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LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 Received 7 8^3 / , tBt^ . 
 
 ^ Accessions No. Q Q HO Shelf No. 
 
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MEMORIAL OF THE PROTESTANT MARTYRS: RIDLEY, LATIMER, 
 
 AND CRANMER; ADJOINING THE NORTH END OP 
 
 MAGDALEN PARISH CHURCH YARD, OXFORD. 
 
/ / C'4^-y/i^ 
 
 
 A NEW EDITION 
 
 OF 
 
 A FREE INQUIRY 
 
 INTO 
 
 THE MIRACULOUS POWERS 
 
 WHICH ARE SCPPOSED TO HAVE SUBSISTED I\ 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN CHUECH, 
 
 FROM THE EARLIEST AGES THROUGH SEVERAL SUCCESSIVE 
 CENTURIES, UPON THE AUTHORITY OF 
 
 CJe primititje J^atfirr^* 
 
 BY 
 
 CONYERS MIDDLETON, D.D. Cambridge, 
 
 uthor of the celebrated Life of Cicero, of a most important Letter frxj." 
 Rome, and of other searching investigations, who published this Work in 1749, 
 / and died 1750. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 J. AND W. BOONE, 29, NEW BOND STREET, 
 
 AND ALL BOOKSELLERS. 
 
 OCTOBER 10th, 1844. 
 Price ^s. or 9s. per doz.'\ 
 
<?■ 
 
 ?7 
 
 n^ 
 
 Extract from the Works of the excellent Chillingvjorthy 
 who was horn 1602 and died 1644, cet. 42. 
 
 "The Bible, I say, the Bible, is the religion of Protestants. 
 I, for my part, after a long, and (as I believe and hope) impartial 
 search after the true way to eternal happiness, do profess plainly 
 that I cannot find any rest for the sole of my foot but upon this 
 rock only. I see plainly, and with my own eyes, that there are 
 Popes against Popes, and Councils against Councils ; some Fa- 
 thers against other Fathers; the same Fathers against themselves; 
 a consent of Fathers of one age against a consent of Fathers of 
 another age ; traditive interpretations of Scripture are pretended, 
 but there are few or none to be found. No tradition but that of 
 Scripture can derive itself from the fountain, but may be plainly 
 proved either to have been brought in in such an age of Christ, 
 or that in such an age it was not in. In a word, there is no suf- 
 ficient certainty but of Scripture, for any considering man to build 
 upon. This, therefore, and this only, I have reason to believe. 
 This I will profess, according to this I will live ; and for this, if 
 there be occasion, I will not only willingly, but gladly lose my 
 life, though I should be sorry that Christians should take it 
 from me.'' 
 
 This quotation is taken from sorne Letters against Calvinism, Ro- 
 vianism, and the Athanasian Creed (page 37 J: to ichich is added a 
 Letter to the Bishop of London, demjing the exercise of any Miraculous 
 Powers in the Administration of the Sacraments. Third Edition. 
 Boone, Bond Street. Price 6d. each, or 3s. per doz. 
 
L/1 
 
 AN INQUIRY 
 INTO THE SUPPOSED ]MIRACULOUS POWERS 
 
 OF 
 
 THE PRBIITIVE FATHERS. 
 
 I NOW precede^ according to my promise^ to a more 
 precise and accurate discussion of the argument of 
 the Introductory Discourse, -and to open all the par- 
 ticular proofs^ which induced me finally to embrace 
 it^ with that freedom and impartiality which becomes 
 every ingenuous and disinterested inquirer after 
 truth : and, that I may lay the whole question 
 before the reader in the clearest hght, I propose 
 to observe the following method. 
 
 I. To draw out, in their proper order, all the prin- 
 cipal testimonies, which relate to the miraculous 
 gifts of the church, as they are found in the writings 
 of the fathers, from the earliest ages, after the days 
 of the Apostles. Whence we shall see, at one view, 
 the whole evidence, by which they have hitherto 
 been supported. 
 
 II. To throw together all, which those fathers 
 also have delivered, concerning the condition of the 
 persons who are said to have been indued with those 
 
 In the opinion of the editor, the times seem to call for this 
 edition of Dr. Middleton's work. The Introductory Discourse 
 and the many notes of this able and learned writer have been 
 omitted in order to offer a comprehensive view of the subject 
 adapted more especially to readers in general. 
 
4 
 
 giftSj and to have wrought the miracles, to which 
 they appeal. 
 
 III. To illustrate the particular characters and 
 opinions of the fathers who attest those miracles^ 
 so as to inable us to determine with more exactness 
 what degree of credit may be due to their testimony. 
 
 IV. To review all the several kinds of miracles 
 which are pretended to have been wrought, and to 
 observe from the nature of each how far the credi- 
 bility of them may reasonably be suspected. 
 
 V. To refute some of the most plausible objec- 
 tions which have hitherto been made by my anta- 
 gonists, or which the prejudices and prepossessions 
 of many pious Christians may be apt to suggest to 
 the general turn of my argument. 
 
 I. In collecting all the facts and testimonies, which 
 relate to the present argument, from the earliest 
 antiquity, after the days of the Apostles, our first 
 thoughts are carried of course to the Apostolic Fa- 
 thers, that is, to those, who had lived and conversed 
 with the Apostles, and who, by their special appoint- 
 ment, were ordained to succeed them in the govern- 
 ment of the Church. For as there are several of this 
 character, whose writings still remain to us, St. 
 Barnabas, St. Clemens, St. Ignatius, St. Polycaiy, 
 St. Hennas, so it is natural to expect, that, in these 
 valued remains, the history of the miraculous gifts, 
 which are so much celebrated by tlie writers of the 
 New Testament, should be carried on still in the 
 same manner by these their immediate successors, 
 through the next generation. For if any such gifts 
 
5 
 
 had been actually subsisting in tlieir days, it is highly 
 probable, that men of their eminent zeal and piety, 
 who had seen the wonderful eftects of them, under 
 the management of the Apostles, and must themselves 
 have possessed a large share of them, woald have 
 made some appeal or reference to them, in their cir- 
 cular epistles to the Churches, as their predecessors 
 had done, for the honor of the Gospel, and the credit 
 of their own ministry. But instead of this, it is 
 remarkable, that there is not the least claim or pre- 
 tension, in all their several pieces, to any of those 
 extraordinary gifts, which are the subject of this 
 inquiry ; nor to any standing power of working 
 miracles, as residing still among them, for the con- 
 version of the heathen world. The whole purpose 
 of their writings is, to illustrate the excellence and 
 purity of the Christian doctrine ; and the whole 
 power of their ministry seems to have lain in the 
 innocent and amiable character of their lives, and in 
 the pious, charitable, and fervent strain of their 
 pastoral exhortations. 
 
 They speak indeed in general, of certain sjnritual 
 gifts, as abounding among the Christians of that 
 age : yet these cannot reasonably be interpreted to 
 mean anything more than the ordinary gifts and 
 graces of the Gospel, faithj hope, and charity ; the 
 love of God and of man ; which they all recommend 
 in the warmest terms, and appear to have possessed 
 in the highest degree. Archbishop Wake however, 
 who has translated their works into English, says, 
 that in all probability, they loere itidued loith the ex- 
 traordinary gifts of the Holy Spirit, and that there 
 
are sufficient indications of it in their writings : 
 " which he endeavours to confirm, not bj^ any facts 
 or express testimonies, drawn from themselves, but 
 by inferences onely or conjectures, grounded on a 
 supposed frequency of th6se indowments in that age, 
 and the communication of them, as he says, to 
 much lesser and worser men ; on the sanctity of their 
 lives, and the greatness of the stations, to which 
 they w^ere called by the Apostles ; and on the ac- 
 counts of them, transmitted to us by their Succes- 
 sors : from all which he concludes, that they were 
 not onely instructed by persons inspired, but were 
 themselves also in some measure inspired too, or 
 indued with the extraordinary gifts of the Holy 
 Ghost/^ But whatever gifts of this sort there may 
 be supposed to have possessed, it is certain at least, 
 as the same translator of their works takes occasion 
 to inculcate, that their endowments were far inferior, 
 both in their kind and degree, to those of their pre- 
 decessors, the Apostles. 
 
 But the learned Mr. Dodwell, a writer of a more 
 sanguin complexion, peremptorily declares, from 
 the mere title or address of St. Ignafms^s Epistle to 
 the Church of Smyrna, that miracles subsisted in 
 great abundance in those days, because that Church 
 is there stiled, blessed with every good gift and want- 
 ing in no good gift. Yet these words, as they are 
 explaned by the context, manifestly signify nothing 
 more than the ordinary gifts of the Gospel, faith 
 and charity, for the whole passage runs thus : To 
 the Church of God the Father, and of the beloved 
 Jesus Christ, ivhich God hath mercifully blessed loith 
 
every good gift, being filled luith faith and charity 
 so as to be wanting in no good gift. In another 
 Epistle likewise of St. Ignatius to the Romans, 
 written on his journey towards Rome, whither he 
 was going to suffer martyrdom^ there are these 
 words : "I am willing to die for God^ unless you 
 liinder me. I beseech you that you show not an 
 unseasonable goodwill towards me ; suffer me to be 
 food for the wild beasts, by whom I shall attain 
 unto God ; for I am the wheat of God and shall be 
 ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may 
 be found the pure bread of Christ/^ &c. From 
 which words the same learned person again infers, 
 that the prayers of the primitive Christians had the 
 power to disable the ivild beasts from assaidting tlie 
 martyrs, ivho were exposed to them in the amphi- 
 theatres. Yet the passage itself has not the least 
 reference to prayers, or to anything miraculous, but 
 to the ordinary endeavours and intercession of the 
 Christian brethren at Rome, who offered to use 
 their interest to preserve him from that cruel death 
 which he was then going to suffer ; to which sense 
 it is expressly restrained in the relation of his mar- 
 tyrdom, written by those who accompanied him in 
 this very journey, and were present at his death, by 
 whom we are told : " That the brethren who came 
 out to meet him on his approach to that city, and 
 were zealous for his safety, undertook to appease the 
 people, so that when he came to be exposed to the 
 wild beasts in the amphitheatre they should not desire 
 his destruction ; but the Saint over-ruled, and com- 
 manded them to be quiet." And to the same sense 
 
8 
 
 also Dr. Cave has interpreted it in his Life of this 
 Saint. " The Christians at Rome,^' says he, " came 
 out to meet and entertain him ; and when some of 
 them did but intimate that possibly the people might 
 be taken off from desiring his death, he expressed a 
 pious indignation, intreating them to cast no rubs 
 in his way that might hinder him, now he was has- 
 tening to his crown/^ 
 
 And in truth, all the other expressions of these 
 fathers, which are commonly understood to signify 
 the extraordinary gifts of the Holy Ghost, may be 
 interpreted more rationally and more agreeably to 
 the general turn of their writings, to denote onely 
 the ordinary graces of the Gospel, faith, and charity; 
 which they constantly extoll, as superior to all other 
 perfections ; as things ivonderfull and admirable ; and 
 tlie peculiar gifts of God : nay in some places, they 
 seem even to disclame all gifts of a more extraor- 
 dinary kind. Thus Folijcarp, in his Epistle to the 
 Philippians, says, ^' These things, my brethren, I 
 took not the liberty to write to you of myself, con- 
 cerning righteousness, but you before encouraged 
 me to it. For neither I, nor any other such as I 
 am, can come up to the wisdom of the blessed and 
 renowned Paul. And in the same Epistle he de- 
 clares, that it was not granted to him, to practise 
 that, which is written in the Scripture; be angry 
 and sin not, and let not the sun go dovm upon your 
 wrath.'' St. Ignatius also, in his Epistle to the 
 Ephesians, says : " These things I prescribe to you, 
 not as if I were somebody extraordinary, for tlio' 
 I am bound for his -name I am not yet perfect in 
 
Jesus Christ, but now I begiu to learu, and speak 
 to you as to fellow disciples. For I ought to have 
 been stirred up by you in faith^ in admonition," &c. 
 This same Saint indeed, in one or two of his 
 Epistles, seems to intimate that the knowledge of 
 certain events had been communicated to him by 
 the Spirit. Thus in his Epistle to the Phil add- 
 phians, speaking of the earnest exhortations which 
 he had given them to unity and submission to their 
 bishops, priests, and deacons, he says : '' Some peo- 
 ple suspected that I was acquainted beforehand with 
 the di\dsions among you ; but he is my witness, 
 for whom I am bound, that I did not know it from 
 any human flesh, but the Spirit declared it, speaking 
 thus, do nothing without your bishop,'' &c. From 
 which Dr. Wake takes occasion to infer, that he loas 
 indued with a large portion of the extraordinary gifts 
 of the Holy Ghost : yet I do not find that any other 
 commentator has ventured to build anything mira- 
 culous or supernatural upon it. 
 
 It is related likewise of Polycarp, in the ancient 
 narrative of his martyrdom, '' how in the time of 
 that persecution, in which his life was particularly 
 sought for by the heathen magistrates, he withdrew 
 himself from Smyrna, by the ad\dce of his friends, 
 into a little village, where he spent his days and 
 nights in prayer, with a few who accompanied him ; 
 and as he was praying, a vision was offered to him, 
 three days before he was taken, in which he saw his 
 pillow on fire : whereupon, turning presently to his 
 companions, he said prophetically, I must certainly 
 be burnt alive." The same narrative calls him. 
 
 a3 
 
10 
 
 also a prophetic teacher; and declares^ that every 
 word which he uttered had either been fidfilled, or 
 ivould be fulfilled. Whence some later writers have 
 affirmed, that he was indued with a spirit of pro- 
 phesy, and fortold everything that was to happen 
 to him. But the foresight of his death, and the 
 manner of it, in the time of a cruel persecution, 
 when his person was particularly hunted from vil- 
 lage to village, as the principal and destined sacri- 
 fice, may reasonably be considered as the effect of 
 common prudence, without recurring to anything 
 miraculous. 
 
 Here then we have an interval of about half a 
 century, the earliest and purest of all Christian 
 antiquity after the days of the Apostles, in which 
 we find not the least reference to any standing 
 power of working miracles, as exerted openly in 
 the church for the conviction of unbelievers; but, 
 on the contrary, the strongest reason to presume 
 that the extraordinary gifts of the apostolic age 
 were by this time actually withdrawn ; and the Gos- 
 pel left to make it^s vvay by it^s own strength, and 
 the authority of those credentials and original 
 miracles with which Christ had furnished it, as an 
 effectual security of its success and triumphs over 
 the powers of the earth. Yet before we take leave 
 of these apostolic fathers it may be proper to ob- 
 serve, for the prevention of unnecessary cavils, that 
 if from the passages referred to above, or from any 
 other which may be found in them, it should appear 
 probable to any that they were favoured on some 
 occasions with extraordinary illuminations, visions, or 
 
11 
 
 divine impressions, I shall not dispute that point witli 
 them, but remind them only that the gifts of that 
 sort were merely personal, granted for their par- 
 ticular comfort, and reaching no farther than to 
 themselves, and do not therefore in any manner 
 affect or relate to the qusestion now before us. 
 
 But if the apostolic writers have left us in the 
 dark with regard to our present argument, their 
 successors it must be owned, as far as their authority 
 reaches, have cleared it from all obscurity by their 
 strong, explicit, and repeated attestations of many 
 extraordinary gifts and miraculous powers which 
 were constantly and publicly exerted in the Chris- 
 tian Church through each succeeding age. 
 
 Justin Martyr, who is supposed to have written 
 his first Apology within fifty years after the days of 
 the Apostles, says, " There are prophetical gifts 
 among us at this day, and both men and women 
 indued Avith extraordinary powers by the Spirit of 
 God. And he frequently appeals, to what every 
 one might see with his own eves, in everj^ part -of 
 the world, and particularly in Rome, in the case of 
 persons possessed with devils j who were cured and 
 set free, and the devils themselves bafiled and driven 
 away by the Christians, adjuring or exorcising them 
 in the name of Jesus, when all other exorcists and 
 enchanters had tried in vain to help them." 
 
 IrencEUS, who was contemporary with Justin, but 
 wrote somewhat later, and lived much longer, af- 
 firms, "That all who were truly disciples of Jesus, 
 receiving grace from him, wrought miracles in his 
 name, for the good of mankind, according to the 
 
12 
 
 gift, which each man had received : some cast out 
 devils, so that those from whom they were ejected, 
 often turned believers, and continued in the Church : 
 others had the knowledge of future events, visions, 
 and prophetical sayings : others healed the sick by 
 tlie imposition of hands : that even the dead had 
 been raised, and lived afterwards many years among 
 them : that it was impossible to reckon up all the 
 mighty w^orks, which the Church performed every 
 day, to the benefit of nations ; neither deceiving, nor 
 making a gain of any, but freely bestowing, what 
 it had freely received/^ And as to the particular 
 miracle of raising the deadj he declares it ^^ to have 
 been frequently performed on necessary occasions ; 
 w^hen by great fasting, and the joint supplication of 
 the Church of that place, the spirit of the dead per- 
 son returned into him, and the man was given back 
 to the prayers of the saints." And again, ^' we hear 
 many, says he, in the Church indued with prophetic 
 gifts; speaking with all kind of tongues; laying 
 open the secrets of men for the public good ; and 
 expounding the mysteries of God. 
 
 Theopldlus, Bishop of Antioch, who lived in the 
 same age with Irenceus, speaking of the evil and seduc- 
 ing spirits, which used to inspire the poets and 
 prophets of the heathen world, says, ^' the truth of 
 this is manifestly shewn ; because those, who are 
 possessed by such spirits, are sometimes exorcised 
 even at this day by us, in the name of the true God ; 
 when these seducing spirits confess themselves to be 
 the same diTemons, who had before inspired the hea- 
 then poets. 
 
