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 judge, by the miracles of Scrip- ture. . . . The miracles of Scripture are, on the whole, grave, simple, majestic ; those of ecclesiastical history often partake of what may be called a romantic character, and of that wildness and inequality which enters into the no- tion of romance. The miracles of Scripture are undeniably beyond nature; those of ecclesiastical history are often scarcely more than extraordinary accidents or coincidences, or events which seem to betray exaggerations or errors in the statement." In a word,46 "Scripture is to us a Garden of Eden, and its creations are beautiful as well as 'very good ' ; but when we pass from the Apostolical to the fol- lowing ages, it is as if we left the choicest valleys of the earth, the quietest and most harmonious scenery, and the most cultivated soil, for the luxuriant wilderness of Africa or Asia, the natural home or kingdom of brute nature, unin- fluenced by man." Newman labors to show that this is only a general contrast; that there are some miracles in Scripture which, taken by themselves, would find their place in the lower class; and some in ecclesiastical history which rise to the higher class; and in later life he would somewhat modify his statement of the contrast. But the admission that the contrast exists is unavoidable; some measure of recognition of it runs, as we have seen, through the literature of all the Christian ages, and it is big with significance.
I have frequently quoted in the course of this lecture Newman's essay on TJie Miracles of Ecclesiastical History compared with those of Scripture, as regards tlieir nature, credibility and evidence. Indeed, I have purposely drawn a good deal of my material from it. Perhaps I owe you
NEWMAN ON MIRACLES 55
some account of this book, which is, perhaps, an even more famous book than Middleton's, formerly described to you. Newman had written in 1825-6 a paper on The Miracles of Scripture, compared with those reported elsewhere, as regards their nature, credibility, and evidence. That was in his Prot- estant days, and in this paper he takes sufficiently strong ground against the genuineness of ecclesiastical miracles. Then came the Oxford movement of which he was the leader; and afterward his drift Romeward. As this drift was reaching its issue in his passing into the Roman church — in 1842-3 — he wrote the subtle plea for the genuineness of ecclesiastical miracles with which we are now concerned, primarily as a preface for a translation of a portion of Fleury's Ecclesiastical History}1 How well pleased he, as a Catholic, was with his performance is evidenced by his republication of the two papers together, without substan- tial alteration, in repeated editions after his perversion.
The essay now claiming our attention is probably the most specious plea for the credibility and reality of the whole mass of ecclesiastical miracles ever penned. I say the whole mass, although Newman, with great apparent candor, admits that there is to be found among them every variety of miracle, of every degree of intrinsic credibility or incredibility, and supported by every degree of evidence or no-evidence. For, after he has, under the cover of this candor, concentrated attention upon what seem to him the particular miracles most deserving to be true, and supported by the most direct and weighty evidence, he subtly suggests that, on their basis, many more in themselves doubtful or distasteful may be allowed, that insufficiency of proof is not the same as disproof, and that very many things must be admitted by us to be very likely true for the truth of which we have no evidence at all — inasmuch as we must distinguish sharply between the fact and the proof of the fact, and must be prepared to admit that failure of the latter does not carry with it the rejection of the former.
56 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES