grave subjects, and we cannot suspect him before him to be named, than we may presume of any leaning towards the burlesque; at once to decide that certain alleged miracles nevertheless, his theory of Ecclesiastical in the Church are not really such, because they are unlike those to which our eyes have miracles is nothing other than a caricature been accustomed, in Scripture. There is far of the argument from analogy. It is Bishop greater difference between the appearance of Butler travestied. We present the sub-of a horse or an eagle, and a monkey, or a stance of it to our readers in his own words :

:

"To take for instance, the case of animal nature, let us consider the effect produced upon the mind on seeing, for the first time, the many tribes of the animal world, as we find them brought together for the purposes of science or exhibition in our own country. We are accustomed, indeed, to see wild beasts more or less, from our youth, or at least to read of them; but even with this partial preparation, many persons will be moved in a very singular way on going for the first time, or after some interval, to a menagerie."-P. 47.

lion and a mouse, as they meet our eye, than between the most august of the Divine manifestations in Scripture, and the meanest and most fanciful of those legends which we are accustomed without further examination to cast aside."-Pp. 48, 49.

It must be acknowledged that Mr. Newman's vein is not happy, in striving to do honor to the miracles of Rome and the early ages. He allows that many of them were false, and many of doubtful authority; and those which are, or may be true, he characterizes as rude and brutelike in nature, uncouth, aimless, ludicrous, or deformed. Reserving the question of the truth or falsehood of the miracles, the epithets, by which he describes them, are at once apposite, and admirably chosen. A Tractarian theory is the very counterpart of the legendary labyrinth: those who lose themselves perish; and for all that enter, the only possible fortunate issue is to return, after much waste of time and labor,

"First, the endless number of wild animals, their independence of man and uselessness to him; then their exhaustless variety; then their strangeness in shape, color, size, motions, and countenance; not to enlarge on the still more mysterious phenomena of their natural pro. pensities and passions; all these things throng upon us, and are in danger of overpowering us, tempting us to view the Physical Cause of all as disconnected from the Moral, and that, from the impression borne in upon us, that nothing we see in this vast assemblage is religious, in our sense of the word religious. We see full to the place from which they set out at first; evidence there of an Author-of power, wis- and Mr. Newman is true to his school. dom, goodness; but not of a Principle or Agent correlative to our idea of religion. But without pushing this remark to an extreme point, or dwelling on it further than our present purpose requires, let two qualities of the works of nature be observed before leaving the subject, which (whatever explanation is to be given of them, and certainly some explanation is not beyond even our limited powers) are at first sight very perplexing. One is that principle of deformity, whether hideousness or mere homeliness, which exists in the animal world; and the other (if the word may be used with due soberness) is the ludicrous;-that is, judging of things, as we are here judging of them, by their impression upon our minds.

"An inquirer, then," says he, p. 104, "should not enter upon the subject of the miracles reported or alledged in ecclesiastical history, without being prepared for fiction and exagge This cannot be insisted on too often: nothing ration in the narrative, to an indefinite extent. but the gift of inspiration could have hindered it. Nay, he must not expect that more than a few can be exhibited with evidence of so cogent and complete a character as to demand his acceptance."

Yet why should not an honest man be able to tell the truth, although he laid no claim to inspiration? If the Fathers were "It is obvious to apply what has been said holy and honest men, they inay reasonably to the case of the miracles of the Church, as be expected to narrate facts, which they compared with those in Scripture. Scripture profess in many cases to have seen with is to us a garden of Eden, and its creations are their own eyes, without any very considerbeautiful as well as 'very good but when we able amount of lying. Here, however, and pass from the Apostolic to the following ages, it is as if we left the choicest valleys of the here only, in Mr. Newman's opinion, the earth, the quietest and most harmonious Scripture appears to have a considerable adscenery, and the most cultivated soil, for the vantage: for it is an authentic document; luxuriant wildernesses of Africa or Asia, the while the Church unfortunately has never natural home or kingdom of brute nature, un-catalogued her miracles, and hence, such influenced by man. Or rather, it is a great in- of them as are known to be true, afford justice to the times of the Church, to represent the contrast as so vast a one; and Adam only an indefinite presumption in favor of might much more justly have been startled at the various forms of life which were brought

the others.