13 
 
 TertuUian, who florislied towards the end of the 
 second^ and died in the beginning of the third cen- 
 tnry, challenges the heathen magistrates, "to call 
 before their tribunals, any person possessed with a 
 devil; and if the evil spirit, when exorcised by any 
 Christian whatsoever, did not own himself to be a; 
 devil, as truly, as in other places, he would falsely 
 call himself a God, not daring to tell a lie to a 
 Christian, that then they should take the life of that 
 Christian : and what is more manifest, adds he, than 
 this operation; what more convincing than this 
 proof?'' In another place ^^ there is a sister,^' " says 
 he, among us, indued with the gifts of revelations, 
 which she suffers in the Church, during the time of 
 divine service, by an ecstasy in the spirit : she con- 
 verses with Angels, and sometimes also with the 
 Lord : sees and hears mysteries : and knows the 
 hearts of some, and prescribes medicines to those, 
 who want them/' 
 
 Minucms FeliXj who is supposed to have written 
 in the beginning of the third century, addressing 
 himself to his heathen friend, in his Dialogue, called 
 Octavius, says ; " the greatest part of you know, 
 what confessions the daemons make concernina; them- 
 selves, as oft as they are expelled by us out of the 
 bodies of men, by the torture of our words, and the 
 fire of our speech. Saturn himself, and SerapiSj and 
 Jupiter, and the rest of them, w^hom you worship, 
 constrained by the pain, which they feel, confess 
 what they are : nor in this, do they tell us a he, 
 tho' it be to their own shame, especially when some 
 of your people are present. Believe them therefore 
 
14 
 
 to be dsemonSj from their own testimonj^ and true 
 confession. For being adjured by the true and onely 
 God^ they unwiRingly and wretchedly betray their 
 uneasiness in the bodies of men ; and either fly out 
 instantly^ or vanish gradually, in proportion as the 
 faith of the patient, or the grace of the agent assists 
 towards the cure/^ 
 
 Origen^ who lived at the same time with Minucius, 
 tho' something younger, declares ; " that there re- 
 mained still among the Christians of his days, the 
 manifest indications of that Holy Spirit, whicli was 
 seen in the shape of a dove. For they drive away 
 devils, says he ; perform many cures ; foresee things 
 to come ; according to the will of the divine word : 
 and tho' Celsus and the Jew, who is introduced by 
 him, will make a jest of what I am going to say, I 
 will say it nevertheless ; that many people, as it were 
 against their wills, have been brought over to Chris- 
 tianity, by the Spirit giving a sudden turn to their 
 minds, and offering visions to them either by day or 
 by night ; so that instead of hating the word, they 
 became ready even to lay down their lives for it. I 
 have seen many examples of this sort ; and should I 
 onely set down such of them as were transacted in 
 my presence, I should expose myself to the loud 
 laughter of the unbelievers, who imagine that we, 
 like the rest whom they suspect of forging such 
 things, are imposing our forgeries also upon them : 
 but God is my witness, that my sole purpose is, to 
 recommend the religion of Jesus, not by fictitious 
 tales, but by clear and evident facts. ^■' 
 
 In another place, he says ; " that miracles ])cgan 
 
15 
 
 with the preaching of Jesus, were multiplied after 
 his ascension^ and then again decreased ; but that, 
 even in his days, some remains of them continued 
 with a few, whose souls were cleansed by the word, 
 and a life conformable to it." Again; ''Some," 
 says he, in proof of a miraculous power received 
 through faith in Christ, " heal the sick, by invoking 
 the name of God over them, and of Jesus, with a 
 recital of some story of his life. I myself have 
 seen many so healed in difficult cases ; loss of senses, 
 madness, and innumerable other evils, which neither 
 men nor devils could cure." Again, speaking of 
 devils ; " We are so far," says he, " from worship- 
 ping them, that by prayers and the rehearsal of some 
 passages of the sacred writ, we drive them before us, 
 out of men and places, and also out of beasts ; for 
 they sometimes attempt to do mischief also to these." 
 Then as to the method of performing this miracle, 
 " It was not," he says, " by any curious, magical, 
 or inchanting arts, but by prayer alone, and certain 
 plain adjurations or exorcisms, which any simple 
 Christian might perform : for even common and illi- 
 terate lavmen Avere generally the actors in this case." 
 In which no man was more eminent than one of his 
 own disciples, Gregory, called the Woncler-ivorker, 
 who cast out devils, not only by word of mouth, but 
 even by a message, or mandatory letter to them ; as 
 the ecclesiastical writers have recorded of him. 
 
 Ojjyrian, the scholar of Tertiillian, who wrote 
 about the middle of the third century, speaking of 
 prophetic visions, which was the peculiar gift of that 
 age, says ; " Besides the \-isions of the night, even 
 
16 
 
 boys among us are filled with the Holy Ghost, and 
 in fits of ecstacy, see, hear, and speak things, by 
 which the Lord thinks fit to instruct us/' And de- 
 scribing all the various pranks of the devils, " They 
 insinuate themselves,^' says he, " into the bodies of 
 men, raise terrors in the mind, distortions in the 
 limbs, break the constitution, and bring on dis- 
 eases; — 3^et adjured by us in the name of the true 
 God, they presently yield, confess, and are forced to 
 quit the bodies which they possessed. You may see 
 them by our command, and the secret operation of 
 the divine power, lashed with scourges, scorched 
 with fire, tortured by an increase of pains ; howling, 
 groaning, begging; confessing whence they came, 
 and whither they go, even in the hearing of their 
 own worshippers : and they either fly out immedi- 
 ately, or vanish gradually, according to the faith of 
 the patient, or the grace of him who Avorks the 
 cure." In another place, treating again on the same 
 miracle, " It is performed," says he, ^' at this day, 
 so that the devil is lashed and burned and tortured 
 by the exorcists, with human words, but a divine 
 power : and when he promises to go out, and to dis- 
 miss the men of God, he often deceives, and by the 
 same lie of obstinacy and fraud, does what PltaroaJt 
 had done before, till he is oppressed by the salutary 
 water of baptism." 
 
 ArnobiuSj who is supposed to have published his 
 book against the Gentiles, in the year of Christ 303, 
 tells us, " that Christ used to appear sometimes in 
 those days to just and holy men, not in vain dreams, 
 but in his pure and simple form ; and that tlie men- 
 
17 
 
 tion of his name put the evil spirits to flight ; struck 
 their prophets dumb; deprived the Southsayers of 
 the power of answering ; and frustrated the acts of 
 arrogant Magicians ; not by the terror or hatred of 
 his name, as the Heathens pretended, but by the 
 efficacy of his superior power/^ 
 
 Ladantius, the disciple of Arnobius, who florished 
 and wrote about the same time, speaking of those 
 daemons or evil spirits, says ; " that being adjured by 
 the Christians in the name of God, they retire out of 
 the bodies of men ; and being lashed by their words 
 as by scourges, confess themselves to be daemons j 
 and even tell their names; the same which are 
 adored in the temples ; and this even in the presence 
 of their worshippers ; yet casting no reproach on re- 
 ligion, but on their own honor, because it is not in 
 their power to lie either to God, in whose name they 
 are adjured, or to the just, by w^hose voice they are 
 tortured : wherefore after many bowlings, they fre- 
 quently cry out that they are scourged and burned, 
 and are going out instantty." 
 
 These are the principal testimonies which assert 
 the miraculous gifts of the Primitive Church, through 
 the three first centuries : which might be supported 
 still by many more of the same kind, and from the 
 same as well as different writers, if it were necessary. 
 But these are sufficient for our purpose : and the 
 warmest admirers of those ages will not scruple, I 
 dare say, to risk the fate of the cause upon the 
 merit of them : for if these cannot command belief, 
 the credit of the miracles in question must sink at 
 once ; since Christian antiquity can furnish no other 
 
18 
 
 evidence in their favor half so strong and authentic 
 as this. 
 
 I shall close this first article with a remark or two, 
 which it seems naturally to suggest. It has abeady 
 been observed, that the silence of all the Apostolic 
 writers on the subject of these gifts, must dispose us 
 to conclude that in those days they were actually 
 withdrawn. And if this conclusion be thought to 
 have any weight in it, then surely the pretended re- 
 vival of them, after a cessation of forty or fifty years, 
 and the confident attestation of them made by all 
 the succeding Fathers, cannot fail of infusing a suspi- 
 cion of some fiction in the case. For if they did really 
 cease for so long an interval, and at a time when the 
 Christian cause seemed to want them the most, as 
 being then deprived of it^s first and ablest cham- 
 pions, — the Apostles ; we cannot conceive any reason 
 why they should afterwards be revived, when the 
 Church, without any such help, had been gathering 
 more and more strength all that while, by its own 
 natural force. But it is remarkable, that as the 
 Church continued to increase in power and credit, so 
 it's miraculous gifts are said to have increased also 
 in the same proportion : for tho' by an increase of 
 power it certainly stood less in need of true miracles, 
 yet by the same power it became more able to re- 
 ward, and more like therefore to excite false preten- 
 sions to them. 
 
 Again, the difference which every one may per- 
 ceive between the miraculous gifts of the Apostolic 
 days, and these of the following ages, not onely in 
 the nature, but in the manner also of exerting them, 
 
19 
 
 will greatly confirm tlie suspicion just intimated. 
 The Apostles wrought their miracles on special occa- 
 sions, when they felt themselves prompted to it by a 
 divine impulse ; but at other times were destitute of 
 that power ; as it is evident from many facts and in- 
 stances recorded in the New Testament. Agreeably 
 to which, tho^ they appeal sometimes, in confirma- 
 tion of their mission, to the miraculous works which 
 their Master had inabled them to perform ; yet we 
 never find them calling out upon the magistrates 
 and people to come and see the mighty wonders 
 which they were ready to exhibit before their eyes, 
 on all occasions, at any warning, and in all places, 
 whenever thev thought fit. AVhereas this confident 
 and ostentatious manner of proclaming their extra- 
 ordinary powers, carries with it an air of quackery 
 and imposture, as it was practised by the primitive 
 wonder-workers ; who, in the affair especially of cast- 
 ing out devils, challenge all the world to come and 
 see with what a superiority of power they could 
 chastise and drive those evil spirits out of the bodies 
 of men, when no other Conjurors, Inchanters, or 
 Exorcists, either among the Jews or the Gentiles, 
 had been able to eject them. 
 
 II. Under this head, I shall briefly lay before the 
 reader all such notices as I have been able to draw 
 from any of the primitive writers, concerning the 
 persons who were indued with these extraordinary 
 gifts, and wrought the several miracles to which they 
 appeal. 
 
 Now whenever we think or speak with reverence 
 
 ^ 
 
20 
 
 of those primitive times, it is with regard always to 
 these very Fathers, whose testimonies I have been 
 collecting; who have left behind them, in their 
 writings, the genuin specimens of their sanctity and 
 abilities. Venerable saints, and eminent lights of the 
 best and purest ages, as Dr, Waterland calls them, and 
 of admirable indowments, ordinary and extraordinary. 
 And they were indeed the chief persons and cham- 
 pions of the Christian cause in those days ; the Pas- 
 tors, Bishops, and Martyrs of the Primitive Church. 
 Yet none of these Venerable Saints have any w^here 
 affirmed, that either they themselves, or the Apos- 
 tolic Fathers before them, were indued wdth any 
 power of working miracles, but declare only in ge- 
 neral, " that such powers were actually subsisting in 
 their days, and openly exerted in the Church ; that 
 they had often seen the wonderful effects of them ; 
 and that every body else might see the same when- 
 ever they pleased/^ But as to the persons who 
 wrought them, they leave us strangely in the dark ; 
 for instead of specifying their names, conditions, or 
 characters, their general stile is, " such and such 
 works are done among us, or by us ; by our people ; 
 by a few ; by many ; by our Exorcists ; by ignorant 
 laymen, women, boys, and any simple Christian 
 whatsoever :^^ but in the particular case of casting out 
 devils, Origen expressly says, that it toas performed 
 generally by layinen. Agreeably to which Mr. Whiston 
 declares, "that this gift, which he ranks amongst the 
 greatest of miracles, was wholly appropriated by our 
 Saviour to the meaner sort of Christians, with an 
 exclusion even of the clergy ; so that, after the days 
 
21 
 
 of tlie Apostles^ none of the sacred order ever pre- 
 tended to it/^ 
 
 But of what condition soever the actors were, it is 
 certain that in the performance of their miracles 
 they were always charged with fraud and imposture 
 by their adversaries. Lucian tells us, that whenever 
 any crafty Juggler, expert in his trade, and who knew 
 hoiv to make a right use of things, went over to the 
 Christians, he ivas sure to grow rich immediately, by 
 making a prey of their simplicity. And Celsus repre- 
 sents all the Christian wonder-workers as mere vaga- 
 bonds and common cheats, " who rambled about to 
 play their tricks at fairs and markets; not in the 
 circles of the wiser and better sort, for among such 
 they never ventured to appear ; but wherever they 
 observed a set of raw young fellows, slaves, or fools, 
 there they took care to intrude themselves and to 
 display all their arts." Ccecilius also calls them a 
 lurking nation; shunning the light; mute in public ; 
 prating in corners. 
 
 The same charge was constantly urged against 
 them by all the other enemies of the Christian 
 Faith, Julian, Porphyry, &c. ; of whom Dr. Water- 
 land however has taken occasion to declare, that they 
 had some regard to truth in what they said, and to 
 public report, and to their oivn characters. But as 
 this seems to have been an hasty and inconsiderate 
 concession, made to serve a particular point which 
 he was then urging, that the ancient infidels were 
 better men than the moderns, so I shall lay no stress 
 upon it, but observe onely on the whole, that from 
 these short hints and characters of the primitive 
 
22 
 
 wonder-workers_, as given by both friends and ene- 
 mies^ we may fairly conclude^ that the celebrated 
 gifts of those ages were generally engrossed and ex- 
 ercised by private Christians^ chiefly of the layety ; 
 who used to travel about from city to city, to assist 
 the ordinary Pastors of the Church and Preachers 
 of the Gospel in the conversion of the Pagans, by 
 the extraordinary gifts with which they were sup- 
 posed to be indued by the Spirit of God, and the 
 miraculous works which they pretended to perform. 
 
 And here again we see a dispensation of things 
 ascribed to God, quite different from that which we 
 meet with in the New Testament. For in those 
 days the power of working miracles was committed 
 to none but the Apostles, and to a few of the most 
 eminent of the other disciples, who were particularly 
 commissioned to propagate the Gospel, and preside 
 in the Church of Christ. But upon the pretended 
 revival of the same powers in the following ages, we 
 find the administration of them committed, not to 
 those who were instructed with the government oi 
 the Church ; not to the successors of the Apostles, 
 to the Bishops, the Martyrs, or the principal cham- 
 pions of the Christian cause ; but to boys, to women, 
 and above all, to "private and obscure laymen, not 
 onely of an inferior, but sometimes also of a bad 
 character. But if those venerable Saints and Mar- 
 tyrs were not indued with them when living, they 
 had amends made to them when dead, if w'e can 
 believe the reports of their successors, hj a profusion 
 of them on their bones and reliques : which suggests 
 a farther cause of suspecting the faith and judgement 
 
23 
 
 of those early ages. For how can we think it credi- 
 ble, that God should withhold his distinguishing 
 favors from his faithful servants when living, to be- 
 stow them on their rotten bones ? or employ his ex- 
 traordinar}" power to no other use, but to pei'petuate 
 a manifest imposture in his Church ? since it is to 
 those ancient tales, so gravely attested, of miracles 
 wrought by the bones of Saints and May^tyrs, that 
 the Church of Rome owes all that trade, which she 
 still draws from the same fund and treasure of her 
 wonder-working reliques : and if we can believe such 
 stories, as they are delivered to us by the primitive 
 writers, we cannot condemn a practice which is evi- 
 dently grounded upon them. 
 
 These things, I say, are so strange, as to give just 
 reason to suspect, that there was some original fraud 
 in the case; and that those strolling wonder-workers, 
 by a dexterity of juggling, which art, not Heaven, 
 had taught them, imposed upon the credulity of the 
 pious Fathers, whose strong prejudices and ardent 
 zeal for the interest of Christianity, would dispose 
 them to embrace, without examination, whatever 
 seemed to promote so good a cause. That this was 
 really the case in some instances, is certain and no- 
 torious ; and that it was so in all, will appear still 
 more probable when we have considered, in the next 
 place, the particular characters of the several Fathers 
 on whose testimony the credit of those wonderfull 
 narratives depends. 
 
 III. The authority of a writer who affirms any 
 qusestionable fact, must depend on the character of 
 
24 
 
 his veracity and of his judgement. As far as we are 
 assured of the one, so far are we assured that -he 
 does not willingly deceive us; and from our good 
 opinion of the other, we persuade ourselves that he 
 was not deceived himself: but in proportion as there 
 is reason to doubt of either, there will always be 
 reason to doubt of the truth of what he delivers. 
 Nay, in many cases, the want of judgement alone 
 has all the same effect as the want of veracity too, 
 towards invalidating the testimony of a witness : es- 
 pecially in cases of an extraordinary or miraculous 
 nature, where the weakness of men is the most liable 
 to be imposed upon ; and the more so, as it happens 
 to be joined to the greater piety and simplicity of 
 manners. Since this then is the sole rule of deter- 
 mining the measure of credit, which is due to a wit- 
 ness of any strange and qusestionable facts, I shall 
 apply it to the case before us, and examine what 
 proofs of a sound judgement and strict veracity are 
 to be found in the writings of those Fathers, who 
 attest the miraculous stories which we are now con- 
 sidering. 
 
 As to the Apostolic Fathers of whom I have 
 spoken above, since they have contributed but little 
 towards the illustration of the present qusestion, and 
 bear no direct testimony in it, or none at least but 
 what confirms the point which I am defending, there 
 is no reason to enter into the consideration of their 
 particular characters. Their works, as I have said, 
 are translated into English, so that every one may 
 judge of them for himself. They appear to have 
 been men of great piety, integrity, and simplicity ; 
 
25 
 
 and that is all, I tliink, whicli we need to declare of 
 them on this occasion. 
 
