and difficult to avoid: but still that to the humble and diligent mind God will always give sufficient means of avoiding it. What those means are, we can never pronounce à priori. And since none can say that superhuman beings may not interfere in the concerns of mankind, without God's express and special commission; and particularly since we are taught to believe that, for the purpose of moral trial or temptation, they do interfere, and interfere habitually; it is impossible to affirm that they may not have power to try us by the exercise and display of some superhuman authority, nor is it possible to affirm that even under such a temptation God may not enable us to escape or to bear it.

Hence it clearly follows, that even the evidence of miracles can be affirmed to be decisive only under certain conditions: and, clearly, these conditions can be only those stated before; namely, the consistency of the doctrine for which they are alleged with the light of reason and nature, or of course with other doctrines previously known and admitted; and also that the authority be allowed to pass unrefuted by any superior, or at least equal, authority.

SECTION III.

OF THE QUESTION WHETHER THE PERFORMANCE OF A MIRACLE CONFERS ON THE AGENT A LASTING SUBSEQUENT AUTHORITY OR WHETHER IT BE NECESSARY THAT THE ACT OF POWER PERFORMED, AND THE DOCTRINE WHICH MAY BE DECLARED ON THE CREDIT OF IT, BE CONNECTED BY SOME MORE PARTICULAR COPULA.

In the preceding Sections it is, I believe, sufficiently proved, both that a miracle cannot safely be defined as any thing more than an act above human power; and also that consequently we may require certain conditions to prove it conclusive of a divine authority. But a question arises, also, whether even these conditions are enough to hinder us from being possibly deceived. Granting these conditions, yet, if a mere man work a miracle once, and perhaps once only in his life, can we be certain that this miracle confers its authority on every doctrine which he may promulgate in the whole course of it? It is commonly supposed' that this can

a Fleetwood on Miracles, p. 117-119, ed. of 1702. And Farmer, p. 330-334.

not be; and that unless we connect the doctrine and the attestation together, by conditioning that the doctrine must be declared first, and the power confirmatory of it evidenced afterwards, and evidenced as its direct attestation or proof, we cannot allow the miracle to be proof of the doctrine; that without this caution we cannot be assured that the power exerted may not have been given for one purpose, and the authority, which that power confers, abused to another purpose by human fraud or error. Thus it is said that God's impenetrable wisdom may have, and, it is commonly supposed, has, sometimes communicated the possession of supernatural powers to persons who may in their general characters be very undeserving of credit, may have so communicated them with a particular view to some single object or end; and that it does not follow that because those persons were entrusted, for one particular purpose, with an authority which it is impossible to dispute, they must therefore be entitled to plead the sanction of that authority on all occasions on which they may be willing to claim it. But if they declare their doctrine first, and then exert their power in confirmation of it, thus connecting the doc

trine and its attestation together, the authority of the doctrine will thus be evidently established, together with the evidence of the attestation itself.

To this I answer, that though in the miracles of Scripture much of this cumulative proof may be found, much of this immediate connexion between the doctrine and its direct attestation, and though undoubtedly a copula thus immediate and particular may be, and is, of great importance in evidencing the real nature of the act performed, and in excluding all possibility of imposture; yet I do not see on what principle it can become necessary to substantiate a claim of superhuman authority. If a man, of whose chemical or mechanical knowledge I may have had proof at a time remote from the present, should now come and tell me that such or such facts are true, in the science of chemistry, or of mechanics, which he professes, I have still that evidence for crediting what he says, which I derive from my knowledge of his former skill. So, if a person whom I know to have formerly possessed a large portion of the confidence of

a See Ch. I. of the following Treatise.

my friend, if such a person tells me, even after the lapse of many years, of any passage of my friend's history, concerning which he may have had sufficient means of information, I, in the actual knowledge which I possess that they were at one time in habits of intercourse, have ground for crediting him, although I may not possess any evidence of there having existed any recent communication between them. And so, also, equally, if I am taught a revelation by a person whom I have known to exert at any time a power clearly superhuman. That power must still confer on him some authority. The credit due at all times to any person who has shown at any time clear proof of such power, and who now appeals to that proof as to his authority, cannot but be greater than that which, cæteris paribus, is due to a person who has never shown any such proof. He stands at all events in a very peculiar situation, a situation which gives him peculiar authority; and it does not appear that we can reject that authority, unless some specific cause be assigned why we may or ought to distrust it.

The only argument which can be alleged against this statement rests, I believe, solely on