The next step is to prove, as well as he

66

'can, (pp. 106-109,) that Leslie's tests can mischievous nature; for it is distinctly and only be applied to a very few of the Mosaic emphatically announced, at the commencemiracles, and not at all to those of the New ment of Tract 85, as a kill or cure reTestament; that Paley proves but the bare medy." fact of the Resurrection; that Lyttleton, Douglas, and others, fail in most instances in making out their case, and that Douglas especially (p. 109) leads us to infer, that the whole of the New Testament miracles lie under the suspicion of falsehood. Nay, as there are men who object to the Ecclesiastical Miracles as fanciful, trifling, extravagant, or evidently false, he meets such arguments thus :

It may reasonably be asked, were it possible to drag down Scripture to the level of the Fathers, and to show that it contained contradictions, errors, and untruths,where would be the gain to the Tractarians? Their answer is, that if we have faith in the Church, though our religion were "as unsafe as the sea," yet He "who could make St. Peter walk the waves, could make even a corrupt or defective Creed, truth to us." -Tract 85, p. 85. Not now for the first "As they are used to serve the purpose of time has Christ been "wounded in the those who would disparage saints, it is neces-house of his friends." sary to show that they can be turned by unbelievers as plausibly, but as sophistically, against apostles."-P. 90.

When the Priests

publicans and sinners pressing into the kingdom of God before them, they hated and spoke against the teaching of Jesus ever the more bitterly, as it went forth, with increasing clearness, the opposite and the antagonist of their own.

and Pharisees of old, in spite of Levitical succession, and asceticism, and traditional lore, saw fishermen and peasants chosen and We will not outrage the feelings, and in-approved as ministers of the gospel, and sult the good sense of our readers, by following Mr. Newman in this disgraceful attempt. The Tractarians teach that the Canon and the Creed, the Bible and the doctrines of Christianity, have no other proof, no other foundation, than the voice of the fourth and fifth centuries; "they know no other, they require no other." They teach that, "If the Fathers contra dict each other in words, so do passages of Scripture contradict each other," (Tract 85, p. 80); that a certain miracle of our Lord's would, if met with any where else, be spoken of " as an evident fiction," (p. 92); that His interpretation of "I am the God of Abraham," would "startle and of fend reasoning men," (p. 110); that were we not used to read many of the Scripture narratives, we should scoff at them, (p. 88); that the prophets gathered certain of their doctrines from Babylon, others from the heathen; and that, if we reject the authority of the Fathers, because we find contradictions, absurdities, and falsehoods in their writings, (as is 'most undeniably the case,) we are bound, on the very same grounds, to reject the authority of the Scriptures. In like manner is continued for 115 pages, a deliberate, laborious, and systematic attempt to undermine and depreciate the inspired Word of God, to barb the arrows of the infidel, to collect every accusation, to insinuate every topic, which tends to shake our confidence in Scripture; and all this for what? merely that men may be driven elsewhere for a systen which is not to be found in it. Nor is the attempt made in ignorance of its dangerous and

But leaving these men, and their unhappy and chaotic theories, where falsehood cannot be separated from truth, and superstition and infidelity struggle for the mastery, there remains still, in all its perplexity, the unresolved problem of Ecclesiastical Miracles. As a preliminary to further inquiry, we unhesitatingly reject from the list every miracle said to have been wrought by pretended saints, heretics, or demons, and every narrative found in anonymous, obscure, or apocryphal works; in short, all which the Church of Rome scruples or declines to receive. Still further, we shall consider only such miracles as are vouched for by the very chief of the Fathers in acknowledged genuine treatises, or by the authority of a General Council, or by the authentic acts of saints canonized by the Church of Rome, and inserted in her Breviary. Few perhaps are aware of the extreme severity of the Romish ordeal. The following account of it is taken from " Milner's End of Controversy," p. 253, as published at Derby in 1843.