 Justin Martyr comes next, whose genius will best 
 be illustrated by some specimens of it, extracted 
 from his writings. We have seen above, that among 
 the indowments conferred in an extraordinary man- 
 ner on the primitive Christians, the gift of expound- 
 ing the Holy Scriptures, or the mysteries of God, was 
 reckoned one : and this, as Justin frequently affirms, 
 toas granted by the special grace of God to himself. 
 Let us inquire then what use he made of this divine 
 gift : and if ever he was really inlightened by it, we 
 might surely expect to find the effects of it there, 
 where he is discoursing on the mystery of the Cross ; 
 which he declares to be the greatest symbol of power 
 and dominion, and explanes in the following manner. 
 " Consider,'^ says he, " all the things in the world, 
 whether they could be administered, or have any 
 communication with each other, without this form 
 of the Cross. The sea could not be passed, unless 
 that trophy called the sail were preserved in the 
 ship : the earth could not be tilled "without it : for 
 neither diggers nor artificers could do their work but 
 by instruments of this shape. The form of man 
 differs in nothing else from other animals, but in the 
 erection of his body, and the extension of his arms, 
 and the projection of his nose from the forehead, 
 through which respiration is made, and which shews 
 nothing else but the figure of the cross : in which 
 sense also it is spoken of by the prophet ; Christ the 
 Lord is the breath before our face J' Upon this pas- 
 sage the very pious and learned Dr. Grabe makes 
 
 B 
 
26 
 
 tlie following remark, which I would recommend to 
 all the zealous admirers of these venerable saints and 
 2mrest ages : " that the holy Martyr must not be rashly 
 blamed, for an interpretation so farced and far fetched; 
 because it was the prevailing custom of that age to im- 
 port into the sacred text senses ivhich did not belong to 
 itr 
 
 Again : ^^ Hear/^ says Justin, " how Christ, after 
 he was crucified, fulfilled the symbol of the tree of 
 life in Paradise, and of all the other things which 
 were to happen afterwards to the righteous. For 
 Moses was sent with a rod to redeem his people : 
 with this rod he divided the sea ; brought water out 
 of the rock ; and with a piece of wood made the 
 bitter water sweet. Jacob also with sticks made his 
 uncle Laban's sheep bring forth such lambs as were 
 to be his own gain, &c.^^ And so he goes on, in this 
 way of allusion, to apply all the sticks and pieces of 
 wood in the Old Testament to the Cross of Christ : 
 and pursuing the same argument in another place, 
 where he is describing the fight of the Israelites with 
 Amalek, he says, " that Avhen the son of Nun, called 
 Jesus, led the people on to battel, Moses employed 
 himself in prayer, with his hands stretched out in 
 the form of a cross ; that as long as he continued in 
 that posture, Amalek was beaten ; but when he re- 
 mitted any thing of it, his own people suffered : and 
 that all this was owing to the power of the cross : 
 for the people did not conquer because Moses prayed, 
 but because while the name of Jesus was at the head 
 of the battle, Moses was exhibiting the figure of the 
 Cross. ^' It would be endless to run through all the 
 
27 
 
 interpretations of tlie same kind which are to be 
 found in this Father, since his works are but little 
 else than a wretched collection of them ; the pure 
 flights of an enthusiastic fancy and heated brain, 
 which no man in his sober senses could mistake for 
 di^ane revelations. Yet as absurd as they now ap- 
 pear to be, this pious Father insists that they were 
 all suggested to him from Heaven, and appeals to 
 the Jeivs themselves, against whom he was applying 
 them, whether they thought it j)ossible for him, to 
 acquire so perfect a knoivleclge of the Holy Scriptures, 
 if he had not received from the author of them, the 
 grace or gift to understand them. "What credit then 
 can be due to this Father, in the report of other 
 people^s gifts and inspirations, who was so grossly 
 deceived himself, or willing at least to deceive others, 
 in this confident attestation of his own ? Dr. Cave 
 tells us, that Justin was ivholly ignorant of the Hebreiv 
 tongue, which was the cause of his childish blunders 
 whenever he meddled with it. " Every one,^^ says 
 he, "who has dipped but ever so little into that 
 tongue, knows, that Satan in the Hebrew signifies 
 an adversary : but see the ridiculous interpretation 
 of Justin. He is called Satanas, says the Martyr ; 
 a name compounded agreeably to his nature, of 
 Sata, which signifies an Apostate, and Nas, a ser- 
 pent," &c. But for a farther illustration of his 
 character, I shall give an instance or two of the 
 doctrines, which he teaches as orthodox and Apos- 
 tolical, as well as of the facts, which he asserts as 
 certain and unqaistionable. 
 
 He declares, that all the Christians, who were in 
 
 B 2 
 
28 
 
 all points orthodox^ embraced and believed the doc- 
 trine of the millennium ; ^' that all the Saints should 
 be raised in the flesh, and reign with Christ in Jeru- 
 salem, enlarged and beautified in a wonderful man- 
 ner for their reception, in the enjoyment of all 
 sensual pleasures, for a thousand years before the 
 general resurrection/^ Which doctrine he deduces 
 from the testimony of the Prophets and of St. John 
 the Apostle, and was followed in it by the Fathers of 
 the second and third centuries : yet the doctrine 
 itself was afterwards exploded, as it well deserved, 
 not onely as absurd and monstrous, but as impious 
 and heretical. St. Jerom treats it as a mere fable, 
 or dream of the Jcavs, and Judaizing Christians. Yet 
 from the authority of those Fathers who asserted it, 
 and the credit which it had obtained with the gene- 
 rality of Christians, he foresaw, as he tells us, what 
 a furious storm he should raise against himself by that 
 freedom. The sure fate of all those, who in any age 
 of the Church, from the earliest times down to the 
 present, have had the virtue and courage to attack 
 any popular error, or reigning superstition. 
 ' He asserts another doctrine full as monstrous ; 
 " that God having created the world, committed the 
 care of it to Angels, who transgressing their duty, 
 fell in love with women, and begot children on them, 
 whom we call Daemons ; who subdued mankind to 
 their power, partly by magical writings, partly by 
 terrors, and punishments, and partly by the insti- 
 tution of sacrifices, fumes, and libations, of w^hich 
 they began presently to stand in need, after they 
 had enslaved themselves to their lusts and pas- 
 
29 
 
 sions/^ &c. And in another place, "the truth/^ 
 says he, " shall come out ; that evil Daemons of old 
 debauched women and coniipted boys, and spread 
 terrors among men, who did not examine things by 
 reason, but seized with fear, and not knowing that 
 these Daemons were evil spirits, called them Gods, 
 and gave every one that name, which they had each 
 taken to themselves. But when Socrates by true 
 reason endeavoured to expose their practices, and 
 draw men away from their worship, they, by the 
 help of wicked men, took care to get him put to 
 death, as an Atheist and impious person/' 
 
 He professes likewise the highest regard for cer- 
 tain spurious books, which were published under the 
 names of the Sibyl and Hystaspis ; which he treats 
 with the same reverence as the Prophetic Scriptures -, 
 appeals to them as di\-ine, and says, that " by the 
 contrivance of Dcemons, it toas inade a capital crime 
 to read them, in order to deter men from coming at 
 the knowledge of what was good, and keep them 
 still in subjection to themselves; which yet, adds 
 he, they were not able to effect ; for we not onely 
 read them freely without fear, but offer them also, 
 as you see, to your perusal, knowing that they will 
 be found acceptable to all." And it is certain, that 
 from this example and authority of Justin, these 
 silly writings were held in the highest veneration by 
 the Fathers and rulers of the Church, thro' all suc- 
 ceding ages. 
 
 Clemens of Alexandria supposes them to have been 
 inspired by God, in the same manner as the Prophets 
 
30 
 
 of the Old Testament; which he confirms by the 
 authority both of St. Peter and of St. Paul, whom 
 he cites as appeahng to them for a prediction of the 
 life and character of Jesus. " For as God/^ says 
 Clemens, " out of his desire to save the Jews, gave 
 them Prophets, so raising up Prophets also to the 
 Greeks, from their own nation and language, as far 
 as they were capable of receiving that good gift of 
 God, he separated them from the vulgar, as not 
 onely the Preaching of Peter, but the Apostle Paul 
 also declares ; speaking thus, take the Greek books 
 into your hands, and look into the Sibyl, how clearly 
 she speaks of one God, and of the things to come ; 
 then take Hystaspes also and read, and you will find 
 the Son of God much jnore clearly and evidently 
 described ; and that many Kings shall employ all their 
 forces against Christ, out of their hatred to him, and 
 to all ivho bear his name.'^ 
 
 The heathens on the other hand charged the Chris- 
 tians with the forgery of these books, and gave the 
 title of Sibyllists, by way of contempt to those who 
 held them to be di^dne : w^hich charge the Fathers 
 constantly denied and treated as a pure calumny. 
 Yet all the Critics of these days allow the fact to be 
 true, and consider it as one of the pious frauds of 
 those primitive ages. There is no man, says Dr. Cave, 
 who does not see that they were forged for the advance- 
 ment of the Christian faith. Some impute the fraud 
 to Hernias ; some to Papias ; and others to Justin 
 himself. Mr. Blondel and Mr. Dodwell charge it 
 upon the Heretics, called Montanists ; but by a 
 
31 
 
 gross mistake, as Dr. Cave observes, since Montanus 
 was not in being till forty years after the Sibylline 
 books were known to the world. 
 
 Justin affirms also that silly story concerning the 
 Septuagint version of the Old Testament. "That it 
 was made by seventy elders sent for that pui'pose 
 from Jeiiisalem to JEgypt, at the request of King 
 Ptolemy; whom that King shut up in as many 
 separate cells, and obliged them each to translate 
 the whole Bible apart, and without any communica- 
 tion with each other : yet all their several transla- 
 tions were found to agree verbatim from the begin- 
 ning to the end, and by that means were demon- 
 strated to be of divine inspiration.^^ And to raise 
 the greater attention to his story, he introduces it 
 by declaring, "that he is not telling us a fable or 
 forged tale, but that he himself had seen at Alexan-^ 
 dria the remains of those very cells in which the 
 translators had been shut up." But repeating the 
 same story in his Apology, he makes an unhappy 
 blunder, by saying, that King Ptolemy^s message, 
 to beg the assistance of those seventy translators, ivas 
 sent to Herod, King of Jerusalem ; whereas Herod 
 happened to live about three hundred years later 
 than Ptolemy. Dr. Grabe endeavours to excuse 
 Justin by the help of a forced criticism, which the 
 ingenious editor of Justin's Apology with good reason 
 derides ; since this pious Father was certainly guilty 
 here of that weakness against which St. Paul warned 
 both Timothy and Titus, of giving too much heed to 
 profane, Jewish, and old ivomen's fables, and fur- 
 nishes a pregnant instance how easily his prejudices 
 
32 
 
 might impose upon him in all other cases of the 
 like nature. 
 
 To these specimens of his want of judgement, I 
 might add several more, from his frequent use of 
 fabulous and apochryphal books, forged by the first 
 Christians under the names of the Apostles, and 
 likewise from his false and negligent manner of 
 quoting the genuin Scriptures. Dr. Grabe has col- 
 lected several instances of the first sort, and his 
 learned editor finds frequent occasion to animadvert 
 upon the second. 
 
 It will be said perhaps that these instances shew 
 indeed a weakness of judgement, yet do not impeach 
 the veracity of Justin as a witness of fact. With 
 regard to which, we must call to mind what is hinted 
 above, that the w^ant of judgement alone may, in 
 some cases, disqualify a man as eff'ectually from 
 being a good witness as if he wanted veracity too. 
 For example, Justin expressly affirms, that he had 
 seen the cells, in ivhich the seventy were shut up to the 
 task of translating the Bible. Now it is certain that 
 there never were any such cells, nor any such trans- 
 lators ; and the best excuse which can be made for 
 him is, that he was imposed upon by some Jeivs or 
 Christians of Alexandria, who might shew him some 
 old ruins under the name of cells, which his pre- 
 possession in favor of the story, owing to his natural 
 credulity and want of judgement, made liim take to 
 be really such. 
 
 Again, in his Apology, addressed to the Emperor 
 and Senate of Borne, he charges them with paying 
 divine honors to the Heretic and Impostor, Simon, 
 
33 
 
 of Samaria, commonly called the Magkian ; and for 
 the truth of his charge, appeals to a Statue, then 
 subsisting in Rome, and publicly dedicated to that 
 Simon in the Island of the Tiber, with this Inscrip- 
 tion, SIMONI DEO SANCTO. But it is manifest 
 beyond all reasonable doubt, as some learned men 
 have shewn, that Justin was led here into a gross 
 blunder by his usual want of judgement and know- 
 ledge of Roman affairs, and his pre-conceived belief 
 of certain fabulous stories which passed current about 
 this Simon among the first Christians ; for the Statue 
 and Inscription, to which he appeals, were not dedi- 
 cated to his Countryman, Simon Magus, of whose 
 Deification there is not the least hint in any Ro7nan 
 writer, but to a Sabine Deity, of ancient worship in 
 Rome, and of similar name, SE^IONI SANCO, 
 frequently mentioned by the old Writers ; as the 
 Inscription itself, dug up, about two centuries ago, 
 from the ruins of that A'ery place, or little Island, 
 which Justin describes, has clearly demonstrated. 
 
 Now should we allow these cases to be clear 6f 
 any fraud or design to deceive, yet they yield so bad 
 a sample of his understanding, as to render his tes- 
 timony of very little weight in any other relation 
 whatsoever. For if he was deceived in such plain 
 and obvious facts, where a common discernment and 
 moderate knowledge of history would have enabled 
 him to have discovered the truth, how much the 
 more easily would he be caught by a confederacy of 
 subtle and crafty impostors, employing all their arts 
 to amaze and dazzle the senses of the credulous, and 
 
 B 3 
 
34 
 
 to put off their surprizing tricks for the miraculous 
 effects of a divine power ? 
 
 I cannot dismiss this Father without taking notice 
 of an accusation which he frequently brings against 
 the Jews, that they had expunged many passages out 
 of the Greek Bibles, in which the character and suf- 
 ferings of Jesus ivere clearly described : which charge 
 all the learned of these later ages have found to be 
 wholly groundless. Let us see then how he supports 
 it. " They have erased/^ says he_, " out of the book 
 of Esdras the following w' ords : Esdras said to the 
 people, this passover is our Saviour, and our refuge ; 
 and if you will but persuade yourselves, and be con- 
 vinced in your hearts, that we are to humble him in 
 a sign or figure, and afterwards to put our trust in 
 him, this place shall not be made desolate to all 
 ages, says the Lord of Hosts. But if you do not 
 believe on him, nor attend to his preaching, you 
 shall be as dirt to the nations. ^^ The editor of Justin 
 remarks here, that this passage is not to be found in 
 any copies either of the Apocrhyphal or Canonical 
 Esdras ; nor in any other Christian writer, but Lac- 
 iantius ; and instead of being expunged by the Jews, 
 appears to have been forged by the Christians : where 
 he refers us to the censure of an able critic and pro- 
 testant divine, John Croius, who charges the forger}^ 
 on Justin himself, in the following words : " To pro- 
 pose what I think, freely and candidly, and what all 
 honest and religious judges of these matters will 
 allow to be true ; I take this to have been a pious 
 fraud of Justin, in which Lactantius followed him ; 
 
35 
 
 who forged and published this passage for the con- 
 firmation of the Christian doctrine^ as well as the 
 greatest part of the Sibylline Oracles, and the sen- 
 tences of Mercurius" 
 
 Again ; Justin affirms, that in the 90th Psalm it 
 was said, tell the nations, that the Lord reigned from 
 the tree : and that the Jews had erased the words, 
 from the tree. But as there is no footstep of these 
 words, either in the Vulgate or any of the Greek or 
 Hebrew copies, it is manifest, says the editor, that 
 they ivere not expunged by the Jews, but added by the 
 Christians. Lastly, he charges them with expunging 
 a passage of Jeremiah, which yet he owns to be re- 
 tained in some copies of their synagogues : as it ac- 
 tually is in all copies, both Gy^eek and Hebrew, to 
 this day. Upon which the editor says, that he ab- 
 solves the Jews again from all fraud, but cannot ab- 
 solve Justin from the utmost negligence and rashness. 
 So unlucky and injudicious was this Father in his 
 charge of these frauds on the Jews, as to give an oc- 
 casion onely for fixing them after all upon the 
 Christians, and, in the opinion of some, even upon 
 himself. 
 
 The learned and ingenious editor of his Apologies 
 and Dialogues, who shews an inclination to defend 
 him on all occasions where he is defensible, and on 
 some even where he is not, yet is often forced to 
 break out into a kind of astonishment at his igno- 
 rance, negligence, rashness, credulity, so gross in 
 many instances, as to baffle all the art of criticism, 
 nor to admit any certain rule of collecting his real 
 sense. Yet there are some still j says he, who extoll 
 
36 
 
 hirrij not onely as a most learned, but a most eloquent 
 writer. 
 
 Irenaeus, whose character and doctrines come next 
 to be considered, was, of all the Fathers whose works 
 still remain to us, the most diligent collector and as- 
 sertor of Apostolic traditions. And in truth, as far 
 as his judgement and veracity may be relied upon, 
 he seems to have been well qualified for that charac- 
 ter; being acquainted, as he tells us, with several 
 who had conversed familiarly with the Apostles, and 
 curious also to inform himself of all the particular 
 doctrines which they had ever taught by word of 
 mouth. " He lived,^^ says Mr. Dodwell, ^' so near to 
 the times of the Apostles, as to be able to transmit 
 their doctrines to posterity with certainty and fide- 
 lity, as they were delivered to him by oral tradition 
 from their immediate successors and disciples." Yet 
 Photius, one of the ablest critics of his own or any 
 other age of the Church, has intimated a different 
 character of him in the following short censure upon 
 his writings ; in which, he thought it necessarij, he 
 says, to advertise the reader, that in some of them the 
 purity of truth, with respect to ecclesiastical doctrines, 
 is adulterated by his false and sp)urious 7^easonings. 
 But the following instances of the doctrines which 
 he delivers as orthodox and Apostolic, will be the 
 surest rule of determining his real character, as well 
 as the proper degree of credit which may be due to 
 his testimony. 
 
 He affirms then, tJtat our Saviour lived to an old 
 age, or ivas fifty years old at the least, at tlie time of 
 his crucifixion; which he attempts to prove, first. 
 
37 
 
 from the reason of the thing ; " that as Christ came 
 to save all men, of all ranks and degrees, so it was 
 necessary that he should pass through all the several 
 stages of life, that he might be a pattern to them 
 all : secondly, from the unanimous tradition and po- 
 sitive testimony of all the old men, who had lived 
 with St. John and the other Apostles, from whom, 
 he says, they all received this account, and con- 
 stantly bore witness to the truth of it/^ Yet this 
 unanimous tradition, so solemnly vouched by this ve- 
 nerable Father, is as certainly false as the Gospels 
 are true. Dr. Whitby, after he has produced this 
 same passage, cries out as it were with astonishment, 
 " Behold here, according to Irenceus, how all the 
 Elders of Asia testify with one voice, that they had 
 received from St. John and the other Apostles a 
 tradition concerning a fact manifestly false ! behold 
 an apostolic man, professing to prove from St. John^s 
 Gospel, things not onely contradictory to that Gos- 
 pel, but to the articles of our Creed !" &c. The 
 learned Cave also, in his Life of IrencBus, tells us, 
 " that he was betrayed into this error, — partly from 
 a mistaken report which he had somewhere picked 
 up, (and it may be from his master. Pap i as,) and 
 partly out of opposition to his adversaries, who 
 maintained that our Saviour staid no longer upon 
 earth than till the thirty-first year of his age ; 
 against whom the eagerness of disputation tempted 
 him to make good his assertion from any plausible 
 pretence," &c. 
 
 He asserts likewise the doctrine of the Millenimn^ 
 in the grossest sense of it, from the same authority 
 
38 
 
 of a tradition, handed down to him by all the old 
 men who had conversed with St. John, and heard 
 him relate what our Saviour himself used to teach con- 
 cerning it : of which he has recorded the following 
 passage ; " The days will come, in which there shall 
 grow vineyards, having each 10,000 vine stocks ; and 
 each stock, 10,000 branches; each branch, 10,000 
 shoots ; each shoot, 10,000 bunches ; each bunch, 
 10,000 grapes ; and each grape squeezed shall yield 
 twenty-five measures of wine ; and when any of the 
 saints shall go to pluck a bunch, another bunch will 
 cry out, I am a better, take me, and bless the Lord 
 through me. In like manner a grain of wheat sown 
 shall bear 10,000 stalks ; each stalk 10,000 grains ; 
 and each grain 10,000 pounds of the finest flour; 
 and so all other fruits, seeds, and herbs in the same 
 proportion, &c. These words, says he, Papias, a 
 disciple of St. John, and companion of Poly carp, an 
 ancient man, testifies in writing in his fourth book, 
 and adds, that they are credible to those who be- 
 lieve." The pious and cautious Dr. Grabe remarks 
 on this occasion, " that what Irenmis says here about 
 the stalks of grain, will be thought an argument of 
 straw by those to whom such things appear incredi- 
 ble : but, that we ought not however either to deny 
 or affirm any thing rashly." But Eusehms gives a 
 a frank and clear solution of the matter, by infonn- 
 ing us, that Papias ivas a iveak man, of a very shallow 
 understanding, as it appeared from his luritings, and 
 by mistaking the meaning of the Apostles, imposed 
 these silly traditions on Irenseus, and the greatest part 
 of the ecclesiastical writers, tvho reflecting on the age 
 
39 
 
 of the man, and his near approach to the Apostles, 
 were drawn by him into the same opinions. 
 
 Irenceus affirms also, on the same authority of tra- 
 dition, delivered to him by those who had received 
 it from the Apostles, that Enoch and Elias were 
 translated into that very Paradise from lohich Adam 
 was expelled, to remain there till the consummation 
 'of all things : and that it was the same place into 
 which St. Paul also was caught up. This is af- 
 firmed likewise by all the later Fathers, both Greek 
 and Latin ; induced to it, we may imagine, by the pre- 
 tence of an Apostolical tradition : which yet, from the 
 absurdity of it, must necessarily be as false as the 
 rest above mentioned. Feverdantius, the learned 
 editor of Irenceus, remarks upon this place ; that tho^ 
 St. Austin does not allow this opinion to be a point of 
 faith, yet since Irenseus and all the primitive Fathers 
 declare it to have been the doctrine of the Apostles, he 
 cannot think it safe to believe otherivise. And we 
 must needs own him to be in the right, if, according 
 to the principles of the Church of Rome, we can 
 think the positive testimony of Irenceus, or the con- 
 current authority of all the Fathers, of weight 
 enough to bear down the common sense and reason 
 of mankind. 
 
 He asserts likewise very strongly, the fabulous 
 story of the ^eptuagint version, with all the parti- 
 culars already recited, of it^s miraculous birth, and 
 the separate cells, &c. To which he has added ano- 
 ther, no less romantic; that the sacred Scriptures 
 were utterly destroyed in the Babylonish captivity, but 
 restored again, after seventy years, by Esdras, in- 
 
40 
 
 spired by God for that purpose. And tho^ in this also 
 he was followed by all the principal Fathers of the 
 succeding centuries, yet as Dr. Prideaux and other 
 learned men have remarked, there is no better 
 foundation for it than that fabulous relation in the 
 fourteenth chapter of the second Apochryphal book of 
 Esdras ; a book too absurd even for the Romanists 
 themselves to admit into their canon : and notwith- 
 standing the authority of Irenceus, and of all the 
 other Fathers wdio assert the same opinion, Mr. 
 Tillemont declares it to be very dangerous to religion, 
 and tending extremely to weaken the authority of the 
 Scriptures. He intimates also more than once his 
 belief of angels mixing with the daughters of men : 
 where his editor takes notice that all the early Fa- 
 thers were drawn into the same error, by the autho- 
 rity of the Apochryphal book of Enoch, cited by St. 
 Jude. Yet as monstrous as this error was, it main- 
 tained its ground, as Dr. Whitby assures us, through 
 the four first centuries ; tho' St. Chrysostom treats it 
 as absurd and blasphernous, and all who espoused it as 
 mad; and Theodoret calls them infatuated and very 
 stupid. 
 
 From some of the doctrines above mentioned, and 
 particularly that of the Millenium, ]\Ir. Chillingworth 
 has proved against the Romanists, that the Catholic 
 Church, even in the earliest ages, and within thirty 
 or forty years after the Apostles, ivas not infallible in 
 matters of faith : since all those absurdities were 
 taught by the Fathers of those ages, not as their 
 private opinions onely, but as doctrines of the Uni- 
 versal Church, derived immediately from the Apos- 
 
41 
 
 ties, and held so necessary, that those who held the 
 contrary were hardly considered as real Christians : 
 to which he adds the following remark ; that if 
 PapiaSj who first committed them to writing, could 
 either by his own e^Tor, or a desire to deceive, cozen 
 the Fathers of the purest age in this, why not also in 
 other things ? Why not in tiventy, as well as one ? 
 And ivhy might not twenty others do it as ivell as he? 
 
 As to Irenceus^s manner of expounding the Scrip- 
 tures, it is much the same with that of Justin, or 
 rather, according to Dr. Grahe, with that of the age 
 in which he lived : following no rule of criticism, nor 
 giving any attention to the proper signification of 
 words ; but indulging a wild and enthusiastic fancy, 
 in the invention of typical senses and forced allu- 
 sions, utterly trifling and contemptible : ivhich those, 
 who read the Fathers, must always hear in mind, as a 
 learned critic observes, or they will he drawn into 
 great and frequent errors. 
 
 Treating of the distinction of animals into clean 
 and unclean, he says, " The law foretold these things 
 figuratively, by animals denoting men. Those who 
 divide the hoof and chew the cud, it pronounces 
 clean; those who do neither, unclean. Who then 
 are clean ? Those who believe in the Father and 
 the Son. This is their firmness, or double hoof; 
 and to meditate day and night on the laws of God, 
 so as to be adorned with good works, is to chew the 
 cud. But the unclean neither divide the hoof nor 
 chew the cud ; that is, neither have faith in God, 
 nor meditate on his laws. This is the abomination 
 of the Gentiles. But such as chew the cud, and do 
 
42 
 
 not divide the hoof, are unclean : this is a figurative 
 description of the Jews,'' with much more to the 
 same purpose. In which method of reasoning, as he 
 followed Barnabas, and the Apostolic Fathers, so he 
 was followed himself by the later writers ; and espe- 
 cially by Clemens of Alexandria, who has copied this 
 very passage. 
 
 Again, endeavouring to prove that the Mosaic 
 laio was to fill up the middle age of the world, 
 between the natural law and the law of Christ, he 
 says ; " This was typically shewn by many things, 
 but especially by Thamar, daughter-in-law to Judas. 
 For when she was bringing out twins, one of them 
 put out his hand the first ; and as the midwife sup- 
 posed him to be the first-born, she tied a scarlet 
 string about his hand. But when this was done, he 
 drew in his hand again, and his brother Phares came 
 out first, and after him Zara, who had the mark. 
 The Scripture clearly manifesting by it the people 
 who had the scarlet sign ; that is, the faith professed 
 by those of the foreskin, or the uncircumcised ; 
 which was first shewn out in the Patriarchs, and 
 then withdrawn, that it^s brother might be brought 
 out first, and then he be born afterwards, who had 
 been shewn before, and was known by the scarlet sign; 
 which is the passion of the Just one, prsefigured from 
 the beginning in Abel, described by the Prophets, but 
 perfected in the last days by the Son of God." 
 
 His reasoning also upon the number of the Gos- 
 pels is in the same strain. " It is impossible," says 
 he, " that there could have been more or less than 
 four. For there are four climates and four cardinal 
 
43 
 
 "wiuds^ and the Church is spread over the whole 
 earth ; but the Gospel is the pillar and foundation 
 of the Church, and it^s breath of life. The Church 
 therefore was to have four pillars, blowing immor- 
 tahty from every quarter, and giving life to men,^^ &c. 
 
 I have been the fuller in opening the characters 
 and opinions of Justin and IrenceitSy that I might 
 save myself the trouble of inlarging in the same 
 manner on the rest ; especially as their characters 
 will be sufficiently illustrated by the specimens of 
 them occasionally interspersed in the sequel of this 
 argument. But the later Fathers, generally speak- 
 ing, do but copy the notions and even the blunders 
 of these two. For as they are the earliest, who 
 have left any considerable works behind them, so 
 they are the first likewise in credit and authority 
 with succeding ages, on the account of their piety, 
 learning, and abilities; and the case was the same 
 with the ancients as it is still with the moderns, that 
 when any facts or doctrines have once been esta- 
 blished by men of eminent character, they are usually 
 taken upon trust by all who follow, till some new 
 inquirer arises, who, not content with opinions im- 
 posed on him by chance or education, resolves to 
 judge for himself, and to use his natural right and 
 liberty of searching into the real grounds of them. 
 
 For instance, St. Clemens of Rome having alledged 
 the ridiculous story of the PhcBnix, as a type and 
 proof of the resurrection^ all the later Fathers take 
 it from him of course, and refer us to the same bird, 
 not onely as really existing, hut as created on purpose 
 by God, to refute the incredulity of the Gentiles on 
 
44 
 
 the subject of this great article of our faith. Yet 
 all the heathen writers, from whom they borrowed 
 the story, from Herodotus down to their own times, 
 treat it as nothing else but a mere fable. The case 
 is the same with all the other facts and absurd doc- 
 trines above specified ; of the Millennium ; of Angels 
 debauching ivomen, and begetting Daemons ; of the di- 
 vinity of the Septuagint version ; of the destruction of 
 the sacred Scriptwes in the Babylonish captivity, &c. 
 In all which, these two Fathers, whose principles I 
 have been illustrating, were implicitly followed for a 
 century or two at least by all their successors. Re- 
 ncBics indeed stands single in his account of the old 
 age of Christ ; tho^ confidently affirmed by him, on 
 the pretended authority of all the Apostles ; because 
 it was endently inconsistent with the history of the 
 Gospels. But the later Fathers generally ran into 
 a contrary extreme, and affirmed, what was main- 
 tained by the Herpetics onely of Irenseus's days, that 
 our Lord preached but one complete year, and died at 
 the age of thirty ; which, according to Clemeyis of 
 Alexandria, was both foretold by the Prophets, and 
 affirmed by the Evangelists. Whereas from the 
 history of the Gospels, it is evident, that his mi- 
 nistry continued through several successive Passovers, 
 or as Sir Isaac Neivton has with great probability 
 computed, through five ; and that he died in his 
 thirty-fourth year. 
 
 Now from what I have above collected, it is cer- 
 tain, that if a gross absurdity of opinions, and the 
 belief of things impossible, be the proof of a weak 
 mind ; if expositions of the Scriptures, void of reason 
 
45 
 
 and common sense, betray a great want of judge- 
 ment,, then we may justly charge those defects upon 
 these ancient fathers ; from whose foohsh reasonings, 
 both in religion and morality, whole books have been 
 compiled. Mr. Dochoell, one of their most zealous 
 admirers, does not pretend to defend them on this 
 head, but frankly owns, that their way of reasoning 
 is loose, sophistical and declamatory; far short of 
 the solidity of the modernSj who excell them not onely 
 in philosophy and learning, but in the knowledge of 
 antiquity, and even of their own languages ; and all 
 that he pleads for in favor of their interpretations, 
 especially of the New Testament, is, that they should 
 not be wholly slighted, tho' they have but little sense 
 in them, because they were agreeable to the custom or 
 taste of those ages. 
 
 As to the quaestion of their veracity, it may admit 
 perhaps some debate, and it will probably bethought." 
 harsh in the opinion of many, to suspect men of 
 such piety and sanctity of life either of the invention 
 or the propagation of known forgeries. Yet there 
 are many things so peremptorily affirmed, without 
 any ground of truth or probability, by the two 
 Fathers whose characters I have been considering, 
 as to give us too much cause for such a suspicion : 
 which, as we have seen above, has been actually 
 charged on Justin, by men of learning, and may 
 with equal reason be charged also on Irenceus. For 
 what other account can be given of his frequent ap- 
 peals to the tradition and testimony of the Apostles, 
 for the support of so many absurd and incredible 
 doctrines ? If the doctrines themselves be false ; 
 
46 
 
 the pretended tradition of tliem could not possibly 
 be true ; and if we absolve Irenceus from the forgery 
 it must be charged on somebody else more ancient 
 still, and of authority' enough to impose it upon 
 him ; and on whomsoever it may fall, it gives but a 
 lamentable idea of those primitive ages, and primi- 
 tive champions of the Christian cause. 
 
 Papias, who is supposed to have been the disciple 
 of St. Jolm, and Bishop of Hierapolis, is said to have 
 given rise to most of the fabulous traditions, which 
 obtained in those early days. Dr. Whitby joins 
 IrencBus to him, and says: "It is very remarkable, 
 that these two earliest writers of the second century, 
 who, on the credit of idle reports and uncertain 
 fame, have delivered to us things said to be done by 
 the Apostles and their scholars, have shamefully im- 
 posed upon us, by the forgery of fables and false 
 stories.^^ But whoever forged the rest of the spu- 
 rious traditions above recited, yet that which relates 
 to the old age of Jesus, the most solemly attested of 
 them all, and peculiar to Irencjeus, may be fairlj^ pre- 
 sumed to be his own forgery, because it was never 
 embraced by any body else, and was singularly 
 adapted to the argument, which he was then assert- 
 ing in opposition to certain Heretics, called Valen- 
 tinians, who allowed but one intire year to our 
 Saviour^s ministry. 
 
 But be that as it will ; since the very earliest of 
 all traditions, and the nearest to the fountain's head, 
 are found to be so corrupt ; it will demonstrate at 
 least what a treacherous foundation they must be to 
 build any opinion upon, and much more any article 
 
47 
 
 of our faith : which might be exemplified by many 
 other iustanccs from the history of the first centu- 
 ries. For as soon as rehgious disputes began to 
 infest the Church, the plea of Apostolical tradition 
 was presently employed, as the most effectual to 
 silence an adversary ; and was taken^ up therefore 
 and urged with equal confidence by all sides. And 
 it is an argument indeed, which of all others seems 
 the best calculated for the use of controversy : for 
 wherever it meets with credit, it must necessarily 
 have great weight ; and where it happens even to 
 find none, yet it cannot easily be confuted, as not 
 being reducible to any clear test or fixed rule by 
 which it may be tried. It is not therefore strange 
 to find its authority carried so high, and in some 
 cases magnified even above the Scriptures them- 
 selves, by all the dealers in controversy, from the 
 earliest Fathers down to Dr. JVaterlcmd. 
 
 For example ; in that most ancient and celebrated 
 dispute between the eastern and western Churches, 
 about the time of holding their Easter, St. Polycarp, 
 Bishop of Smyrna, the disciple and immediate suc- 
 cessor of the Apostles, and Anicetus his contempo- 
 rary, tlie Bishop of Ro77ie, severally alledged the 
 authority of Apostolic tradition for their different 
 practice, from which neither of them could be- in- 
 duced to depart. But Papias, as it is hinted above, 
 the disciple of Poly carp, was the chief promoter and 
 assertor of it : " as oft," says he, "^ as I met with 
 any one who had conversed with the ancients, I al- 
 ways inquired very diligently after their sayings and 
 doctrines: what Andreiv, Peter, Philip, John, and 
 
 ^-^^. 
 
48 
 
 the rest of our LorcVs Apostles, used to teacli. For 
 I was persuaded that I could not profit so much by 
 books, as by the voice of living witnesses/^ Iren(Bus, 
 the scholar of Papius, who had learnt the use of it 
 from his master, was likewise a zealous assertor of it. 
 " If a dispute/^ says he, " should arise about any 
 matter, tho^ but of little moment, ought we not to 
 have recourse to the most ancient Churches, in 
 which the Apostles resided, and take from them 
 what is certain and clear about the point in quses- 
 tion ?" Tertullian declares it to be the onely weapon 
 that can knock down an heretic; and in all such 
 controversies advances it^s authority above the Scrip- 
 tures ; nay, forbids any appeal to the Scriptures, as 
 hurtful to the cause of truth. We must not appeal 
 to the Scriptures, says he, or trust the merits of the 
 cuuse ivith them : in which there can either be no vic- 
 to7y, or an uncertain one, or ivhat is equivalent to un- 
 certain. And in this. Dr. Waterland declares, that 
 he seems to have judged ivell upon the prudential case, 
 and like a wise and sagacious man ivith regard to the 
 circumstances of those times. And in another place 
 the same learned Doctor observes, from the autho- 
 rity of Irenceus, that Polycarp had converted great 
 numbers to the Faith by the strength of tradition ; 
 being a sensible argument, and more affecting, he says, 
 at that time, than any dispute from the bare letter of 
 the Scripture could be. 
 
 Here then we see in short the origin and history 
 of tradition. Papias, a weak and silly man, who 
 mistook the sense of the Apostles, was the first who 
 made it his particular business to recommend the 
 
49 
 
 use of it, and for that purpose took the pains to 
 collect all the umvritten facts and sayings of Christ 
 and his Apostles, from the report of those who had 
 conversed with them. These sayings, as Eusebius 
 tells us, consisted of a number of strange parables, 
 and doctrines of our Saviour, with several other fabu- 
 lous stories : Avhich the authority of so venerable a 
 person, who had lived with the Apostles, imposed 
 upon the Church for genuin : and the gravity of his 
 scholar Irenceus confirmed and propagated to suc- 
 ceding ages : through which every one still added to 
 the collection, whatever he thought useful to the 
 particular cause or opinion that he favored. This 
 account of the matter, deduced from the testimony 
 of antiquity itself, confutes at once all the extrava- 
 gant enconiums which our leading divines so lavishly 
 bestow on those primitive Fathers and their tradi- 
 tions. For if the earliest and best vouched traditions 
 of all which are transmitted to us be true, or at all 
 to be regarded, it follows of course that we ought to 
 receive the absurd doctrines above mentioned as ar- 
 ticles of faith ; the fable of the Millennium ; of the old 
 age of Christ ; of JEnoch. translated into Adam's pa- 
 radise ; with many more of the same stamp ; which 
 were all embraced by the earliest Fathers, and deli- 
 vered to us, on the authority of the Apostles, by 
 some of their immediate successors ; and especially 
 by those four, on whom Dr. Waterland lays the 
 greatest stress ; Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Irenceus 
 and Clemens of Alexandria : " eminent personages," 
 as he says, " who florished within fifty, sixty, or at 
 most ninety years from the Apostolic age. Whose 
 
 c 
 
50 
 
 nearness to the time, known fidelity^ admirable in- 
 dowments, ordinary and extraordinary, add great 
 weight to their testimony or doctrine, and make it a 
 probable rule of interpretation in the prime things/^ 
 To which he subjoins in a marginal note, "that 
 Clemens, tho^ the latest of the four, yet testifies of 
 himself, that he had received his doctrine from seve- 
 ral disciples of the very chief Apostles ; who had 
 trulj^ preserved the tradition of the blessed doctrine, 
 as it came directly from the holy Apostles, Peter, 
 James, and JohnP Notwithstanding all which, the 
 Doctor could not but know, that this very Clemens 
 holds as many absurd, unsound, and exploded doc- 
 trines, and deals as largely in the fabulous and 
 apochryphal books of the primitive Christians, as 
 any other Father whatsoever. These facts shew like- 
 wise the weakness of that argument, which the 
 Doctor alledges for the truth of doctrines, from the 
 unanimity with which they are asserted by the an- 
 cient writers. "This is the argument," says he, 
 " which Irencms and Tertullian insist much upon and 
 triumph in, over the hseretics of their days ; for it is 
 highly unreasonable to suppose that Churches dis- 
 tant in place, and of different languages, and under 
 no common visible head, should all unite in the same 
 errors. Again, such unanimity could never come by 
 chance, but must be derived from one common 
 source : and therefore the harmony of their doctrine 
 was in itself a pregnant argument of the truth of it." 
 But if the unanimity of the primitive Fathers must 
 be allowed to have so great a force as to evince the 
 truth of any opinion, it would necessarily establish 
 
51 
 
 all those monstrous doctrines above specified ; since 
 it would be difficult to produce any otber wliatsoever 
 in which there was so great an harmony among 
 them, or so general a consent of the whole Church, 
 through the three first centuries, and that intirely 
 grounded upon the pretence of apostolic tradition. 
 
