Chapter 5.--Why Miracles are Not Usual Works.
11. For since the divine power administers the whole spiritual and corporeal creature, the waters of the sea are summoned and poured out upon the face of the earth on certain days of every year. But when this was done at the prayer of the holy Elijah; because so continued and long a course of fair weather had gone before, that men were famished; and because at that very hour, in which the servant of God prayed, the air itself had not, by any moist aspect, put forth signs of the coming rain; the divine power was apparent in the great and rapid showers that followed, and by which that miracle was granted and dispensed. [371] In like manner, God works ordinarily through thunders and lightnings: but because these were wrought in an unusual manner on Mount Sinai, and those sounds were not uttered with a confused noise, but so that it appeared by most sure proofs that certain intimations were given by them, they were miracles. [372] Who draws up the sap through the root of the vine to the bunch of grapes, and makes the wine, except God; who, while man plants and waters, Himself giveth the increase? [373] But when, at the command of the Lord, the water was turned into wine with an extraordinary quickness, the divine power was made manifest, by the confession even of the foolish. [374] Who ordinarily clothes the trees with leaves and flowers except God? Yet, when the rod of Aaron the priest blossomed, the Godhead in some way conversed with doubting humanity. [375] Again, the earthy matter certainly serves in common to the production and formation both of all kinds of wood and of the flesh of all animals: and who makes these things, but He who said, Let the earth bring them forth; [376] and who governs and guides by the same word of His, those things which He has created? Yet, when He changed the same matter out of the rod of Moses into the flesh of a serpent, immediately and quickly, that change, which was unusual, although of a thing which was changeable, was a miracle. [377] But who is it that gives life to every living thing at its birth, unless He who gave life to that serpent also for the moment, as there was need. [378]
[371] 1 Kings xviii. 45
[372] Ex. xix. 6
[373] 1 Cor. iii. 7
[374] John ii. 9
[375] Num. xvii. 8
[376] Gen. i. 24
[377] Ex. iv. 3
[378] [One chief reason why a miracle is incredible for the skeptic, is the difficulty of working it. If the miracle were easy of execution for man--who for the skeptic is the measure of power--his disbelief of it would disappear. In reference to this objection, Augustin calls attention to the fact, that so far as difficulty of performance is concerned, the products of nature are as impossible to man as supernatural products. Aaron could no more have made an almond rod blossom and fructuate on an almond tree, than off it. That a miracle is difficult to be wrought is, consequently, no good reason for disbelieving its reality.--W.G.T.S.]
Chapter 6.--Diversity Alone Makes a Miracle.
And who is it that restored to the corpses their proper souls when the dead rose again, [379] unless He who gives life to the flesh in the mother's womb, in order that they may come into being who yet are to die? But when such things happen in a continuous kind of river of ever-flowing succession, passing from the hidden to the visible, and from the visible to the hidden, by a regular and beaten track, then they are called natural; when, for the admonition of men, they are thrust in by an unusual changeableness, then they are called miracles.
[379] Ezek. xxxvii. 1-10
Chapter 7.--Great Miracles Wrought by Magic Arts.
12. I see here what may occur to a weak judgment, namely, why such miracles are wrought also by magic arts; for the wise men of Pharaoh likewise made serpents, and did other like things. Yet it is still more a matter of wonder, how it was that the power of those magicians, which was able to make serpents, when it came to very small flies, failed altogether. For the lice, by which third plague the proud people of Egypt were smitten, are very short-lived little flies; yet there certainly the magicians failed, saying, "This is the finger of God." [380] And hence it is given us to understand that not even those angels and powers of the air that transgressed, who have been thrust down into that lowest darkness, as into a peculiar prison, from their habitation in that lofty ethereal purity, through whom magic arts have whatever power they have, can do anything except by power given from above. Now that power is given either to deceive the deceitful, as it was given against the Egyptians, and against the magicians also themselves, in order that in the seducing of those spirits they might seem admirable by whom they were wrought, but to be condemned by the truth of God; or for the admonishing of the faithful, lest they should desire to do anything of the kind as though it were a great thing, for which reason they have been handed down to us also by the authority of Scripture; or lastly, for the exercising, proving, and manifesting of the patience of the righteous. For it was not by any small power of visible miracles that Job lost all that he had, and both his children and his bodily health itself. [381]
[380] Ex. vii. and viii
[381] Job i. and ii