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; but after it was planted, that power ceased, and God left it to be maintained by ordi- nary ways." So, Nathaniel Marshall wrote, "that there are successive evidences of them, which speak full and home to this point, from the beginning down to the age of Constantine, in whose time, when Christianity had ac- quired the support of human powers, those extraordinary assistances were discontinued." Others, sharing the same general point of view, would postpone a little the date of entire cessation. Thus the elder Henry Dodwell supposes true miracles to have generally ceased with the conversion of the Roman Empire, yet admits some special miracles, which seem to him to be exceptionally well attested, up to the close of the fourth century. Daniel Waterland, in the body of his treatise on the Trinity, speaks of miracles as continuing through the first three centuries at least, and in the Addenda extends this through the fourth. John
8 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
Chapman's mode of statement is " that though the estab- lishment of Christianity by the civil power abated the ne- cessity of miracles, and occasioned a visible decrease of them, yet, after that revolution, there were instances of them still, as public, as clear, as well-attested as any in the earlier ages." He extends these instances not only through the fourth century but also through the fifth— which, he says, "had also its portion, though smaller than the fourth." William Whiston, looking upon the charismata less as the divine means of extending the church than as the signs of the divine favor on the church in its pure beginnings, sets the date of their cessation at A. D. 381, which marks the triumph of Athanasianism; that being to him, as an Arian, the final victory of error in the church— which naturally put a stop to such manifestations of God's favor. It is a similar idea from his own point of view which is given ex- pression by John Wesley in one of his not always consistent declarations on the subject. He supposes that miracles stopped when the empire became Christian, because then, "a general corruption both of faith and morals infected the church— which by that revolution, as St. Jerome says, lost as much of its virtue as it had gained of wealth and power." 10 These slight extensions of the time during which the miracles are supposed to persist, do not essen- tially alter the general view, though they have their sig- nificance— a very important significance which Middleton was not slow to perceive, and to which we shall revert later.
The general view itself has lost none of its popularity with the lapse of time. It became more, rather than less, wide-spread with the passage of the eighteenth into the nineteenth century, and it remains very usual still. I need not occupy your time with the citation of numerous more recent expressions of it. It may suffice to adduce so pop- ular a historian as Gerhard Uhlhorn who, in his useful book on The Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism,11 declares
THE CURRENT THEORY 9
explicitly that "witnesses who are above suspicion leave no room for doubt that the miraculous powers of the Apos- tolic age continued to operate at least into the third cen- tury." A somewhat special turn is given to the same gen- eral idea by another historian of the highest standing — Bishop Mandel Creighton. "The Apostles," he tells us,12 "were endowed with extraordinary powers, necessary for the establishment of the church, but not necessary for its permanent maintenance. These powers were exercised for healing the sick and for conveying special gifts of the Holy Spirit; sometimes, but rarely, they were used for punish- ment. . . . These special powers were committed to the church as a means of teaching it the abiding presence of God. They were withdrawn when they had served their purpose of indicating the duties to be permanently per- formed. To 'gifts of tongues' succeeded orderly human teaching; to 'gifts of healing' succeeded healing by edu- cated human skill ; to supernatural punishment succeeded discipline by orderly human agency."