 But I cannot dismiss this article of the doctrines 
 and opinions of these ancient Fathers, without tak- 
 ing notice of one which was universally received and 
 believed through all ages of the primitive Church ; 
 viz., "that there were a number of magicians, ne- 
 cromancers or conjurers, both among the Gentiles 
 and the hseretical Christians, who had each their 
 particular daemons or evil spirits for their associates, 
 perpetually attending on their persons, and obsequi- 
 ous to their commands ; by whose help they could 
 perform miracles, foretell future events, call up the 
 souls of the dead, exhibit them to open view, and 
 infuse into people whatever dreams or visions they 
 thought fit/^ All which is constantly affirmed by 
 the primitive writers and apologists, and commonly 
 applied by them to prove the immortality of the 
 soul. 
 
 "Let the powers of necromancy,^^ says Justin 
 Martyr, " and the evocations of human souls, and 
 of boys especially, who had sufi'ered violent deaths, 
 and of those spirits whom the magicians call the in- 
 spirers of dreams and assessors, and the works which 
 are performed by the skillfull in these arts, convince 
 you that the souls of men exist still after death.^^ 
 
 Lactantius, speaking of certain philosophers who 
 held that the soul perished with the body, says, "they 
 
 c2 
 
52 
 
 durst not have declared such an opinion in the pre- 
 sence of any magician, or if they had done it_, he 
 would have confuted them upon the spot, by sensible 
 experiments ; by calling up souls from the dead, and 
 rendering them visible to human eyes, and making 
 them speak and foretell future events/^ 
 
 The author of the book, called the Recognitions 
 of St. Clemens, one of the most ancient and most 
 learned of those many spurious pieces which were 
 forged by the first Christians, affirms, "that Simon 
 Magus confessed to one of his companions, that he 
 wrought all his amazing works by the help of the 
 soul of an health}^ vo^iig boy, who had been vio- 
 lently put to death for that purpose, and then called 
 up from the dead by ineffable adjurations, and com- 
 pelled to be his assistant/^ 
 
 Irenceus, giving an account of the disciples of the 
 same Simon, tells us, " that they lived lewdly, exer- 
 cising magical arts, and using exorcisms, incanta- 
 tions, and love-charms, and industriously practising 
 all other curious arts, by the assistance of their fa- 
 miliar spirits and inspirers of dreams/^ And speak- 
 ing afterwards of the hseretic Carjwcrates and his 
 followers, he says, " These likewise practise magical 
 arts, with incantations and love-charms, and have 
 their assistant daemons and inspirers of dreams, with 
 all the other malevolent spirits/^ 
 
 "The magicians," says Clemens of Alexandria, 
 " boast of daemons, as the ministers of their impiety, 
 reckoning them part of their family, and forcing 
 them by their incantations to be the slaves of their 
 will." 
 
5a 
 
 TertuUian declares of these dsemons^ " that they 
 had the power of inflicting horrible diseases both ou 
 the minds and bodies of men, and even crnel deaths; 
 yet they frequently contrived to cure the disorders 
 which they had wrought, in order to support the 
 credit of their divinity, and the honor of their altars, 
 and secure to themselves their proper food and nour- 
 ishment from the rich steams and blood of the vic- 
 tims, which were offered to them/^ For this like- 
 wise, as monstrous as it is, was the common opinion 
 of all the Fathers, taken as usual upon trust, from 
 the authority of Justin Martyr, who was probably 
 the inventor of it ; " that the daemons, after they had 
 given themselves up to their lusts and lewd debauch- 
 eries with boys and women, began to want the rich 
 fumes and the fat of sacrifices to strengthen them 
 for the enjoyment of their lustfull pleasures." 
 
 Cyprian affirms, ^^that they commonly lay lurk- 
 ing within the statues and images of the heathen 
 Deities ; inspired the breasts of the southsayers ; 
 animated the fibres of the entrails of victims ; di- 
 rected the flight of birds, and the chances of lots; in- 
 volving falsehood always with truth, and themselves 
 sometimes deceived as well as deceiving others ; dis- 
 quieted the lives of men ; disturbed their sleep ; ex- 
 cited terrors in their minds, convulsions in their 
 bodies ; destroyed health and brought on diseases, 
 so as to force people to worship them : that being 
 filled and fatted by the steams of altars and burnt 
 sacrifices, they might seem to cure the maladies 
 which they had inflicted ; whereas all the cure which 
 they performed, was by ceasing onely to do hurt." 
 
54 
 
 And as the whole system of Pagan idolatry was 
 believed by the Fathers to have been managed by 
 the craft and agency of daemons, so the whole art of 
 magic was supposed also to be carried on by the 
 same powers, for the sake of deluding and destroy- 
 ing mankind. In the case of idolatry, they imagined 
 them to assume the names, and to act the parts of 
 the heathen Gods, and in magic to assume the forms 
 of departed souls, and to appear under the names of 
 those who were called up from the dead ; and as 
 such, to foretell future events, and answer to all 
 qusestions which should be demanded of them. And 
 the reason which they give why the souls called up 
 from the dead were chiefly of those who had been 
 put to a violent death, is, because such spirits were 
 generally thought to be the most malevolent and re- 
 vengeful, and ready to perpetrate the same acts of 
 violence on others which they themselves had inju- 
 riously suffered. 
 
 Now the opinion which I have here explaned, is 
 not only a proof of the grossest credulity, but of 
 that peculiar species of it, which, of all others, lays 
 a man the most open to the delusive arts of im- 
 postors. For a mind so totally possessed by super- 
 stitious fancies and disturbed by vain terrors, could 
 not have either the judgement to discern, or the in- 
 clination to examine, or the courage even to suspect 
 the pretensions of those vagrant jugglers, who in 
 those primitive ages were so numerous, and so in- 
 dustriously employed in the affair of deluding their 
 fellow creatures. Every man will perceive how easy 
 it must have been to men of that class, whether 
 
55 
 
 Heathens,, Jews, or Christians, (for they are all al- 
 lowed to have had such impostors among them,) to 
 impose the tricks of their art as the effects of a su- 
 pernatural power, on a multitude already persuaded 
 that they lived on magic ground, exposed at every 
 step to snares and charms, contrived by malicious 
 spirits perpetually haunting them, and watching 
 every unguarded moment to get possession both of 
 their souls and bodies. And when pious Christians 
 are arrived to this pitch of credulity, as to believe 
 that evil spirits or evil men can work real miracles, 
 in defiance and opposition to the authority of the 
 Gospel, their very piety will oblige them to admit as 
 miraculous whatever is pretended to be wrought in 
 the defence of it, and so make them of course the 
 implicit dupes of their own wonder-workers. 
 
 IV. I shall now procede, as I proposed, to take 
 a particular review of all the several gifts, or mira- 
 culous powers, which were actually clamed and pre- 
 tended to have been possessed by the primitive 
 Church : which, according to the testimonies pro- 
 duced above, were, the power of raising the dead ; of 
 healing the sick ; of casting out devils ; of prophecying ; 
 of seeing visions ; of discovering the secrets of men ; 
 of expounding the Scriptures ; of speaking with tongues. 
 
 Sect. 1. As to the first, and the principal indeed 
 of all miracles, that of raising the dead. It was fre- 
 quently performed, as Irenaus affirms, 07i necessary 
 occasions ; and men so raised had lived aftefrwards 
 among them many years ; but it is very strange, that 
 
56 
 
 from the time of the Apostles there is not an in- 
 stance of this miracle to be found in the three first 
 centuries; except a single case^ slightly intimated 
 by Eusebius, from the books of Papias ; which he 
 seems to rank among the other fabulous stories deli- 
 vered by that weak man. 
 
 It is certain, that if a miracle of so surprizing a 
 nature had been so frequent as Irenaus affirms it to 
 have been, or performed, as it were, in every parish 
 or place where there was a Christian Church, it must 
 have made great noise in the world, and been cele- 
 brated, not onely by the primitive Fathers, but by 
 all the historians of those times. But it was so far 
 from being commonly or openly effected, as every 
 miracle should necessarily be which is wrought for 
 the conversion of infidels, that all the enemies of the 
 Gospel, as Irenaeus himself confesses, constantly af- 
 firmed the thing itself to be impossible. A sure proof 
 that they had never seen or known it to be done, 
 unless in such a manner as carried with it a strong 
 suspicion of fraud or collusion. Mr. Dodivell how- 
 ever, from this single authority of Irenceus^ asserts 
 the miraculous powers of the second century to be 
 superior even to those of the first, or Apostolic age. 
 They raised the dead, says he, in the ajjostolic Churches, 
 yet we have feiv examples of it in the genuin acts of the 
 Apostles : but in Irenseus^s days they raised not a few, 
 hut very often. And in the same strain he runs 
 through all the other miracles of the primitive times, 
 and gives them the preference, in their number at 
 least, to those of the Apostles ; yet is forced to own, 
 after all, that towards the end of the second century, 
 
57 
 
 and while IrencEUS himself might be still living, this 
 power of raising the dead was lost and vanished. 
 For in the very same age, when one Autolicus, an 
 eminent heathen, challenged his friend Theophilus, 
 Bishop of Antioch, a convert and champion of the 
 Gospel, to shew him but one person who had been 
 raised from the dead, on the condition of turning 
 Christian himself upon it, Theophilus discovers by 
 his answer, that he was not able to give him that 
 satisfaction. Upon which Mr. Dodivell remarks, that 
 the great number of persons who had been raised some 
 years before, when the fact was common, were dead 
 again for the second time in this interval ; which, for 
 the sake of his hypothesis, he stretches as well as he 
 can to forty years. But in truth, the fact itself, as 
 delivered by IrencBUS, seems to be utterly incredible 
 on many accounts : 1st. That a case of so wonderful 
 a nature should be common among them, yet not a 
 single instance of it particularly described, or clearly 
 attested in all history. 2dly. That it should be per- 
 formed in every part of the world where there was a 
 Church or assembly of Christians, yet all those who 
 were not of that Church, and for whose sake it was 
 chiefly performed, should be insisting all the while 
 that the thing itself loas impossible. 3rdly. That it 
 should be common in the days of Irenaus, yet Theo- 
 philus, who lived at the same time, should not be 
 able to alledge a single instance of it when chal- 
 lenged to it by his friend, whom he was laboring 
 to convert, and who offered to be converted upon 
 the proof of that fact. Lastly, That a power, of 
 all others the most affecting and reputable to the 
 
 c 3 
 
58 
 
 Churchy should be withdrawn at a time when it^s 
 adversaries were defying them to shew any effects of 
 it, and putting the merits of the controversy upon 
 that very issue. All which circumstances laid toge- 
 ther, must needs leave the strongest suspicion on the 
 claim of the primitive Church, with regard to this 
 prime miracle of raising the dead. 
 
 Sect. 2. The next gift said to have resided in it, is 
 that of healing the sick and curing all sorts of diseases : 
 in favor of which the ancient testimonies are more 
 full and express ; tho^ with some variation concern- 
 ing the method of cure. Some affirm that it was 
 done by the imposition of hands ; some, by invoking 
 the name of God and of Jesiis, and reciting some story 
 of his life ; and others, by the use of oil, which was 
 consecrated by holy men, and dispensed to the peo- 
 ple for the cure of their diseases. Tertullian tells 
 us, " that a Christian called Proculus cured the Em- 
 peror Severus of a certain distemper by the use of 
 oil : for which service that Emperor was favorable 
 afterwards to the Christians, and kept Proculus as 
 long as he lived in his palace." And St. Jerom 
 affirms, " that Hilarion the Monk used to heal all the 
 wounds of the husbandmen and shepherds with con- 
 secrated oil ; and preserved the life of the son-in-law 
 and daughter of an holy woman called Constantia, 
 by anointing them with the same." Yet these cures, 
 if true, might be accounted for probably without a 
 miracle, by the natural power and efficacy of the oil 
 itself, since in our days the bite of vipers, after in- 
 flaming a man^s arm to a degree which threatened 
 
59 
 
 destruction to him, is known to have been checked 
 and cured in a short time by the application of oil : 
 which might perhaps have been the very case of 
 Hilarion's shepherds. But be that as it will, the pre- 
 tence of curing diseases by a miraculous power was 
 so successfully maintained in the heathen world by 
 fraud and craft, that when it came to be challenged 
 by the Christians, it was not capable of exciting any 
 attention to it among those who themselves pre- 
 tended to the same power ; which, the' the certain 
 effect of imposture, was yet managed with so much 
 art, that the Christians could neither deny nor de- 
 tect it ] but insisted always that it was performed by 
 damons or e^il spirits, deluding mankind to their 
 ruin : and from the supposed reality of the fact, in- 
 ferred the reasonableness of believing what was more 
 credibly affirmed by the Christians to be performed 
 by the power of the true God. We do not deny, says 
 Athenagoras, that in different places, cities, and coun- 
 tries, there are some extraordinary works performed in 
 the name of idols, from lohich some have received bene- 
 fit, others harm. But then he goes on to prove, that 
 they were not performed by God, but by Damons. 
 " If I should allow," says Origen, ^^that there is a 
 Daemon cunning in medicine, called j^scidapius, 
 who cures diseases, yet I would say to those who are 
 surprized at it, as well as at the prsedictions of 
 Apollo, that if the cure of diseases and prsediction 
 of events be things of an indifferent nature, and 
 which belong to bad as well as to good beings, shew 
 me that those who cure and foretell are not bad, but 
 good, and worthy to be held in a manner as Gods/^ 
 
60 
 
 Wiatever proof then the primitive Church might 
 have among themselves of this miraculous gift^ yet 
 it could have but little ejffect towards making prose- 
 lytes among those who pretended to the same gift ; 
 possessed more largely, and exerted more openly, 
 than in the private assemblies of the Christians. 
 For in the temples of jEscidapius, all kinds of dis- 
 eases were believed to be publickly cured by the pre- 
 tended help of that Deity : in proof of which there 
 were erected in each temple columns or tables of brass 
 or marble, on which a distinct narrative of each par- 
 ticular cure was inscribed. Pausanius writes, " that 
 in the temple at Ejndaurus, there were many co- 
 lumns anciently of this kind, and six of them re- 
 maining to his time, inscribed with the names of 
 men and women who had been cured by the God, 
 with an account of their several cases and the me- 
 thod of their cure : and that there was an old pillar 
 besides, w^hich stood apart, dedicated to the memory 
 of Hippolytus, who had been raised from the dead." 
 Strabo also, another grave writer, informs us, " that 
 these temples were constantly filled with the sick, 
 imploring the help of the God : and that they had 
 tables hanging around them, in which all the mira- 
 culous cures were described." There is a remark- 
 able fragment of one of these tables still extant, 
 and exhibited by Gruter in his collection, as it was 
 found in the ruins of JEseidapius's Temple, in the 
 island of the Tyber, in Rome ; which gives an ac- 
 count of tivo blind men restored to sight by ^Escula- 
 pius, in the open vieiv, and with the loud acclamations 
 of the people, acknowledging the manifest power of the 
 
61 
 
 God. Upon which the learned Montfaucon makes 
 this reflection, that in this are seen, either the iviles 
 of the Devil, or the tricks of Pagan Priests, suborn- 
 ing men to counterfeit diseases and miracidous cures. 
 
 jS^ow tho' nothing can support the behef and 
 credit of miracles more authentically than public 
 monuments, erected in proof and memory of them 
 at the time when they were performed ; yet in defi- 
 ance of that authority, it is certain that all those 
 heathen miracles were pure forgeries contrived to 
 delude the credulous multitude. And in truth, this 
 particular claim of curing diseases miraculously, af- 
 fords great room for such a delusion, and a wide 
 field for the exercise of craft. Every man^s experi- 
 ence has taught him, that diseases thought fatal and 
 desperate, are oft surprizingly healed of themselves, 
 by some secret and sudden effort of nature, impene- 
 trable to the skill of man : but to ascribe this pre- 
 sently to a miracle, as weak and superstitious minds 
 are apt to do, — to the prayers of the living, or the 
 intercessions of the dead, — is what neither sound 
 reason nor true religion will justify. Wherefore 
 when the narratives of these pretended cures are de- 
 livered to us by partial and interested, or by weak 
 and credulous men, they will always furnish reason 
 to suspect that the relators were either deluded 
 themselves, or ^villing to delude others : and unless 
 we knew more precisely in this case the real bounds 
 between nature and miracle, we cannot pay any 
 great regard to such stories; especiallj^ when we 
 are informed at the same time by the Christians 
 themselves, that the same cures were performed also 
 
62 
 
 by knaves and impostors, of all sects and nations ; 
 by Heathens, Jews, and Heretics ; which, according 
 to the principles of those days, were ascribed either 
 to the power of Daemons, or to the magical force of 
 amulets and charms. 
 
 Sect. 3. But the most eminent and celebrated of 
 all the miraculous powers of the primitive Church 
 was, the gift of casting out Devils, or the cure of 
 Dtxmoniacs. To this the ancient Fathers and apolo- 
 gists make the most frequent appeals ; and on this 
 they lay the greatest stress towards evincing the di- 
 vinity of the Christian religion. It is not easy how- 
 ever to collect from their accounts what was the real 
 case of these Dccmoniacs, and the proper nature of 
 of their malady. The Fathers indeed themselves 
 seem to have been fully persuaded, and labor to per- 
 suade every body else, that they were actually pos- 
 sessed and tormented by Devils, or evil spirits : yet 
 many learned men of modern times have imagined 
 them rather to have been affected by the Epilepsy, 
 or falling sickness. Mr. Dodwell himself takes their 
 case to have been of this kind, and curable by the 
 ordinary tvay of medicine, as well as the extraordi- 
 nary one of miracle. And it is certain, that the 
 effects constantly ascribed to it seem to be nothing 
 else but the ordinary symptoms of an Epilepsy, as 
 they are described by the physicians. Justin speaks 
 of them as being thrown down always to the ground, 
 by the Devils who possessed them. And Chrysostom, 
 in his elaborate consolation to Stagirius, who was 
 also possessed, recites all the particulars of his case 
 
63 
 
 as they were related to him by a common friend : 
 the convulsion of his hands, the distortion of his eyes, 
 the foam of his mouth, his horrid and inarticulate 
 voice, the tremor of his body, and the long privation 
 of his senses. St. Gregory, of Nyssa, speaking of a 
 woman also in the same case, says, that groaning 
 with a te7Tible and inarticulate voice, different from 
 human, she fell fiat on the ground, tearing her hair, 
 her eyes distorted, her mouth foaming ; nor did the 
 Devil desist from strangling her, ^c. Then as to 
 what these Fathers declare concerning their power 
 of lashing, burning, and tormenting the Devils ; and 
 of their groaning and howling under the torture of 
 the Christian exorcism, such an imagination might 
 easily be conceived, from the strange convulsions of 
 the body, and the hollow sighs and groans which 
 commonly attend such fits. And the other circum- 
 stances likewise, so constantly attested by them all, 
 concerning the speeches and confessions of the Devils ; 
 their answering to all questions ; owning themselves to 
 be wicked spirits ; telling whence they came and ivhither 
 they were going, and pleading for favor and ease from 
 the hands of the Exorcists ; may not improbably be 
 accounted for, either by the disordered state of the 
 patient, answering wildly and at random to any 
 quaestions proposed; or by the arts of imposture 
 and contrivance between the parties concerned in 
 the act. 
 
 This, I dare say, will appear probable to every 
 impartial reader, who, from the credulous and en- 
 thusiastic disposition of these Fathers, and their 
 preconceived and erroneous notions about the origin 
 
64 
 
 and power of Dsemons^ will be apt to conclude, that 
 they were either induced by their prejudices to give 
 too hasty a credit to these pretended possessions, or 
 carried away by their zeal, to assist even in sup- 
 porting a delusion which was useful to the Christian 
 cause. And tho^ this may sound harsh in the ears 
 of many, it will not appear strange to those who 
 have given any attention to the history of mankind ; 
 which will always suggest this sad reflection, that 
 the greatest zealots in religion, or the leaders of 
 sects and parties, whatever purity or principles they 
 pretend to, have seldom scrupled to make use of a 
 commodious lie, for the advancement of what they 
 call the truth. And with regard to these very 
 Fathers, there is not one of them, as an eminent 
 writer of ecclesiastical history declares, who made 
 any scruple in those ages of using the htjperholical 
 style, to advance the honor of God and the salvation 
 of men. For it is certain, that the greatest part of 
 the wonderfull things which they relate, are in them- 
 selves utterly incredible ; and such of them as hap- 
 pen to be the most distinctly described, carry always 
 the greatest marks of art and contrivance for the 
 sake of serving some particular purpose. For ex- 
 ample, Tertullian, who was an utter enemy to plays 
 and public shews in the Theaters, wrote a Ijook to 
 deter all Christians from frequenting them, in which 
 he tells the following story : " An example hap- 
 pened,^' says he, " as the Lord is witness, of a 
 woman who went to the Theater and came back 
 with a Devil in her ; whereupon when the unclean 
 spirit was urged and threatened in the oflice of 
 
65 
 
 exorcising, for having dared to attack one of the 
 faithfull, / have clone nothing, replied he, but ivhat is 
 venj fair, for I found her on my own ground.'^ He 
 adds a second story still more dreadfull, " of another 
 woman, who, in the very night, after she had seen 
 a tragedy in the Theater, had her winding-sheet 
 shewn to her in a vision, in which she was reproached 
 by name, with the Tragedian, whom she had been 
 seeing, and did not live above five days after/^ 
 
 Now in this last case, it is not improbable, that a 
 poor weak woman, who went to sleep under the 
 consciousness of a grievous sin committed by her, 
 might, by the terrors of a dream, be thrown into 
 a disorder that put an end to her life. But in the 
 first, tho^ God himself is appealed to for the truth 
 of it, yet when we reflect on the principles of those 
 times, and the particular warmth of Tertullian' s-, 
 zeal, we cannot but suspect, that the smart answer 
 of the Devil, was contrived to enforce, what he was 
 so warmly inculcating, the horrible sin and danger- 
 ous consequence of frequenting the public theaters. 
 
 It is very remarkable, that all the Fathers, who 
 lay so great a stress on this particular gift of casting 
 out devils, yet allow the same power 1)oth to the 
 Jews and the Gentiles, as well before as after our 
 Saviour's coming. Justin Martyr, in his dialogue 
 with Trypho the Jeio, says, "that all Devils yield 
 and submit to the name of Jesus, when they would 
 not to any other name of their Kings, Prophets, 
 or Patriarchs ; yet if any should exorcise them in 
 the name of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, 
 they would in like manner submit. For your Exor- 
 
66 
 
 cistSj adds he^ as well as the Gentiles^ use this art 
 in exorcising, together with certain fumes and 
 ligatures." And the Jews, says IrencRUS, even now, 
 by this same invocation of the name of God, drive 
 away Devils. 
 
 Origen, in his dispute with Celsus, asserting the 
 descent of the Jews from Abraham, Isaac, and 
 Jacob, says, "that these names joined to that of 
 God, have such power, that not onely their own 
 nation use them in their prayers, and in casting out 
 devils, but all other Inchantors and Magicians what- 
 soever ; and that in magical books, the same invoca- 
 tion and use of God^s name is often found, as 
 peculiar to the art and effectual against Devils." 
 And speaking of Abraham's great merit, he ob- 
 serves, " that it is not Moses onely who celebrates 
 it, but that many of those, who charm or drive out 
 Devils, call upon the God of Abraham, without 
 knowing even who Abraham was." Again, "if a 
 man," says he, " invoke or exorcise by the name of 
 the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Devils 
 will obey, and do what they are commanded ; but if 
 he translate those names, according to their mean- 
 ing, into any other language, they will have no force 
 at all. The same, adds he, is true of the word, 
 Sabaoth, so much used in incantations; if it be 
 applied in it's original Hebrew, it is effectual ; but 
 if translated into another tongue, so as to put for it 
 the Lord of Hosts, it avails nothing, if we believe 
 the skillfull in these matters." 
 
 Josephus writes, "that Solomon was particularly 
 instructed by God in the art of casting out Devils, 
 
67 
 
 for the benefit of mankind ; and that he left behind 
 him a receit of those charms and exorcisms, by 
 "which he used to drive them out : which same 
 method was the most effectual even to his time. 
 For I saw, says he, one of my countrymen, Eleazar, 
 casting out Devils, in the presence of Vespasian, his 
 sons and officers, and a multitude of soldiers. His 
 method was this : he applied to the nose of a person 
 possessed, a ring, which had a certain drug or root 
 under the seal of it, which Solomon had prescribed ; 
 and so, by the smell of the ring, he drew out the 
 Devil through the nostrils of the patient, who fell 
 presently to the ground ; upon which he adjured the 
 Devil never to return, rehearsing the name of Solo- 
 mon, with certain charms, which he had composed 
 and left behind him j and being desirous to convince 
 the company that he was really indued with this 
 power to which he pretended, he placed a certain 
 cup or vessel filled with water at a little distance 
 from the person possessed, and commanded the 
 Devil, as he was going out of him, to overturn the 
 cup, so as to give the spectators a manifest proof 
 that he had quitted the body of the man/^ Which 
 shews, in contradiction to what Justin Martyr af- 
 firmed above, that besides the name of Jesus, the 
 Devils were subject likewise to that of Solomon. 
 
 Now it will be granted, I suppose, by all men of 
 sense, that these Jeivish and Gentile Exorcists were 
 mere knaves and impostors ; who, by their tricks 
 and false miracles, contrived to delude the credulous 
 multitude, in order to acquire gain or power to 
 themselves, and to keep their people firm to the 
 
68 
 
 Jewish or heathenish rites, in opposition to the 
 Christian. Ulpian, the lawyer, speaks of Exorcism 
 in general, as a term of art used by impostors ; by 
 who he is supposed by some to mean the Jewish, by 
 others the Christian Exorcists. But TertuUian, and 
 all the Fathers in general declare, that these magi- 
 cians and wandering jugglers performed many won- 
 derfull things, above the force of human power, 
 which they wholly ascribe to the assistance of Dse- 
 mons. And if they were so far deluded by those 
 Jewish and Gentile pretenders, as to take such 
 senseless charms, and tricks of legerdemain, for the 
 effects of a supernatural power, their prejudices 
 would operate much more strongly in favor of their 
 own Impostors, who had taken up the same trade : 
 or if they saw through the cheat of the Gentile prac- 
 titioners, yet on account of the credit which they 
 had gained with the people, and the difficulty of de- 
 tecting the fraud, they might think it convenient 
 perhaps to oppose one cheat to another, and set up 
 rival powers of their own, in opposition to those of 
 their adversaries, in hopes of beating them at their 
 own weapons. 
 
 For it is very hard to believe what Origen declares 
 above, that the Devils, for the sake of doing the 
 greater mischief to men, used to possess and destroy 
 their cattel. In confirmation of which St. Jerom has 
 related a most ridiculous story, in his life of St. 
 Hilarion the Monk ; where, after a narrative of 
 many cases of Devils expelled by that saint from the 
 bodies of men, he adds, " but it is to little purpose 
 to talk of men; brute animals also were dayly 
 
69 
 
 brought to him, mad or possessed ; among the rest a 
 Bactrian Camel, of an enormous size, which had al- 
 ready destroyed many people : above thirty men 
 were employed to drag him along with the strongest 
 ropes. His eyes were bloody, his mouth foaming, 
 his tongue rolling and swoln, and his strange roaring 
 above all terrors. The old man ordered it to be let 
 loose, upon which all who were about him ran away 
 immediately. The saint came forward alone, and in 
 the ^yr'iac tongue, said. Thou dost not affright me, 
 Devil, with all that bulk of body : thou art one and the 
 same in a little fox, or in a camel : and so he stood 
 firm with his arm stretched out; and as the beast 
 advanced towards him, fui'ious and ready to devour 
 him, it presently fell down with it^s head to the 
 ground, so that all present were amazed at the sud- 
 den change from so great a fierceness to such a tame- 
 ness. Upon which the old man took occasion to 
 teach them, that the De\'il used to seize cattel out 
 of his hatred to men, to whom he bore so great a 
 grudge as to wish not onely that they, but that all 
 which they had, might perish.'^ To this story I 
 cannot forbear adding, what is likewise affirmed by 
 the same Jerom, of the same Hilarion, that he was 
 so full of the i^ower of the Holy Spirit, as to be able 
 to discover from the smell of the bodies and cloaths of 
 men, or of any thing else, which they had but touched, 
 to what particular Daemon, or to what vice they luere 
 severally subject. Now, tho^ this good Father in- 
 vokes the assistance of the Holy Spirit in his attempt 
 to describe a life so wonderfull, yet all who read it 
 must needs be persuaded, that out of his zeal and 
 
70 
 
 warm affection to the monkish order, which he pro- 
 fessed, and from a desire to advance it^s credit in 
 the w^orld, he either wholly invented, or at least 
 willfully propagated all these extravagant tales, which 
 he himself could not possibly believe. " The time,^' 
 says he, '^ would fail me, if I should attempt to re- 
 late all the wonderfull works that were performed by 
 him : wherefore by the influence of his example, 
 innumerable monasteries began to be founded through 
 all Palcestine ; and all the Monks ran eagerly to 
 Hilarion, &c." This was the real purpose of St. 
 Jeromes zeal ; this the fruit of his fictitious miracles. 
 But to return to the Dcemoniacs. Since this gift of 
 casting out Devils is what the Fathers, as I have 
 said above, lay the greatest stress upon, and to 
 which they make the most frequent appeals, it may 
 be proper to strengthen what I have alreadj^ been 
 declaring upon it, by a few particular observations, 
 which I would recommend to the attention of the 
 reader. 
 
 \st, That there is such an uniformity in all the 
 primitive accounts of them, tho^ given by different 
 Fathers and in difiPerent ages, of the Devils being 
 scourged, burned, and tortured by the Christian Ex- 
 orcists ; and of their howlings, discourses, and confes- 
 sions, that they all seem to have been cast in the 
 same mould ; and to have been the copies rather of 
 one original story, transcribed by the later writers 
 from the earlier, than the natural descriptions, of 
 what each of them had severally seen, at different 
 times, and in distant places. 
 
 2c?/?/, That the persons thus possessed, and in 
 
71 
 
 whom the Devils used to hold discourses, were called 
 by the primitive Christians, ''Eyyai^iiMvQoi or Ventrilo- 
 quists ; because they were believed to speak out of the 
 belly, thro^ the navel. Thus in a book ascribed to 
 Justin Martyr, containing a number of Quaestions 
 with answers to them, for the use of the Orthodox, 
 one of the questions is this ; '^ if all the arts of de- 
 lusion are abolished by the coming of Christ, how 
 comes it to pass, that Daemons still speak by those 
 who are called Ventriloquists, and that they do not 
 make Christianity ridiculous and contemptible, by 
 shewing forth the works of imposture and uttering 
 oracular prsedictions in the bodies of Christians V^ 
 
 Now many of us have seen, and may still see 
 perhaps at this day, a sort of these Ventriloquists, 
 who by a particular formation of their organs, 
 managed by art and practice, could speak in such a 
 manner as to persuade the company that the voice 
 did not procede from them, but from some invisible 
 being ; which they could direct likewise so as to 
 make it seem to come from what part of the room 
 they pleased ; by which means, weak and ignorant 
 people have been terrified almost out of their senses, 
 believing it to be the voice of a Spirit or Dcemon, 
 If we suppose then, that there were any Artists of 
 this kind among those ancient Christians, as there 
 undoubtedly were among the ancient Gentiles, it is 
 easy to imagine, what strange and surprizing feats 
 might be performed, by a correspondence between 
 the Ventriloquist and the Exorcist, so as to delude 
 the most sensible and sagacious of their audience, 
 prepossessed with the belief of these diabolical pos- 
 
72 
 
 sessions, and void of all suspicion that such effects 
 could possibly be produced by any human art or 
 natural cause. 
 
 3f%. From the testimony of Antiquity itself it is 
 evident, that manj^ of their Dsemoniacs could not 
 possibly be cured by all the power of the Exorcists ; 
 and that the cures, which are pretended to have 
 been wrought on any, w^ere but temporary, and 
 appear to have been the cessation rather of a par- 
 ticular fit, or access of the distemper, than the real 
 expulsion of a Daemon. This may be clearly col- 
 lected from the method of treating them in the 
 primitive Church, as it was regulated by several 
 Canons and rules, made for that purpose by Bishops 
 and Councils, injoining, "that they should not be 
 received to baptism, but in tlie intervals of their 
 disorder ; nor to the Communion, unless they shew^ed 
 signs of piety and sobriety, so as not to expose and 
 blaspheme the mysteries ; in which case they might 
 communicate now and then : that they should never 
 be ordained or taken into any order of the Clergy, 
 nor allowed to pray in common with the congrega- 
 tion, but be produced always separately, and com- 
 manded onely to bow down their heads, while the 
 rest of the Assembly were offering up a prayer for 
 them.^^ In different Churches however, a different 
 discipline was observed with regard to them ; for in 
 some they were admitted to baptism, and even to 
 dayly communion; by which means many are af- 
 firmed to have been relieved when all the arts of the 
 Exorcists had been tried upon them in vain. Now 
 these cases manifestly shew, that this celebrated 
 
73 
 
 giftj as it was managed by the primitive Church, 
 was not able to work an absolute cure, or to drive 
 out the Devils so effectually, as to reduce the patients 
 to a permanent state of sanity, so as to render them 
 ordinarily capable, either of baptism, or the Eucha- 
 rist, or of joining even with the congregation in the 
 dayly prayers of the Church. "Whence we may rea- 
 sonably conclude, that it was nothing else but a 
 false mimickry of that genuin power which was ex- 
 ercised by our Lord, and conferred afterwards on his 
 Apostles : a power which never did it^s work by 
 halves, or left it^s cures imperfect. For, as we learn 
 from the Gospel, Mary Magdalen, from whom seven 
 Devils were cast out, continued ever after in her 
 sober senses, accompanying and ministring on all 
 occasions to our Lord, to the time of his death : and 
 the man also, out of whom a Legion of them was 
 ejected, was restored at once to perfect health, both 
 of mind and body, and sent away to proclame in 
 DecapoliSj and the neighbouring country, the mira- 
 culous cure which Jesus had wrought upon him. 
 
 4!thly. There is another circumstance belonging 
 to these primitive Dsemoniacs, of which the reader 
 perhaps may desire some farther explication ; I 
 mean the great numbers of them, which appear to 
 have subsisted in those early ages : whose chief 
 habitation was within a part of the Church, allotted 
 to them for that purpose ; in which, as in a kind of 
 Hospital, they were committed to the care of the 
 Exorcists; whose business it was, ^^to pray over 
 them on some occasions, and to pro^dde their dayly 
 food, and keep them employed in some bodily exer- 
 
74 
 
 cise and innocent business, of sweeping the Churcli 
 and the like, to prevent the more violent agitations 
 of Satan, and lest he should be tempted by their 
 idleness to renew his attacks upon them/^ Which 
 method of relieving so miserable a tribe of helpless 
 mortals, will account for the numbers with which 
 the Churches were stored, as well as for the con- 
 fidence of those challenges made to the Heathens 
 by the Christian Apologists, to come and see at any 
 hour, and any warning, how they could torment, and 
 lash J and hum, and drive the evil spirits out of them; 
 while they kept such numbers of them in constant 
 pay, always ready for the shew ; tried and disciplined 
 by their Exorcists to an habit of groaning and howl- 
 ing, and to give proper answers to all questions 
 which should be demanded of them. 
 
 It is observable also in the last place, that this 
 power of exorcising Dcemoniacs or casting out Devils, 
 which had hitherto been in the hands onelv of the 
 meaner sort of the Christian layety, was put under 
 the direction of the Clergy, by the Council of Lao- 
 dicea, about the year of Christ three hundred and 
 sixty seven, in which it was decreed, that notie should 
 be Exorcists but those ivho were appointed by the 
 Bishop. After which appropriation of it, as Mr. 
 Whiston informs us, "few or none of the clergy, 
 nor indeed of the layety, were any longer able to 
 cast out Devils ; so that the old Christian exorcism 
 or prayer for the Energumens in the Church, began 
 soon after to be omitted as wholly useless.^' Which 
 sudden failure of so eminent a gift seems to be 
 ascribed by him to that fatal step of this unhappy 
 
75 
 
 Council, as he calls it ; as if, by their presumptuous 
 attempt to controul the divine power, they had pro- 
 voked God to withdraw it. But tho' this solution of 
 the case may be agreeable to the character and prin- 
 ciples of that very learned and pious writer, yet it is 
 more agreeable to reason and the experience of man- 
 kind to suppose, that the licencious abuse of this 
 imaginary power by the many false and impudent 
 pretensions of crafty impostors on the one hand, 
 and wrong-headed Enthusiasts on the other, had 
 brought such scandal on Christianity itself, that the 
 Clergy were forced at last to interpose, and take the 
 affair into their own hands. For that this was really 
 the case, is manifestly shewn by the event; since 
 the exercise of this gift was no sooner subjected to 
 any regulation, even by those who favored and 
 desired to support it, than it gradually decreased 
 and expired. 
 