"In the first place, then, a juridical examination of each reported miracle must be made and the depositions of the several witnesses in the place where it is said to have happened, must be given upon oath; this examination is generally repeated two or three different times at intervals. In the next place, the examiners

-P. 253.

at Rome are unquestionably men of character, tracing upwards their distinguishing doctalents, and learning, who, nevertheless, are trines, and their distinguishing miracles, not permitted to pronounce upon any cure or not to the Apostolic age, but to the church other effect in nature, till they have received a regular report of physicians and naturalists of Ambrose and Augustine, of Chrysostom Then, indeed, she had upon it. So far from being precipitate, it em- and Athanasius. ploys them whole years to come to a decision princely bishops, and magnificent basilics, on a few cases, respecting each saint; this is and gold and silver vessels, and precious printed and handed about among indifferent shrines, and gorgeous ceremonies, and the persons, previously to its being laid before the power and the will to trample her enemies Pope. In short, so strict is the examination, under her feet. Her prelates held their that, according to an Italian proverb, It is next own with emperors; the deserts of Egypt to a miracle to get a miracle proved at Rome. It is reported, by F. Daubenton, that an Eng- swarmed with her monks; every shrine lish Protestant gentleman, meeting, in that had its miracles; and her virgins were in city, with a printed process of forty miracles, the first freshness of their glory. Yet there which had been laid before the Congregation appears to be no sufficient reason, why we of Rites, to which the examination of them should seek for the primitive type of Chrisbelonged, was so well satisfied with the res- tianity in an age four hundred years distant pective proofs of them as to express a wish from the time of its Founder. About four that Rome would never allow of any miracles but such as were as strongly proved as these hundred years ago, Bedford and Talbot appeared to be, when, to his great surprise, he were warring with La Hire and Dunois, was informed that every one of these had been and Joan of Arc was judicially murdered rejected by Rome as not sufficiently proved." by the sentence of a French bishop, confirmed by the University of Paris, at the command of the English. Four hundred years ago, Constantinople was a Christian capital, the Cape of Good Hope was not discovered, and the Council of Basle was propounding to the Church the immaculate conception of the Virgin. Four hundred years ago, a Roman Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury denounced the translation of the Bible as "pernicious," and the Roman Catholic Church of England was engaged in condemning the Lollards. Little enough do we know of the spirit or religion of the men of England in those days, when the war of the Roses was preparing. But if we interpose four hundred years of greater darkness, as were the first four centuries of the Christian era, when printing was unknown, and civil wars, continual revolutions, and barbarian swarms swept away almost every trace of literature, how is it possible, not to prove, but even to suppose, that the Church of Christ and his Apostles could be identical, or alike with the Church of Ambrose and Chrysostom?

To these classes, no doubt, Mr. Newman refers, when he speaks of the miracles which are "known to be such," and which lend their sanction to innumerable others, made use of, but not catalogued, in the Romish Church. That, then, which has for evidence whatever is wisest and holiest among the Fathers, or the authority of the General Council, or the searching scrutiny of the Congregation of Rites, sanctioned by the Breviary, with the "imprimatur" of the Council of Trent and the Popes, may safely be looked upon as an authentic specimen of an ecclesiastical miracle. "That Palladius," says Mr. Newman," has put in writing a report of an hyena's asking pardon of a solitary for killing a sheep, and of a female turned by magic into a mare, will appear no reason, except to vexed and heated minds, for accusing the holy Ambrose of imposture, or the keen, practised, and experienced intellect of Augustine, of abject credulity."

We shall, therefore, in illustrating the Nevertheless, though the Patristic Church nature of the ecclesiastical miracles, select, did, in verity, so differ from the Apostolic, not from Palladius and Theodoret, or Vi- as to form, in Mr. Newman's estimation, centius Belluacensis and Jacobus de Vo-" a new dispensation," there is, on that acragine, but from Ambrose and Augustine, count, but the more reason to listen paJerome and Chrysostom, Gregory of Nissa tiently to the miracles which she has to aland Sulpicius Severus, Gregory the Great ledge. Waiving all abstract arguments, it and St. Bernard, the Second Council of is her right to require credence for every Nice, and the Breviary of the Church of miracle which she can satisfactorily subRome. stantiate; while on the other hand, if she Remarkable it is that Romanists and fails in proving the miracles, the doctrines Tractarians alike content themselves with or practices which she founds on them

