§ S7. W0R8U1P OF RELICS. DOGMA OF THE KESURRECTION. 453
lag of tlie blind man against the doubts of the Arians, aiid speaks of it as a universally acknowledged and undeniable fact : The healed man, Severus, is well known, and publicly testifies that he received his sight by the contact of the cover ing of the holy relics.
Jerome calls Vigilantius, for his ojjposition to the idolatrous veneration of ashes and bones, a wretched man, whose condition cannot be sufficiently pitied, a Samaritan and Jew, who considered the dead unclean ; but he protects himself against the charge of superstition. We honor the relics of the martyrs, says he, that we may adore the God of the martyrs; we honor the servants, in order thereby to honor the Master, who has said : " He that recciveth you, receiveth me." ' The saints are not dead ; for the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is not a God of the dead, but of the living. ISTeither are they enclosed in Abraham's bosom as in a prison till the day of judgment, but they follow the Lamb whithersoever he goetb.^
Augustine believed in the above-mentioned miraculous discovery of the bodies of Gervasius and Protasius, and the healing of the blind man by contact with them, because he himselt was then in Milan, in 386, at the time of his conversion,' and was an eye-witness, not indeed of the discovery of the bones— for this he nowhere says — but of the miracles, and of the great gtir among the people.''
He gave credit likewise to the many miraculous cures which the bones of the first martyr Stephen are said to have performed in various parts of Africa in his time.* These relics were discovered in 415, nearly four centuries after the stoning of Stephen, in an obscure hamlet near Jerusalem, through a vision of Gamaliel, by a priest of Lucian ; and some years afterward portions of them were transported to Uzali, not far
' Ep. cix. ad lliparium. * Adv. Vigil, c. 6.
' Cum illic — Mediolani — essemus.
* He speaks of this four times clearly and plainly, Confess, ix. 7 ; De Civit Del, ixii. 8 ; Serm. 286 in Natali MM, Protasii ct Gervasii; Retract, i. 13, § 7.
• Serm. 3! 7 and 318 de Martyr. Steph. Is. Taylor (1. c. ii. pp. 316-S50) ban thoroughly investigated the legend of the relics of the proto-martyr, and comes to the conchision that it likewise rests on pious frauda which Augustine honestly be iieved.
4:60 THIED PERIOD. A.B. 311-590.
from Utica, in North Africa, and to Spain and GauI, and everywhere caused the greatest ado in tlie superstitious populace.
But Augustine laments, on the other hand, the trade in real and fictitious relics, wliich was driven in his day,' and holds the miracles to be really superfluous, now that the world is converted to Christianity, so that he who still demands miracles, is himself a miracle.' Thougii he adds, that to that day miracles were performed in the name of Jesus by the sacraments or by the saints, but not with the same lustre, nor with the same significance and authority for the whole Christian world.* Thus he himself furnishes a warrant and an entering wedge for critical doubt in our estimate of those phenomena.*
§ 88. Observations on the Miracles of the Nicene Age.
Oomp. on the affirmative side especially John H. Newman (now R. C, then Romanizing Anglican): Essay on Miracles, in the 1st vol. of the English translation of Fleury's Ecclesiastical History, Oxford, 1842; on the negative, Isaac Tatloe (Independent) : Ancient Christianity, Lond. 4th ed. 1844. Vol. ii. pp. 233-365. Dr. Newman previously took
' De opera Monachorum, c. 28 : " Tam multos hypocritas sub habitu monachorum [hostis] usquequoque dispersit, circumeuutes provhicias, nusquam tnissos, nusquam fixos, nusquam stantes, nusquam sedentes. Alii membra raartyrum, si tameu martyrum, venditant." Augustine rejects the pretended miracles of the Donatists, and calls them wonderlings (mirabiliarii), who are either deceivers or deceived (In Joann. evang. tract. xiiL § 17).
' De Civit. Dei, xxii. c. 8 : " Cur, inquiunt, nunc ilia miracula, qua praedicatia facta esse, non fiuiit ? Possem quidem dicere, necessaria fuisse priusquam crederel mundus, ad hoc ut crederet mundus. Quisvis adhuc prodigia ut credat inquirit, magnum est ipse prodigium, qui mundo credente non credit." Comp. De util. cred. c. 25, § 47 ; c. 50, § 98 ; De vera relig. c. 25, g 47.
* Ibid.: "Nam etiam nunc fiunt miracula in ejus nomine, sive per sacramenia ejus, sive per orationes vel memorias sanctorum ejus ; sed non eadem claritate illustrantur, ut tanta quanta ilia gloria diflfamentur. . . . Nam plerumque etiam ibi [in the place where these miracles were wrought] pniiclssimi sciunt, ignorantibus caeteris, maxime si magna sit civitas ; et quando alibi aliisque narrantnr, non tanta ea commendal auctoriias, ut sine difficultate vel duhitatione crcdanhn; quaravis Christiaois fidelibuB a fidelibus indicentur." Then follows the account of the famous tniraculum Protasii et Oervaxii, and of several cures in Carthage and Hippo. Those in Hippo were wrought by the relics of St. Stephen, and formally confirmed.
* Comp. Fr. NiTzscn (jun.): Augustinus' Leli e vom Wunder, BerUii, 186B especially pp. 82-36. (A very full and satisfactory treatise.)