 Sect. 4. The next miraculous gift ascribed to the 
 primitive Church, is that of Prophetic visions and 
 extatic trances, and the discovery of men's hearts; 
 for these seem to be the fruit of one and the same 
 spirit ; which exerted itself chiefly about the end of 
 the second and the beginning of the third century, 
 through Tertullian's and Cyprian's days. "The divine 
 censure,^^ says Cyprian, " does not cease to chastise 
 us, neither by night nor by day ; for besides nightly 
 visions, even boys among us are filled with the Holy 
 Ghost, and, in fits of ecstasy, see, hear, and utter 
 things, by which the Lord thinks fit to admonish 
 and instruct us." This ecstasy was a temporary 
 
 D 2 
 
76 
 
 madness or loss of senses, and is called by TertuUian, 
 the spiritual virtue in which prophecy consists. Suidas 
 says, that of all the kinds of fury or madness, that 
 of the Poets and Prophets was alone to be wished 
 for. 
 
 Mr, Dodwell observes, ^' that visions were peculiar 
 to the young, dreams to the old ; because it required 
 a great strength of body to support the violence of 
 such divine agitations." Philo, the Jew, treating 
 of the same ecstasies with which the Patriarchs and 
 Prophets of the Old Testament used to be affected, 
 reasons thus, " the human mind," says he, " is sym- 
 bolically called the Sun by Moses ; while our mind 
 therefore shines and exerts itself within us, spread- 
 ing as it were a meridian light through the Soul, we 
 are then in our right senses, without any divine 
 influx : but when the mind goes down, then a divine 
 ecstasy and prophetic madness fall upon us ; for when 
 the divine light shines, the human sets ; and when 
 that sets, this again rises ; and this is what usually 
 happens to the prophetic race ; for the mind is 
 driven out of us when the divine spirit comes in, 
 and when this again quits us, the other returns ; for 
 it is not fit that mortal should cohabit with im- 
 mortal. 
 
 From these testimonies we may collect, that the 
 Prophecy of the Primitive Church by vision or 
 ecstasy, was of the same kind, as to it^s outward 
 appearance, with that divination by fury, as it was 
 called among the Gentiles, which was practised by 
 the Delphic Pythia and Cumcean Sibyl, when agitated 
 by the pretended power and instinct of the God. 
 
Of which Cicero says, in way of raillery, '^wliat 
 authority can that madness have which you call 
 divine ; that a wise man should not be able to fore- 
 see what a madman can ; and that he who has lost 
 all human senses, should presently acquire divine 
 ones/'' 
 
 Mont anus the heretic, and his female associates, 
 seem to have been the authors of these prophetic 
 trances towards the end of the second century ; and 
 acquired great credit by their visions and ecstasies, 
 in which they acted their part so well, by feigned 
 distortions and convulsive agitations of the body, as 
 to appear to be out of their senses ; and in those 
 fits, uttered many wild prophecies and predictions, 
 which they imposed upon the people for divine reve- 
 lations ; and by affecting at the same time a peculiar 
 sanctity and severity of discipline, gathered a great 
 number of disciples, who first raised and propagated 
 that spirit of enthusiasm in the Church, which 
 subsisted in it for near a century, under the title 
 of vision and prophecy, and then gradually sunk into 
 utter contempt. 
 
 Tertullian, a writer of this enthusiastic turn, severe 
 in his manners, and stiff in his opinions, wrote with 
 great vehemence against Plays and Shews ; in which, 
 as we have seen above, he made great use of nsions 
 towards enforcing his argument. He wrote another 
 book to prove, that it ivas a Sin for a Soldier to ivear 
 a garland or crown on any occasion, and that a Chris- 
 tian should rather suffer martyrdom than submit to it ; 
 and in a third book, he affirms it to be rank idolatry 
 to deck their doors with garlands or flowers on Festival 
 
78 
 
 days, according to the custom of the Heathens ; " and 
 calls the name of God to witness, that he knew a 
 person who had been grievously chastised in a vision, 
 because his servants, even without his knowledge 
 and in his absence, had crowned the door with 
 flowers on some occasion of public joy." He wrote 
 a treatise likewise to prove the soul of man to be 
 corporeal and of human shape ; and for the truth of 
 his opinion, appeals to his ecstatic maid above- 
 mentioned, of whom he tells this story, that " as he 
 happened to be discoursing on the nature of the 
 soul, she fell into one of her trances ; and as soon as 
 the service was over, and the people dismissed, she 
 came as usual to relate to him what she had seen; 
 which was always carefully taken down in writing in 
 order to be examined ; when she declared, that there 
 was shewn to her among other things an human soul 
 in bodily form, yet so as to appear to be a spirit ; 
 not of a void and empty quality, but what might 
 even be handled, tender and lucid, of an airy color, 
 and in all points of human shape." Which wild 
 dream of a frantic, or fiction rather of a silly woman, 
 this Father applies, as the testimony of God him- 
 self, to evince the certainty of his opinion. Lastly, 
 in another book, written to prove that women ought 
 always to wear a veil, he declares, that God, in a 
 vision to a certain sister, had prescribed to her, by a 
 special revelation, the exact length and measure of the 
 veiir 
 
 Now it is easy to imagine, how Tertullian might 
 be imposed upon by the craft of these extatic vision- 
 aries, and by the warmth of his temper and force of 
 
79 
 
 his prejudices, be drawn to espouse auy delusion 
 that flattered his particular zeal and favorite opi- 
 nions. But it is difficult to account for the same con- 
 duct in his scholar Cyprian ; a man of a more acute 
 head and sober mind, but fond of power and Epis- 
 copal Authority ; whose character would tempt us to 
 suspect, that he was the inventor rather than the 
 believer of such idle stories, and the director rather 
 than the dupe of senseless visionaries. Yet in all 
 qusestionable points of doctrine or discipline, which 
 he had a mind to introduce into the Christian wor- 
 ship, we find him constantly appealing to the testi- 
 mony of heavenly visions and divine revelations. It 
 is certain, says Mr. Dodivell, that all things of great 
 moment, which related to the public state of the 
 Church, ivere foretold to him in visions. For instance, 
 in a letter to Cceciliu^, he declares, that he had re- 
 ceived a divine admonition to mix water with wine 
 in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, in order to render 
 it effectual. In another to the Clergy, concerning 
 certain Priests who had restored some lapsed Chris- 
 tians too hastily to the Communion of the Church, 
 he threatens them to execute what he was ordered to 
 do against them, in a vision, if they did not desist. 
 He makes the same threat to one Pupianus, who 
 had spoken ill of him, and withdrawn himself from 
 his communion; where his editor Rigaltius makes 
 this remark, "that the argument of visions and 
 divine revelations, which Cyprian so frequently uses, 
 is a weapon of great force in the hands of so good a 
 man, otherwise a vain and contemptible one ; since 
 crafty Sophists might easily invent such visions, in 
 
80 
 
 favor of any cause^ to delude the simple and un- 
 wary/^ 
 
 In a letter likewise to the Clergy and the people, 
 Cyprian tells them, " how he had been admonished 
 and directed bv God, to ordain one Numidicus a 
 Priest : who by his persuasive exhortations had sent 
 a large number of Martyrs before him to the other 
 world, either stoned or burnt to death ; and beheld 
 even with joy, the wife of his bosom burnt together 
 with the rest ; being himself also left for dead, half 
 burnt and buried in stones, till he was found scarce 
 alive, and carried off by the piety of his daughter, 
 and so restored to the world against his will. But 
 the Lord had now signified the cause of it ; that he 
 might add him to the Priesthood of his Church/^ 
 In another letter he recommends to them one Cele- 
 rinus, whom he had ordained a lecturer : lohose 
 modesty, he says, had been over-ruled and compelled 
 by a divine vision, to accept that office. Where Rigal- 
 tius once more reflects, on the great diligence of 
 Cyprian, in making such use of visions. But Cyprian 
 himself suggests the reason of it, in the Epistle 
 immediately preceding, addressed likewise to the 
 clergy and the people, concerning one Aurelius, 
 whom he had ordained a lecturer, by a divine admo- 
 nition, without calling them together and consulting 
 with them in common, concerning the character 
 and merit of the candidate, as it was the custom 
 of those days in all clerical ordinations ; for which 
 he excuses himself by saying, that there was no 
 occasion, in the present case, to wait for human 
 testimonies, when the divine suffrage had already been 
 
81 
 
 signified. This then seems to be the meaning of 
 Cyprian^ s diligence in the use of visions, that whenever 
 he thought fit to exert his Episcopal authority, with- 
 out the previous consent of his Clergy and people, he 
 might obviate their murmurs by alledging a divine 
 command for it. 
 
 But the most memorable effect of any of his 
 visions was, his flight and retreat, when he withdrew 
 himself from his Church, in the time of persecution. 
 A step which gave great scandal, and seems to have 
 been considered by the Clergy of Rome, in a public 
 letter written upon the subject of it, to the Clergy 
 of Carthage, as a desertion of his post, and pastoral 
 duty. So that it is no wonder to find Cyprian him- 
 self, as well as his Apologist Pontius, the writer of 
 his Life, so sollicitous to excuse it. ^^ There is no 
 doubt, says Rigaltius, but that the severity of his 
 master Tertulliaii, who wrote a book against all 
 flight in time of persecution, raised such scruples 
 and shame in the mind of Cyprian, as made him 
 labor hard to wipe off that disgrace; as the pains 
 and perplexity of his Advocate Pontius likewise 
 shew.'"* They both of them therefore affirm, " that 
 he was commanded to retire, by a special revelation 
 from heaven : and that his flight was not the effect of 
 any other fear but that of offending God, and that 
 his mind, wholly devoted and subservient to the 
 admonitions of God, was persuaded, that, if he had 
 not obeyed the Lord, when he commanded him to 
 retreat, he should sin even by suffering martyrdom.^' 
 Yet this plea was nothing else without doubt, but a 
 mere fiction, contrived for the purpose of quieting 
 
 d3 
 
83 
 
 the scandal, that was raised by his flight, and is in 
 effect confuted by himself in another letter to the 
 Clergy, in which he declares, " that it was the advice 
 and authority of one Tertullus, which prevailed with 
 him to withdraw himself from a place, where his 
 life was so much sought for : wherefore he desires 
 them to perform all the functions of his office for 
 him during his retreat, since their persons were 
 not exposed to so much envy and danger as his 
 would be/^ 
 
 Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria, who lived in the 
 same age, has left the same story likewise concern- 
 ing himself, and swears to the truth of it : that in 
 the time of a persecution, he was commanded by 
 God in a vision to retire from Alexandria, and was 
 wonderfully preserved and guarded by him in his 
 retreat. And shall we not believe a most holy Bishop, 
 says Mr. Dodwell, even upon his oath? The same 
 Dionysius affirms likewise that he had another vision, 
 upon the subject of reading heretical books, about 
 which he had some scruples, till a voice from heaven 
 expressly injoined him to read them all ivithout reserve, 
 because he was able to examine and confute them. This 
 reminds me of a vision also which St. Jerom declares 
 to have been given to himself, about a century *fter; 
 in which he was dragged to the tribunal of Christ, and 
 terribly threatened, and even scourged for the grievous 
 sin of reading secular and profane writers, Cicero, 
 Virgil, and Horace ; whom for that reason he resolved 
 never to take into his hands any more : upon whicli 
 Ruffinus rallies him with great spirit and smartness, 
 
83 
 
 for inventing and publishing so silly a lie. And it 
 must needs be thougbt strange, that God should in- 
 join contrarieties to his saints and servants ; should 
 command one Father to read heretical books because 
 he was able to confute them, yet forbid it afterwards 
 to another, who was full as able to confute them as 
 his predecessor. But if Jeromes vision deserved to be 
 treated by his contemporaries as a fiction, I see no 
 reason, either from the nature of the thing, or the 
 use which is made of it, or the characters of the per- 
 sons concerned, why the lisions of Cyprian and Dio- 
 nysius should not merit the same treatment. 
 
 But how credible soever these ^dsions might appear 
 to the generality of Christians in those days, yet 
 there were many at the same time, as Cyprian him- 
 self confesses, who contemned and made a jest of 
 them all, as mere illusions and impertinent fancies : 
 but they were a sort of men, he says, who ivoulcl 
 sooner believe any thing against a Priest, than believe 
 a Priest. 
 
 In one of the Dialogues commonly ascribed to 
 Lucian, the Christians seem to be ridiculed on the 
 account of their fasting and watching whole nights hi 
 hymns and prayers, as if they could infuse by that 
 means whatever sort of dreams or visions they thought 
 fit. Now there is a passage so applicable to this re- 
 mark in the ancient narrative of the Martyrdom of 
 St. Ignatius, as to make us almost imagine that the 
 author had alluded to it. The narrative was drawn 
 up by persons who had accompanied the Martyr from 
 Asia to Rome, whose thoughts for several months 
 past had been employed on nothing else but the sub- 
 
84 
 
 ject of his martyrdom, and it concludes thus : ''These 
 things were done on the 13th of the Kalends of Ja- 
 nuary ; Sura and Synecius being the second time 
 Consuls of Rome ; of which we ourselves were eye- 
 witnesses. And the night following, as we were 
 watching with tears in the house, and praying to 
 God with bended knees, that he would impart to us 
 weak men some assurance of what was done, [with 
 regard to the Martyr,] it happened, that falling into 
 a slumber, some of us, on a sudden, saw the blessed 
 Ignatius standing before us and embracing us ; others 
 beheld the blessed Martyr praying for us ; others, as 
 it were dropping with sweat, as if just come from 
 his great labor, and standing by the Lord : which 
 when we saw, being filled with joy, and comparing 
 the visions of our dreams with each other, we glori- 
 fied God, the giver of all good, and being assured of 
 the blessedness of the saint, we have made known 
 unto you both the day and the time, that being as- 
 sembled together, according to the time of his mar- 
 tyrdom, we may communicate with the combatant 
 and most valiant Martyr of Christ." 
 
 But to declare freely what I think : whatever 
 ground there might be in those primitive ages, either 
 to reject or to allow the authority of those visions, 
 yet from all the accounts of them that remain to us 
 in these days, there seems to be the greatest reason 
 to suspect that they Avere all contrived, or authorized 
 at least, by the leading men of the Church, for the 
 sake of moderating and governing with more ease 
 the unruly spirit of the populace, in those times of 
 danger and difficulty. For they are generally ap- 
 
85 
 
 plied to excuse the conduct of particular persons, in 
 some instances of it liable to censure ; or to enforce 
 some particular doctrine or discipline, warmly pressed 
 by some, and not well relished by others ; or to con- 
 firm things not onely trifling and frivolous, but 
 sometimes even superstitious and hurtfull to true 
 religion. 
 
 I have already observed, that it was the heretic 
 MontanuSj who first gave a vogue to prophetic visions 
 and ecstacies in the primitive Church. But when 
 his pretensions came afterwards to be suspected and 
 decried, it is remarkable that those who under- 
 took to expose and confute them, employed such 
 argument against his prophecy, as seemed to 
 shake the credit of all prophecy. For whereas the 
 Montanists delivered their prophecies always in ec- 
 stacy, or with loss of senses, it was then urged 
 against them, " that this was the proof of a diabo- 
 lical spirit ; that the true prophets never had such 
 fits ; never lost their senses ; but calmly and sedately 
 received and understood whatever was revealed to 
 them.^^ And Epiphanius makes this the very crite- 
 rion or distinguishing character between a true and 
 false prophet; that the true had no ecstasies, con- 
 stantly retained his senses, and with firmness of mind 
 apprehended and uttered the divine oracles. St. Jerom 
 also declares, that the true prophets never spake in 
 ecstasy, or madness of heart, like Montanus and his 
 mad women, Prisca and Maximilla, hut understood 
 what they delivered, and could speak or hold their 
 tongues whenever they pleased, ivhich those who spake 
 in ecstasy could not do. Eusebius also mentions a 
 
86 
 
 book of one Miltiades, written against Montanus, 
 the purpose of whicli was, to prove that a prophet 
 ought not to speak in ecstasy. Yet from the testi- 
 monies collected above, we have seen, that before 
 the Montanists had brought those ecstasies into dis- 
 grace, the prophecy of the orthodox, as well as that 
 of the heretics, was declared to have been exerted 
 in ecstasy. And it appears to have been the current 
 opinion in those earlier days, that the prophets also 
 of the Old Testament received and uttered their re- 
 velations in ecstasy. 
 
 Athenagoras expressly affirms it, and says, " that 
 while they were under the divine impulse, they were 
 transported out of their senses, and delivered in ec- 
 stacy what was inspired, being mere organs of the 
 Holy Spirit, just as a pipe or flute is of him who 
 blows into it." Justin Martyr speaks of them in the 
 same strain, ^^that the Spirit of God descending 
 from above, made use of them as of an instrument, 
 just as the quill strikes the harp or lyre, to revele to 
 us the knowledge of divine and heavenly things." 
 Tertullian also declares, " that he who has the Spirit 
 within him, must necessarilj^ be deprived of his 
 senses, especially whenever he beholds the glory of 
 God, or when God speaks by him, as being then 
 overshadowed by the divine power." 
 
 Again, Montanus's associate, Maximilla, gave out 
 that the gift of prophecy was to cease with her, and 
 no other prophet was to arise after her. In answer 
 to which, the orthodox asserted, that the true spirit 
 of prophecy could never fail or cease in the Church, till 
 the consummation of all things. In which, as Mr. 
 
87 
 
 Dodtvell ownsj " the ancients argued rastly, and 
 were mistaken in tlieir notion of the perpetuity of 
 prophecy ; since Eusebius, who made it his business 
 to explore and deduce the succession of those pro- 
 phetic gifts, intimates that they were ceased and 
 vanished in his days :^^ that is, about the middle of 
 the fourth centmy. 
 