cannot be sustained. Failure may even | Christian and an enemy to the gods, had dared have more serious consequences: for, "ly- to enter into their temples, so that miraculous ing miracles" and "doctrines of demons,' power was no longer put forth there, nor orathat is, of dead men, are distinguishing swered, that he had such confidence in Him cles emitted. But Gregory (undismayed) anmarks of the great apostacy. who fought for him, that he was able to drive out the demons, or to bring them in again, wherever and whenever it pleased him. (The priest, amazed, asked him for a proof.) Whereupon that great, one tearing off a small fragment from a book, and writing upon it his command to the demons, gave it to the priest: now, these were the words of the letter,GREGORY TO SATAN, ENTER! And the priest having laid this letter on the altar, on performing the customary rites, again saw what he had been accustomed to see, ere the demons had been driven from their temple."-Greg. Nyss. Opera. tom. iii., pp. 548, 549.

Theodorus, afterwards called Gregory, and surnamed "the Wonder Worker," was bishop of Neo Cæsarea, in Pontus, towards the middle of the third century. His life has been written by Gregory of Nyssa, who was the brother of Basil the Great, and whose reputation for learning and virtue gained for him the title of Father of the Fathers. His record of the miracles of his name-sake is corroborated by Basil and Jerome, is received as authentic by Mr. Newman, and is to be found in Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints, which was republished by authority, in 1836, as "an Historical Supplement to the Old and New Testaments."

Gregory Thaumaturgus wrought many wonderful works, and he has left behind two very wonderful writings, both of which deserve notice. The first is very short indeed it is a letter to the devil. The second is not very long it is a creed, which was dictated to him by the Apostle John and the Virgin Mary. The history of the first is gravely narrated by the Nyssene bishop, and as gravely repeated by Mr. Newman. We translate, slightly abridging, from the Paris edition of 1638.

From this miracle it appears to follow, that, in the eyes of the Fathers and of the Church of Rome, there is nothing iniquitous, or unworthy of a Christian bishop, in restoring devil worship, and giving power to Satan by oracles, and miracles, to lead captive and destroy human souls. It may be urged in extenuation, that the priest was afterwards converted. Unfortunately, however, this did not take place, until the bishop, at the priest's request, had inade a huge rock move from one place to another, as if it had been "a living creature." Then the priest acknowledged the incarnation of Christ, and was baptized, (p. 550).

The second production is not less re"As Gregory was returning from his soli-markable. On a very dark night, as Gretude to the city, being overtaken by evening, and a heavy shower of rain, he entered with gory lay awake in great distress of mind his attendants into a certain temple. Now about a sermon which he had to preach on this temple was famous, because in it there the Trinity, he was suddenly aware of a was a familiar intercourse between the de- venerable old man who stood by his bedmons who were worshipped and the attendant side. His mysterious visitor pointed with priests, oracular responses being uttered by his fingers in a certain direction, and Gre them. As soon as he had entered the temple with his followers, immediately he frightened beheld a third party added to their conferory, involuntarily glancing thitherwards, away the demons by the invocation of the name of Christ; and having purified, by the ence. It was a woman of more than husign of the cross, the air polluted with the man aspect and majesty. Light was dif fumes of sacrifices, he spent the whole night, fused around them, brighter than the splenas was his wont, sleepless, and engaged in dor of a torch. Nor was Gregory left in prayer and the singing of hymns. Early in doubt as to the names of his celestial visitthe morning he proceeded on his journey. ors. For the woman, addressing John by But when the priest was offering the customary morning worship to the demons, it is re-name, requested him to explain the mysteported, that the demons appearing to him, said that the place was inaccessible to them, on account of him who had remained in it during the night. The priest, therefore, (after fruilless endeavors to induce them to return,) full of rage and fury, hastening after that great one, as soon as he overtook him, broke out into the fiercest threats, of denouncing him to the magistrates, of laying violent hands upon him, of complaining to the emperor, that he, a

ry to the youth before them: and John answered, "that he was prepared in this matter to gratify the mother of the Lord." As soon as the Apostle had ended his explanation, the two vanished; and Gregory, immediately committing it to writing, has bequeathed this divinely inspired (divinitus datam) document to posterity. We subjoin

a literal translation:

