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 conclusion as to the time of the cessation of these gifts without the help of a right un- derstanding of the true reason of their cessation with the Apostolic age ; purely, that is to say, on empirical grounds. The Free Inquiry itself is a scholarly piece of work for its time, and a competent argument. It is disposed in five parts. The first of these simply draws out from the sources and presents in full the testimony to miraculous working found in the Fathers of the first three centuries. The meagreness and indefiniteness of their witness are left to speak for themselves, with only the help of two closing remarks. The one of these presses the impossibility of believing that the gifts were first withdrawn during the first fifty years of the second century and then restored. The other contrasts the patristic miracles with those of the New Testament, with respect both to their nature and the mode of their working. The second section discusses the persons who worked the ecclesiastical miracles. It is pointed out that no known writer claims to have himself wrought miracles, or names any of his predecessors as hav- ing done so. The honor is left to unknown and obscure men, and afterward to the "rotten bones" of saints who while living did no such works. The third section sub- jects the character of the early Fathers as men of wisdom and trustworthiness to a severe and not always perfectly fair criticism, with a view to lessening the credit that should be given to their testimony in such a matter as the occur- rence of miraculous workings in their day. The fourth section then takes up the several kinds of miracles which, it is pretended, were wrought, and seeks to determine from the nature of each, in each instance of its mention, whether
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its credibility may be reasonably suspected. Finally, in the fifth section, the principal objections which had been raised, or which seemed likely to be raised, to the tenor of the argument are cited and refuted.
The book was received with a storm of criticism, repro- bation, even abuse. It was not refuted. Many published careful and searching examinations of its facts and argu- ments, among others Doctor William Dodwell 57 (the younger) and Doctor Thomas Church,58 to whom Mid- dleton replied in a Vindication, published posthumously (1751). After a century and a half the book remains un- refuted, and, indeed, despite the faults arising from the writer's spirit and the limitations inseparable from the state of scholarship in his day, its main contention seems to be put beyond dispute.59
PATRISTIC AND MEDIEVAL MARVELS
PATRISTIC AND MEDIEVAL MARVELS
As over against the effort made more especially by- Anglican writers to confine genuine ecclesiastical miracles to the first, and in their view the purest and most authori- tative, centuries of Christianity, the Romish theologians boldly declare that God has been pleased in every age to work a multitude of evident miracles in His church. Be- fore this assertion, as we have seen, the Anglican theory is helpless, on the ground whether of fact or of principle. Of fact, because the evidence for the later miracles, which it denies, is very much greater in volume and cogency than that for the earlier miracles, which it accepts. Of prin- ciple, because the reason which it gives for the continuance of miracles during the first three centuries, if valid at all, is equally valid for their continuance to the twentieth century. What we shall look upon as the period of the planting of the church is determined by our point of view. If the usefulness of miracles in planting the church were sufficient reason for their occurrence in the Roman Empire in the third century, it is hard to deny that it may be suffi- cient reason for the repetition of them in, say, the Chinese Empire in the twentieth century. And why go to China? Is not the church still essentially in the position of a mis- sionary church everywhere in this world of unbelief? When we take a really "long view" of things, is it not at least a debatable question whether the paltry two thousand years which have passed since Christianity came into the world are not a negligible quantity, and the age in which we five is not still the age of the primitive church? We must adjudge, therefore, that the Romish theory is the more consistent and reasonable of the two. If we are to
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36 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES