasion, supply it.69 We are here in conta.ct with a…
729 wordsSECTION 43VENERATION OF RELICS 99
cella, Lucca, Venice — without San Gennaro, however, suf- fering in the least by the concurrence." The celebrated miracle of the liquefaction of the blood of Januarius is not then unexampled. In the single Church of the Holy Apos- tles at Rome you may see the perpetually liquid blood of St. James the Less, and the mira…
767 wordsSECTION 44RELICS AND THE ALTAR 101
We have pointed out the affiliation of this whole develop- ment of relic-veneration with heathenism. We are afraid that, as we survey its details, the even uglier word, fetich- ism, rises unbidden to our lips: and when we find J. A. Mac- Culloch, for example, writing of miracles at large, speaking incidentally of "the …
703 wordsSECTION 45APPARITIONS OF MARY 103
when he says:93 "The really pious Catholic has a peculiar passion for miracles. The extremely numerous accounts of miraculous healings, not alone at Lourdes; the multi- plied promises, especially in the little Prayer and Pilgrim Books, of physical healing of the sick in reward for many offered prayers and petitions; th…
755 wordsSECTION 46THE APPARITION AT LOURDES 105
to two shepherd children, a girl and boy, aged respectively fifteen and eleven; Lourdes (1858), where she appeared as "a girl in white, no bigger than me," to a little country- bred girl of fourteen; Pellevoisin (1876), where she ap- peared as " the Mother All-Merciful " to an ill serving-maid ; Le Pontinet (1889), whe…
721 wordsSECTION 47THE CURES AT LOURDES 107
be spoken of with the same energy as "the little seer" of Le Pontinet, as the child of degenerated parents, weighted with the burden of bad heredity.108 But it is a matter only of degree. Bernadette's parentage was not of the best omen; in her person she was, if not a degenerate, yet certainly a defective. It is of suc…
728 wordsSECTION 48IMPERFECT MIRACLES 109
pilgrims are seeking healing. Lourdes does not register her failures; the proportion of her pilgrims who are seeking healing, the proportion of those seeking healing who are healed, can only be guessed. The late Monsignor R. H. Benson, speaking of the great masses of the national pil- grimage, says, no doubt somewhat l…
867 wordsSECTION 49EXPLOITATION OF LOURDES 111
It must remain astonishing, in any event, that miracles should be frequently incomplete. We should a priori ex- pect miraculous cures to be regularly radical. No doubt we are not judges beforehand how God should work. But it is not wrong, when we are asked to infer from the very nature of an effect that it is the immed…
785 wordsSECTION 50SUGGESTION AT LOURDES 113
Lourdes, naturally, repudiates this classification of her cures, and claims a place apart. She points to the unex- ampled multitude of cures wrought by her; she points to their intrinsic marvellousness. The great number of cures wrought at Lourdes is not due, however, to any peculiarity in the curative power which she …
823 wordsSECTION 51116 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
"After perhaps half an hour's waiting, during which one incessant gust of singing rolled this way and that through the crowd, the leaders of the procession appeared far away — little white or black figures, small as dolls — and the sing- ing became general. But as the endless files rolled out, the singing ceased, and a…
850 wordsSECTION 52. INEXPLICABLE AND MIRACULOUS 119
"I saw a sudden swirl in the crowd of heads beneath the church steps, and then a great shaking ran through the crowd ; but there for a few instants it boiled like a pot. A sudden cry had broken out, and it ran through the whole space; waxing in volume as it ran, till the heads beneath my window shook with it also; hand…
830 wordsSECTION 53GOD AND BARE OMNIPOTENCE 121
that they are. Is it wrong suddenly to turn the tables and ask those who would compel us to explain Pierre de Rudder's case, how they explain Charlotte Laborde's case, which is certainly far more wonderful than Pierre de Rud- der's? Charlotte Laborde was a Jansenist cripple who had no legs at all, as two surgeons duly …
850 wordsSECTION 54LOURDES'S SUPERSTITION 123
If, for instance, to take an example so extreme that it could not occur, but one that may serve all the better as our illustration on that account, there were buried some- where in the concrete wholeness of the occurrence the im- plication that twice two are five. It would be more in- explicable that God should not kno…
610 wordsSECTION 55128 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
— by fimile Zola's crisp remark:156 "That two and two make four may have become trite — but nevertheless they do make four. It is less foolish and less mad to say so than to believe, for example, in the miracles of Lourdes." That God is one, and that He alone is to be served with religious veneration, is no doubt an ol…
767 wordsSECTION 56130 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
ties have, in their hopeless agony, been thrown back upon their God as their only refuge, and have found in Him solace and strength, it has over and over again happened that out of their distresses words and deeds have come to them which to their apprehension seemed manifestly divine. We may find an illustration of the…
702 wordsSECTION 57132 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
certain dreadful judgments would fall on London in three weeks, explained explicitly to mean three literal weeks. When the fulfilment did not take place, they re-explained that, after all, it was three prophetic weeks that were in- tended— which corrected dating also was, of course, stulti- fied in the process of time.…
676 wordsSECTION 58134 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
when that which is perfect shall come, and that which is in part shall be done away. If they ask for an explanation of the fact that these powers have ceased in the Church, I answer, that they have decayed just as faith and holiness have decayed; but that they have ceased is not a matter so clear. Till the time of the …
815 wordsSECTION 59136 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
It is not my purpose to enter on a formal examination and criticism of Irving's views; they have already been judged by the course of history. But having thus pre- sented them to you in his own highly ornate language, we may turn our attention to some account of the rise of the movement called (but not by its adherents…
729 wordsSECTION 60138 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
In this excited state of mind Irving was called upon to endure great personal trials. His opinions on the person of Christ were very properly called in question ; and he was compelled to meet ecclesiastical process in consequence. In the midst of these distracting occurrences, he undertook a journey to Scotland that he…
649 wordsSource & rights
Public-domain historical work by B. B. Warfield, 1851–1921. OCR from an original historical scan hosted by Internet Archive; OCR may contain recognition errors.
Project Gutenberg source record →
Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.