"One God the Father of the living Word, tezan publicly asked him for money, which of subsisting essential wisdom and power, and she said he had promised her, he paid her of figure, or likeness (zaganos) eternal; the money, but the devil immediately enperfect, the begetter of the perfect; Father of tered into her. Finally, when a Jew prethe only begotten Son. One Lord, solus ex solo, God of God; the express form and image tended to be dead, and his companion asked of the Godhead, the efficacious Word, the for something to bury him in, Gregory threw Wisdom comprehensive of the constitution of his cloak over the supposed dead man, upon all things, and the Power which formed the removing which, he was found to be dead whole creation; the true Son of the true Fa indeed; and now, the catalogue of nearly ther; invisible of the invisible; incorruptible all the miracles particularly detailed by of the incorruptible; immortal of the immortal; and eternal of the eternal. And one Holy Nyssen is complete. On turning to the Spirit, having existence from God; who has Romish Breviary, it will be found that these been made manifest through the Son, namely miracles of Gregory Thaumaturgus form to men; the image of the Son, perfect of the the subject of the 4th, 5th, 7th, and 8th perfect; Life, the cause (of life) to the living; lessons for the 17th day of November; the the holy fountain, Holiness; the Leader (or drying up of the lake, the staff on the banks Minister) of sanctification; by whom is mani- of the Lycus, the removal of a rock, the fested God the Father, who is over all things, and in all things, and God the Son, who is through (permeates) all things; a perfect Trinity, in glory, eternity, and dominion, neither divided, nor differing (alienated) from

each other."-P. 546.

driving demons from the temple, being all particularly mentioned, and the others in cluded in a general affirmation of the many miracles which he performed. Such as it is, the narrative was gathered from tradition alone, was written one hundred and twenty years after the events, and need not detain us from passing on to the two following centuries.

The fourth and fifth centuries were em

Now, says Nyssen, may we not justly compare this with the tables of the law give en to Moses." Instead of the sensible Sinai, there was the height of desire for the truth; instead of the darkness that covered phatically the age of ecclesiastical miracles the mountain, there was a vision unseen by and "inventions." Irenæus, indeed, makes others; instead of tables of stone, a hu- mention of the "gift of tongues," and of man mind; instead of writing, the voice of men raised from the dead in his time: but his visitors." (P. 574.) The balance here his adoption, in all its absurdity, of the appearing to decline decidedly against Mo-legendary gossip of Papias, and the absence ses, the considerate bishop is willing to af- of all details as to name, date, and place, ford him another chance. Accordingly, he relates a story of two brothers disputing concerning their respective rights to a certain lake. Gregory decided the dispute by drying it up. Now, Moses divided the Red Sea, and Joshua, the river Jordan; but, as Nyssen observes, they merely parted the waters while the host was passing, whereas Gregory dried the lake up altogether. So much for the greatness of the miracle; and if the wisdom of the decision be considered, the celebrated judgment of Solomon, in the matter of the contending mothers, cannot for a moment be compared with it. Pp. 555, 557. Add to these, that, during a remarkable inundation of the river Lycus, he stuck his stick into the ground, at a point from which the river retired, and never rose so far again for a hundred years, and the stick became a tree: which, (Mr. Newman writes, p. 130,) "some may think approaches to fulfil Leslie's celebrated criterion of a miracle."* Again, when a cour

The following twin ecclesiastical miracle is consistent with our personal knowledge. After

prove nothing but his own credulity. Cyprian was no miracle-monger; and the few which he ventures to repeat, concerning the consecrated bread turned into cinders, and such like, are best left in obscurity. It is far otherwise when we come to men, who have ever been looked on as the lights of the Church, and who report what they profess to have seen with their own eyes. Supposing that these eminent men wrote in good faith and with due caution, much will be found in these narratives

the melting of the snow on the Himalaya range, many of the Indian rivers rise with alarming raago, one of the feeders of the Ganges threatened pidity, and subside as rapidly. Not many years to overtop its dams, and injure the surrounding crops. A Roman Catholic priest hastened to the point where the danger was greatest, and laid Blood; but the waters covered it. He then lifted down a consecrated medal in order to stop the the medal, and placed it somewhat farther back, and with the same result: but, on the third trial, he appeared to be successful; for the river rose no higher. Now, this very natural occurrence he always looked upon as a miracle. And why should it not be as good a miracle as Gregory's?