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 supposed to have subsisted in the Christian church from the earliest ages through several suc- cessive centuries. By which it is shown that we have no sufficient reason to believe, upon the authority of the primitive fathers, that any such powers were continued to the church, after the days of the A postles. Middleton was a doughty con- troversialist, no less admired for his English style, which was reckoned by his contemporaries as second in purity to that of no writer of his day except Addison (though John Wesley more justly found it stiff and pedantic), than feared for the sharpness and persistency of his polemics. He was of a somewhat sceptical temper and perhaps cannot be acquitted of a certain amount of insincerity. We could wish at least that it were clearer that John Wes- ley's description of him were undeserved, as "aiming every blow, though he seems to look another way, at the fanatics who wrote the Bible." 56 In this, his chief theological
MIDDLETON'S FREE INQUIRY 29
work, however, Middleton had a subject where scepticism found a proper mark, and he performs his congenial task with distinct ability. His controversial spirit and a cer- tain harshness of tone, while they may detract from the pleasure with which the book is read, do not destroy its value as a solid piece of investigation.
Conscious of the boldness of the views he was about to advocate and foreseeing their unpopularity, Middleton sent forth in 1747 as a sort of preparation for what was to come an Introductory discourse to a larger work designed hereafter to be published, concerning the miraculous powers which are supposed to have subsisted in the Christian church from the earliest ages through several successive centuries; tending to show that we have no sufficient reason to believe upon the authority of the primitive fatliers, that any such powers were continued to the church after the days of the Apostles. With a postscript . . . (London, 1747). In this Discourse he points out the helplessness of the Anglican position in the face of Romish claims. There is no reason for allowing miracles for the first three centuries which is not as good or better for allowing them for the succeeding centuries: and yet the greater portion of the miracles of these later centuries were wrought in support of distinctively Romish teaching, which, it would seem, must be accepted, if their attesting miracles are allowed. Next year (1748) he pub- lished Remarks on two Pamphlets . . ., which had appeared in reply to his Introductory Discourse; and at length in December, 1748, he permitted the Free Inquiry itself to see the light, fitted with a preface in which an account is given of the origin of the book, and the position taken up in the Introductory Discourse is pressed more sharply still — that the genuineness of the ecclesiastical miracles being once allowed, no stopping-place can be found until the whole series of alleged miracles down to our own day be admitted. At the end of this preface Middleton's own view as to the cause of the cessation of the spiritual gifts
30 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES