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 was really at fault. "I fixed upon the following as a means of discovering the truth," he writes. "Both pledged themselves in a solemn compact to go to a holy place, where the awe-inspiring works of God might much more readily make manifest the evil of which either of them was conscious, and compel the guilty to confess, either by judgment or through fear of judgment." God is everywhere, it is true ; and able to punish or reward in secret as He will. "But," continues Augustine, "in re- gard to the answers of prayer which are visible to men, who can search out the reasons for appointing some places rather than others to be the scenes of miraculous interpositions?" The grave of a certain Felix suggested itself to him as a suitable place to send his culprits. True, no supernatural events had ever occurred there. But, he writes, "I myself knew how, at Milan, at the tomb of the saints, where demons are brought in a most marvellous and awful man- ner to confess their deeds, a thief, who had come thither intending to deceive by perjuring himself, was compelled to own his thefts and restore what he had taken away." "And is not Africa also," he asks, "full of the bodies of holy martyrs?" "Yet we do not know of such things being done here," he confesses. "Even as the gift of healing and
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the gift of discerning of spirits," he explains, "are not given to all saints, as the Apostle declares ; so it is not at all the tombs of the saints that it hath pleased Him who divideth to each severally as He will, to cause such miracles to be wrought." As late as 404, then, there were as yet no mir- acle-working shrines in Africa. Augustine, however, is busily at work producing them. And twenty years later we see them in full activity.
It was naturally a source of embarrassment to Augustine that the heretics had miracles to appeal to just like his own ; and that the heathen had had something very like them from time immemorial. The miracles of the heretics he was in- clined to reject out of hand. They never happened, he said. On the other hand, he did not dream of denying the actual occurrence of the heathen miracles. He only strained every nerve to put them in a different class from his own. They stood related to his, he said, as the marvels wrought by Pharaoh's magicians did to Moses' miracles. Mean- while, there the three sets of miracles stood, side by side, apparently just alike, and to be distinguished only by the doctrines with which they were severally connected. A passage in the thirteenth tractate on John on Donatist miracles (he calls them "miracle-ettes"), is very instruc- tive. This tractate seems to have been delivered subse- quently to 416, and therefore represents Augustine's later views. "Let no one tell you fables, then," he cries,12 "saying, 'Pontius wrought a miracle, and Donatus prayed and God answered him from heaven.' In the first place, either they are deceived or they deceive. In the last place, grant that he removes mountains: 'And have not charity,' says the Apostle, 'I am nothing.' Let us see whether he has charity. I would believe that he had, if he had not divided unity. For against those whom I may call marvel- workers, my God has put me on my guard, saying, ' In the last times there shall arise false prophets doing signs and wonders, to lead into error, if it were possible, even the
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elect. Lo, I have foretold it to you.' Therefore the Bride- groom has cautioned us, that we ought not to be deceived even by miracles." Similarly the heathen and Christian miracles are pitted against one another, and decision be- tween them sought on grounds lying outside the miracles themselves. "Which, then, can more readily be believed to work miracles ? They who wish themselves to be reck- oned gods by those on whom they work miracles, or those whose sole object in working any miracles is to induce faith in God, or in Christ also as God? . . . Let us therefore believe those who both speak the truth and work mir- acles." 13 It is not the empirical fact which counts — there were all too many empirical facts to count — but the truth lying behind the empirical fact.14
What now are we to think of these miracles which Au- gustine and his fellows narrate to us in such superabun- dance ?