§ 88. MIRACLES OF THE NICENE AGE. 4CS
Oiitwai'd pomp, and make a stronger appeal to oar faciilt}' of belief. Many of the monkish miracles are not so much supernatural and above reason, as they are w^matural and againd reason, attributing even to wild beasts of the desert, panthers and liyenas, with wdiich the misanthropic hermits lived on confidential terms, moral feelings and states, repentance and conversion,' of which no trace appears in the I^ew Testament.'
2. They serve not to confirm the Christian faith in general, but for the most part to support the ascetic life, the magical virtue of the sacrament, the veneration of saints and relics, and other superstitious practices, which are evidently of later origin, and ai-e more or less offensive to the healthy evangelical mind.'
3. The further they are removed from the apostolic age^ the more numerons they are, and in the fourth century alone there are more miracles than in all the three preceding centuries together, while the reason for them, as against the power of the heathen world, was less.
4. The church fathers, with all the worthiness of their character in other respects, confessedly lacked a highly cultivated sense of truth, and allowed a certain justification of falsehood ad majorem Dei glorlam, or fravs pia^ under the misnomer of policy or accommodation ; ^ with the solitary excep-
' Comp. the examples quoted in § 34, p. 177 f.
' The speaking serpent in Paradise (Gen. iii.), and the speaking ass of Balaam (Num. xxii. 22-33; comp. 2 Pet. ii. 16), can hardly be cited as analogies, since in those cases the irrational beast is merely the organ of a moral power foreign to him.
' Is. Taylor, 1. c. vol. ii. p. 235, says of the miracles of the Nicene age : " These alleged miracles were, almost in every instance, wrought expressly in support of those very practices and opinions which stand forward as the points of contrast, distinguishing Romanism from Protestantism . . . the supernatural properties of the eucharistic elements, the invocation of saints, or direct praying to them, and the efficacy of their relics ; and the reverence or worship due to certain visible and palpable religious symbols." Historical questions, however, should be investigated and decided with all possible freedom from confessional prejudices.
* So especially Jerome, Epist. ad Pammachium (Lib. apologeticus pro libris contra Jovinianum, Ep. xlviii. c. 12, ed. Vallarsi, tom. i. 222, or Ep. xxx. in the Benedictine ed.) : " Plura esse genera dicendi : et inter cetera, aliud esse yvuvaariKois scribere, ahud SuyixaTiKis. In priori vagam esse disputationem ; et adversario respondentem, nunc hsec nunc ilia proponere, argumentari ut libet, aliud loqui, aliud agere, panom, ut dicitur, ostendere, lapid(;m tenere. lu sequenti autera aperta frons et ut
464 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
tion of Augustine, who, in advance of his age, rightly ccndemued fiUsehood in every form.
5. Several church fathers, like Augustine, Martin of Tours, and Gregory I., themselves concede that in their time extensive frauds with tlie relics of saints were already practised ; and this is confirmed by the fact tliat there were not rarely numerous copies of the same relics, all of wliich claimed to be genuine.
6. The Nicene miracles met with doubt and contradiction even among contemporaries, and Sulpitius Severns makes the important admission that the miracles of St. Martin w'ere better known and more firmly Ijelieved in foreign countries than in his own.'
7. Church fathers, like Chrysostom and Augustine, contra diet themselves in a measure, in sometimes paying homage to the prevailing faith in miracles, especially in their discourses on the festivals of the martyrs, and in soberer moments, and in the calm exposition of the Scriptures, maintaining that miracles, at least in the Biblical sense, had long since ceased.''
ita (iicam, ingenuitas necessaria est. Allud est quaer^re, aliud defiiiire. In altero pugnandura, iu altero docendum est." He then appeals to the Greek and Roman ria.ssies, the ancient fathers in their polemical writings, and even St. Paul in his arguments from tlie Old Testament. Of interest in this connection is his controversy with Augustine on the conduct of Paul toward Peter, Gal. ii. 11, which Jerome would attribiite to mere policy or accommodation. Even Chrysostom utters loose principles on the duty of veracity (De sacerdot. i. 5), and his pupil Cassian still more, appealing to the example of Rahab (Coll. xvii. 8, 17, etc.). Comp. Gieseler, i_ ii. p. 307 (§ 102, note 17). The corrupt principle that "the end sanctifies the means," is much older than Jesuitism, which is commonly made responsible for it. Christianity had at that time not yet wholly overcome the spirit of falsehood in ancient heathenism.
' Dialog, i. 18.
" This argument is prominently employed by James Craigie Robertson (moderate Anglican): History of tlic Christian Church to Gregory the (Jreat, Lond. 1854, p. 334. "On the subject of miracles," says he, ''there is a remarkable inconsistency in the statements of writers belonging to the end of the fourth and beginning of the fifth centuries. St. Chrysostom speaks of it as a notorious and long-settled fact that miracles had ceased (v. Newman, in Floury, vol. i. p. xxxir.). Yet at that very time St. Martin, St. Ambrose, and the monks of Egypt and the East are said to have beoji in full thaumaturgical activity ; and Sozomen (viii. 5) iclLs a story of a change of the eucharistic bread into a stone as having happened at Constantiuople, while Chry- BOBtcm Inmself was bLshop. So again, St. Augustine says that miracles such af