distinguished Romish ecclesiastics of France, whose death has just been announced. In these masterly letters the writer es- tablishes two points, as he says truly beyond the possibility of rational denial. The first is, that the popes have erred when speaking " ex cathedra," and therefore are not infallible ; and the second, that the claims of Papal infallibility have been sus- tained by the most bare-faced and persistent forgeries and frauds. Both of these points are proved specially in the case of Pope Honorius. Yet, sad to say, this eminent man, not long before his death, submitted to the decree of the Vatican Council by which the infallibility of the Pope was made an article of faith. He said he " erased " all he had written against that doctrine.1
2. During the first hundred years after the death of the Apos- tles we hear little or nothing of the working of miracles by the early Christians. On this point Bishop Douglass says, " If we except the testimonies of Papias and Irenaeus, who speak of raising the dead, .... I can find no instances of miracles men- tioned by the fathers before the fourth century, as what were performed by Christians in their times, but the cures of diseases, particularly the cures of demoniacs, by exorcising them ; which last, indeed, seems to be their favourite standing miracle, and the only one which I find (after having turned over their writings carefully and with a view to this point) : they challenged their adversaries to come and see them perform."2 The fathers of the fourth century freely speak of the age of miracles as past ; that such interpositions, being no longer necessary, were no longer to be expected. Thus Chrysostom. says : "Ne itaque ex eo, quod nunc signa non fiunt, argumentum ducas tunc etiam non fuisse. Etenim tunc utiliter fiebant, et nunc utiliter non fiunt." 3 And Augustine says : " Cur, inquiunt, nunc ilia miracula, quse pras- dicatis facta esse, non fiunt ? Possem quidem dicere, necessaria fuisse priusquam crederet mundus, ad hoc ut crederet mundus."4
1 It is perfectly intelligible that a man who admits the infallibility of general councils, may be able to subject his strongest personal convictions to the judgment of the Church. But no less than three oecumenical councils and twenty Popes had pronounced Honorius a heretic. How could the council of the Vatican reverse those decisions ? Besides, Gratry and his Gallican and German coadjutors denied that the late council was either oecumenical or free. Father Hyacinth wrote to Gratry on his recantation, and said to him, " You speak of erasing what you have written, but how can you erase the facts which you have demon- strated, or the convictions you have produced in the minds of the faithful ? "
* Criterion, or, the Rules by which the True Miracles recorded in the New Testament are distinguished from the Spurious Miracles of Pagans and Papists. 4th edit. Oxford, 1832, pp. 228-232. The author was Dean of Windsor, Bishop of Carlisle, and afterwards of Salisbury.
« In Epistolam i. ad Corinthios, Homilia, vi. 2; Works, edit. Montfaucon, Paris, 1837, vol. x. p. 53, a.
< De Civitatt Dei, xxn. viii. li Works., edit. Benedictines, Paris, 1838, vol. vii. p. 1057, d.
454 PART III. Ch. XIX. — THE LAW.
However these declarations may be reconciled with the fact that these fathers, themselves, give accounts of what passed for mir- acles in their day, they at least show that in their view there was such a difference between the Scriptural and ecclesiastical miracles that they did not belong to the same category. Al- though these miracles were unfrequent in the early ages of the Church, yet they rapidly increased in number until they became matters of every day's occurrence.
3. They admit of being classified on different principles. As to their nature, some are grave and important ; others are tri- fling, childish, and even babyish ; others are indecorous ; and others are irreverent and even blasphemous. Professor Newman, one of the richest prizes gained by the Romanists from the Church of England in this generation, is candid enough to admit the con- trast between the Scriptural and what he calls ecclesiastical mir- acles. Of the former, he says,1 " The miracles of Scripture are, as a whole, grave, simple, and majestic : those of ecclesiastical his- tory often partake of what may not unfitly be called a romantic character, and of that wildness and inequality which enters into the notion of romance." He says,2 " It is obvious to apply what has been said to the case of the miracles of the Church, as com- pared with those in Scripture. Scripture is to us a garden of Eden, and its creations are beautiful as well as ' very good,' but when we pass from the Apostolic to the following ages, it is as if we left the choicest valleys of the earth, the quietest and most har- monious scenery, and the most cultivated soil, for the luxuriant wildernesses of Africa or Asia, the natural home or kingdom of
1 Two Essays on Scripture Miracles and on Ecclesiastical. By John Henry Newman, formerly Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, 2d edit. London, 1870, p. 116. These Essays, it should be stated, were first published before Dr. Newman entered the Church of Rome. The former was written in 1825-26, and the latter in 1842-43. He was reconciled to Rome in 1845. In the second edition of the united essays published in 1870, he endorses them anew with slight qualification. His words are (p. viii.), "These distinct views of miraculous agency, thus contrasted, involve no inconsistency with each other; but it must be owned that, in the essay upon the Scripture miracles, the author goes beyond both the needs and the claims of his argument, when, in order to show their special dignity and beauty, he depreciates the purpose and value of the miracles of Church history. To meet this undue disparagement in his first essay, of facts which have their definite place in the divine dispensation, he points out in his second the essential resemblance which exists be- tween many of the miracles of Scripture and those of the later times ; and it is with the same drift that, in this edition, a few remarks at the foot of the page have been added in brackets. ' ' This qualification was hardly necessary, as the fourth chapter of the second essay contains the most ingenious defence of ecclesiastical miracles anywhere to be found. It is generally understood that Prof. Newman was in heart a Romanist some years before his secession from the Church of England. Of this his famous Tract Number 90 of the Oxford series, is a sufficient proof.
* Ibid p. 150.