 Since we are now considering the miracles of the 
 Cyprianic age, I cannot forbear taking notice of two 
 or three of those wonderfull stories, which Cyprian 
 himself attests, in that magnificent treatise, as it was 
 called, concerning the lapsed Christians, who, in the 
 time of persecution, had been induced by the terrors 
 of present death or tortures to deny Christ, or offer 
 incense to an idol. " There was a man," says he, 
 " who went up voluntarily to the Capitol to deny the 
 Lord ; and when he had denied him, was presently 
 struck dumb. — A woman also, who, after her lapse, 
 had the impudence to go to the baths, was there 
 seized by an unclean spirit, and throAvn to the 
 ground, and with her teeth tore that tongue with 
 which she had been either talking or feeding im- 
 piously; and so became her own executioner; for 
 she died not long after in great anguish and tor- 
 ments of her bowels." He introduces the next story 
 more solemnly, by declaring that he himself was pre- 
 sent and an eye-witness of it. " Certain parents," 
 says he, " too solicitous for their own safety, and fly- 
 ing from persecution, left an infant daughter to the 
 care of a nurse ; who carried it presently to the ma- 
 gistrates. These being then assembled with the peo- 
 ple before an idol, and seeing the child not yet old 
 
88 
 
 enough to eat flesh, gave it a piece of bread dipt in 
 wine, being the remains of what had been offered to 
 the idoL The mother, ignorant of the fact, within a 
 short time after took her daughter home again : but 
 the child was yet no more able to discover the crime 
 committed, than she was before to understand or to 
 hinder it. The mother brought her therefore to us 
 at the sacrament, while we knew nothing of the 
 matter. But the child being now mingled with the 
 saints, and impatient of the service and prayers, be- 
 gan to be seized, sometimes with fits of crying, some- 
 times with tortures of the mind, and, as if it had 
 been upon the rack, betrayed by all the signs which 
 it^s tender age could give, a sense of guilt and con- 
 sciousness of the fact. The service being ended, 
 when the Deacon began to give the cup to all pre- 
 sent, and it came to the child's turn, the little one, 
 by divine instinct, turned away it's face, held it's 
 lips close shut, and refused the cup : the Deacon 
 persisted, and poured a little down it's throat, tho' 
 by force. Upon this, convulsions and vomitings in- 
 sued. The Eucharist could not stay in a body and 
 mouth so defiled : the consecrated potion of the 
 Lord's blood burst out of it's polluted bowels. So 
 great is the power, so great the majesty of the Lord; 
 the secrets of darkness are detected by it's light; 
 nor could hidden crimes be conceled from the Priest 
 of God ; for this happened to an infant, which was 
 not yet of age to speak, or tell the crimes which 
 others had committed upon it. There was another 
 woman," says Cyprian, "who, after she had taken 
 the sacrament with us unobserved, was instantly 
 
89 
 
 seized with pains and torments^ and fell down con- 
 vulsed and trembling, as if slie had swallowed a 
 sword or deadly poyson : and her crime, which had 
 escaped the notice of men, met with it^s punishment 
 from God. Another, who had attempted with her 
 polluted hands to open her chest, [in which, the 
 consecrated elements, according to the custom of 
 that age, were kept for her use at home,] fire burst 
 out of it in such a manner that she durst not touch 
 it. Another man, who had also been defiled, having 
 had the assurance to take a part of the consecrated 
 bread among the rest undiscovered, could neither 
 eat nor handle it, but instead of it found a coal of 
 fire in his hands. ^^ 
 
 Now what other notion can we reasonably enter- 
 tain of these strange stories, but that they were 
 partly forged, and partly aggravated and dressed up 
 into this tragical form, from some accidental dis- 
 orders, which the sense of a concealed guilt, and the 
 dread of God^s judgements upon it, would naturally 
 raise in anxious minds, on that awfull occasion of 
 receiving the Sacrament ? For it is certain, that 
 they were of the greatest use, in these times of 
 danger and trial, to support the discipline of the 
 Church, which the Lord guarded, as Mr. Dodivell 
 says, by these terrors, as by the sword of a Cherubim. 
 Since none of those, who had secretly lapsed, or 
 been weak enough to deny the faith, and from a 
 desire of conceling their shame, had evaded the 
 penance of the Church, durst either come openly to 
 the Sacrament, or take it even privately at home, 
 or yet wholly abstain from it, when the divine judge- 
 
90 
 
 ments were so signally exerted upon all^ who had 
 ventured on any of those expedients, before they 
 had made a public satisfaction for their crime, and 
 been absolved of it in form by the Pastors of the 
 Church. And it was without doubt for this end, 
 that all these stories, with manv more of the same 
 kind, were so pompously and rhetorically set forth 
 by this eminent Bishop, in his celebrated treatise 
 concerning the lapsed Christians. 
 
 Sect. 5. As to the gift of expounding the Scriptures, 
 or the mysteries of God, by a divine inspiration, 
 which is clamed likewise by the Primitive Fathers, 
 there is not the least trace of it to be found in any 
 age of the Church, from the days of the Apostles. 
 For in the second and third Centuries, the very 
 period, in which all the other miraculous gifts are 
 supposed to have flourished in their greatest vigor, 
 it is certain, as we have seen above, that a most 
 senseless, extravagant, and enthusiastic method of 
 expounding prevailed, which has ever since been 
 utterly slighted and rejected : whereas in these later 
 days, when all extraordinary gifts are confessedly 
 ceased, a clear, solid, and rational way of interpre- 
 ting generally obtains, as the warmest advocates of 
 Antiquity are forced to allow. And whenever any 
 particular Father happens to be censured for his 
 ridiculous comments on Sacred Writ, his Apologists 
 with one voice alledge, that such expositions are not 
 to be charged to the man, but to the age in which he 
 lived, which could not relish or indure any better. 
 
 Justin Martyr however lays claim to this gift, as 
 
91 
 
 conferred upon him by the special grace of God, upon 
 which Mr. Tillemont declares, "that of all the ex- 
 traordinary graces, which the Holy Spirit bestowed 
 upon the Church in those times, there were few so 
 considerable, as that of understanding the Scriptures, 
 which was communicated by singular favor to Justin.'^ 
 Yet from all the writings and monuments of the 
 very earliest Fathers, which remain to us, it is mani- 
 fest, beyond all contradiction, that there never was 
 any such gift in the Church, after the times of the 
 Apostles ; and that Justin in particular, had no 
 better claim to it, than any of the rest. And if 
 those Fathers then, through a fervency of zeal, or 
 an enthusiastic turn of mind, could mistake such 
 fancifull expositions for divine inspirations, I see 
 no reason why they might not as easily be deluded 
 in every other instance of those pretended gifts, 
 which flattered the same zeal and spirit, that so 
 strongly possessed them. 
 
 It is a common case with men of great piety, 
 zealously persuaded of the truth and high importance 
 of any religious doctrine, to think it reasonable 
 that God should interpose himself miraculously in 
 favor of it, when it happens to be opposed by any 
 earthly power and in danger of being oppressed : 
 and when they are thus prepared by their prejudices, 
 to expect a divine interposition, they listen to every 
 pretension of that sort, which craft or wild enthu- 
 siasm can devise, without allowing their reason to 
 examine it, or to suggest the suspicion of a fraud. 
 There are many instances of this in History, and a 
 remarkable one in our own ; that of the Holy Maid 
 
93 
 
 of Kent J in the reign of Henry the VIII. : who by 
 the pretence of visions and divine revelations^ com- 
 municated in trances or ecstacy, contrived by Popish 
 Priests, to raise the sinking credit of their cause, 
 drew in Bishop Fisher, with many other eminent 
 persons, to take her for a Prophetess, divinely in- 
 spired, as Tertullian did his ecstatic Maid. Yet this 
 modern Prelate was more learned and judicious, 
 than any one perhaps of all the ancient Fathers, 
 and by all accounts of him, as pious and religious 
 too : since he lost his life, or, in the stile of the 
 Romish Church, suffered martyrdom, for the sake of 
 those very prejudices, which betrayed him into this 
 folly. But the Lord Cromwell, expostulating with 
 him on that subject, rightly told him, ^^ that the 
 true reason, which induced him to give credit to the 
 maid, was the matter of her prophecies ; to which he 
 was so addicted, that nothing could come amiss, 
 which served to that end ; and he appealed to his 
 conscience, whether, if she had prophesied in favor 
 of the King^s proceedings, he would have given such 
 easy credit to her, and not have examined the mat- 
 ter farther/^ 
 
 Sect. 6. The gift of tongues also is clamed, as we 
 have seen, among the rest, and affirmed to have 
 been actually possessed by the primitive Christians : 
 for if the testimony of Irenaus can be credited, many 
 Tvere indued with it in his days, and heard to speak 
 all hinds of languages in the Church. And in truth, 
 this gift, in the common estimation of human reason, 
 has been thought so essentially necessary to the pro- 
 pagation of the Gospel, in those first ages, that the 
 
93 
 
 advocates of the primitive miracles, trusting to that 
 hypothesis, instead of searching into the fact, urge 
 the necessity of it^s continuance after the days of 
 the Apostles, as a proof of the continuance of all the 
 rest. Yet how great soever the importance of it 
 may seem to be, it is evident, as I have elsewhere 
 shewn, from the origin, nature and exercise of it, 
 as they are represented in the New Testament, that 
 it was not permanent or lasting, either in the Church 
 at large, or in those particular persons, who were 
 principally favored with it, but was granted onely 
 on certain special occasions, and then again with- 
 drawn, even from the Apostles themselves ; so that, 
 in the ordinary course of their ministry, they appear 
 to have been generally destitute of it. 
 
 IrencBus however declares it to have been indulged 
 to many in his days. But it is very remarkable, that 
 this primitive Bishop, who ascribes it so liberally to 
 others, appears to have been in great want of it him- 
 self, for the propagation of the Gospel in his own 
 Diocese, among the Celtce, or Gauls; where, as Dr. 
 Cave interprets his words, it was not the least part of 
 his trouble, that he was forced to learn the language of 
 the country, a rude and barbarous dialect, before he 
 could do any good upon them. Nor is it less strange 
 also, that from the time of Irenceus there is not a 
 single Father, in all the succeding ages, who, upon 
 his authority, has ventured to carry on the same 
 pretension, or make the least claim to it; or to 
 speak of it in any other manner, than as a gift pe- 
 culiar to the first Christians in the times of the 
 Apostles. And I might risk the merit of my argu- 
 
94 
 
 ment on this single point ; that, after the apostolic 
 times, there is not in all history one instance, either 
 well attested, or even so much as mentioned, of any 
 particular person who had ever exercised this gift, or 
 pretended to exercise it, in any age or country what- 
 soever. Mr. Dodwell supposes it to have ceased in 
 the reign of M. Aurelius, about sixty years after the 
 death of St. John. But it is not credible that a 
 gift of such eminent use should intirely cease, while 
 all the rest were subsisting in full vigor, and abound- 
 ing every day more and more. If, according to the 
 common hypothesis, we admit them all to be true, it 
 is not possible, I say, to imagine any cause why this 
 in particular should be withdrawn, and the rest con- 
 tinued ; but if, agreeably to my system, we consider 
 them all as fictitious, we then see an obvious and 
 manifest reason for it. For all the other extraordi- 
 nary gifts, of healing diseases, casting out devils, 
 visions, and ecstatic revelations, afford great room to 
 impostors to exert all their craft of surprizing and 
 dazzling the senses of the simple, the credulous, and 
 the superstitious of all ranks ; whereas the gift of 
 tongues cannot easily be counterfeited, or a preten- ^ 
 sion to it imposed on men of sense, or on any indeec* 
 but those who are utterly illiterate and strangers i^ 
 all tongues but their own : and to acquire a numbe^ 
 of languages by natural means, and to a degree that 
 might make them pass for a supernatural gift, was a 
 work of so much difficulty and labor, as rendered it 
 impracticable to support a pretension of that kind 
 for a succession of many years. And this, in all 
 prolDability, was the real cause of it's being dropped 
 
95 
 
 so early in those primitive ages : for after the men- 
 tion of it by IrencBus, we find it no longer in any 
 subsequent list of the miraculous gifts, nor the least 
 hint of it's continuance in the Church in any later 
 writer, from that time down to the present. If this 
 then appears to have been the case of this particular 
 gift ; that a false claim to it was made by the earty 
 Fathers, and held up for a while till it could no 
 longer be supported ; it is sufficient, one would think, 
 of itself, to blast the general credit of all the rest, 
 tho' no particular mark of fraud could have been 
 fixed on each of them separately : but when there is 
 not a single one among them all, which, either from 
 it's nature, or end, or manner of exertion, or the 
 character of it's witnesses, does not furnish just 
 ground to suspect it as fictitious, it must needs per- 
 suade every rational inquirer that they were all de- 
 rived from the same source of craft and imposture. 
 
 In short, if we trace the history of this gift from 
 its origin, we shall find, that in the times of the 
 Gospel, in which alone the miracles of the Church 
 are allowed to be true by all Christians, it was the 
 'irst gift which was conferred upon the Apostles, in 
 '>j, public and illustrious manner, and reckoned ever 
 yi.'QV among the principal of those which were im- 
 ■irted to the first converts. But in the succeding 
 ges, when miracles began to be of a suspected and 
 dubious character, it is observable, that this gift is 
 mentioned but once by a single writer, and then va- 
 nished of a sudden, without the least notice or hint 
 given by any of the ancients, either of the manner, 
 or time, or cause of it's vanishing. Lastly, in the 
 
96 
 
 later ages, when the miracles of the Church were not 
 onely suspected, but found to be false by our Re- 
 formers, and considered as such ever since by all 
 Protestants, this gift has never once been heard of, 
 or pretended to by the Romanists themselves, tho^ 
 they challenge at the same time all the other gifts of 
 the Apostolic days. From all which, I think, we 
 may reasonably infer, that the gift of tongues may 
 be considered as a proper test and criterion for de- 
 termining the miraculous pretensions of all Churches 
 which derive their descent from the Apostles ; and 
 consequently, if, in the list of their extraordinary 
 gifts, they cannot shew us this, we may fairly con- 
 clude, that they have none else to shew which are 
 real and genuin. 
 
 I have now run through all the various kinds of 
 the miraculous gifts which are pretended to have 
 subsisted in the Church during the second and third 
 centuries, and have opened the genuin state of them, 
 as far as it is discoverable to us at this distance, from 
 the most authentic monuments and testimonies of 
 the principal Fathers of those centuries. Ages, 
 which are always stiled the purest, and in which 
 these very Fathers bore the first character; not 
 onely on the account of their piety and integrity, 
 but of their abilities also and learning. If any sus- 
 picions then can be entertained against such wit- 
 nesses, they will be stronger still against all who 
 succeded them, especially after the Empire became 
 Christian, when, according to the hypothesis of the 
 very admirers of these primitive ages, a general 
 corruption both of faith and morals began more 
 
97 
 
 openly to infect the Christian Chui'ch; which by 
 that revolution, as St. Jerom says, lost as much of 
 her virtue as it had gained of power and ivealth. 
 
 But in the case of these miracles, there is one 
 circumstance common to all the -writers who attest 
 them, as well as in the earlier as the later ages, 
 that tho^ their assertions be strong their instances 
 are weak ; and when, in proof of what they affirm, 
 they descend to alledge any particular facts, they are 
 usually so unlucky in the choice of them, that instead 
 of strengthening, they weaken, the credit of their 
 general affirmation, and, from the absurdity of each 
 miracle related by them, furnish a fresh objection to 
 their power of working any. This the reader can 
 hardly fail to observe from the examples already 
 produced ; to which I shall add one or two more of 
 the most considerable, which are transmitted to us 
 from the same ages, and which I had before omitted 
 to recite. 
 
 One of the most authentic and celebrated pieces 
 in all primitive antiquity, is the circidar letter of the 
 Church of Smyrna, containing a narrative of the 
 Martyrdom of St. Polycaiy, their Bishop, and of 
 the many miracles, as Mr. Dodivell says, ivhich made 
 it illustrious. This letter, written about the middle 
 of the second century, informs us, " that when that 
 Saint was entring the lists, in which he was to be 
 burnt, there was so great a tumult that no body 
 could be heard. But there came a voice to him from 
 heaven, saying, be strong, Polycarp, and acquit thy- 
 self like a rnan ; and tho' no body saw who it was 
 that spake, yet many of the brethren heard the 
 
 E 
 
98 
 
 voice. As soon as he had finished his prayer, the 
 executioner kindled the fire, and the flame began to 
 blaze to a great height. When behold, says the 
 writer, a mighty wonder appeared to us, whose lot 
 it was to see it, and who wei-e reserved by heaven to 
 declare to others what we had seen. For the flame, 
 forming a kind of arch, like to the sail of a ship 
 filled with the wind, encompassed the body of the 
 martyr as in a circle, who stood in the midst of it, 
 not as flesh which is burnt, but bread which is 
 baked, or as gold and silver glowing in a furnace ; 
 and so sweet a smell issued from him all the while, 
 as if it had been the smoak of frankincense or some 
 rich spices. At length, when these wicked men 
 saw that his body could not be consumed by fire, 
 they commanded the executioner to draw near, and 
 to thrust his sword into him; which being done 
 accordingly, there came out of his Body a Dove, and 
 so great a quantity of blood as quite extinguished 
 the fire ; so that the whole multitude were amazed to 
 see so great a difi'erence between the unbelievers and 
 the elect." Yet it appears from the sequel of the 
 narrative, that there was fire enough still left to 
 consume the body to ashes, which was executed with 
 great care, that the Christians might not be able to 
 preserve the least remains of it. 
 
 The greatest part of this Epistle is transcribed by 
 Eusebius, who has omitted the mention of the Dove 
 which flew out of his body ; for which reason Mr. 
 Dodwell and Archbishop Wake have thought fit also 
 to omit it. Yet all the oldest copies still extant, 
 from which Archbishop Usher j Cotelerius, and Ruinart, 
 
99 
 
 published their several editions, retain this passage ; 
 which Eusebius might probably drop for the same 
 reason for which Mr. Dodwell and Bishop Wake 
 also profess to have dropt it; viz._, for the sake of 
 rendring the narrative the less suspected. To the 
 end of this letter is annexed the following advertise- 
 ment. " This Epistle was transcribed by Caius from 
 the copy of Irenceus, the disciple of Poly carp ; and 
 I, Socrates, transcribed it at Corinth. After which, 
 I, Pioniits, again wrote it out from the copy above 
 mentioned, having searched it out by the revelation 
 of Polycarp, who directed me to it/^ &c. 
 
 Eusebius also relates a miracle wrought by Nar- 
 cissus, Bishop of Jeiiisalem, about the end of the 
 second or the beginning of the third century ; " that 
 when the sacred oil was almost spent, in the vigil 
 of Easter, and the people were in a great consterna- 
 tion about it, he ordered those, who had the care of 
 the lamps, to go and draw water from a certain well 
 in the neighbourhood, and to bring it away to him ; 
 which being accordingly done. Narcissus, after he 
 had prayed over it, commanded them to pour it into 
 the lamps with a sincere faith in Christ ; upon which, 
 by a miraculous and divine power, the nature of the 
 water was changed into the fatness of oil ; of which 
 oil, as Eusebius says, several small quantities were 
 preserved by great numbers of the faithfuU, to his 
 time, which was about an hundred years after the 
 date of the miracle." 
 
 The same Historian, giving an account of the 
 horrible barbarities which were exercised upon the 
 Christians of Palestine, concludes one of his stories 
 
 £ 2 
 
100 
 
 in the following manner : " after these things had 
 ])een transacted many days successively^ this miracle 
 appeared. There was a clear and bright sky^ and a 
 remarkable serenity of the air ; when on a sudden, 
 the pillars in the porticoes of the City, poured out 
 drops of tears; and when there was not the least 
 moisture in the air, the streets and public places 
 were all wet, no body knew how, as if water had 
 been thrown upon them ; so that it became a com- 
 mon talk, that the earth wept for the impiety w^hich 
 was committed, and to reprove the relentless and 
 savage nature of men, stones and inanimate bodies 
 shed tears for what had happened." A description 
 of this kind might easily be excused in an Orator or 
 a Poet, but when an Historian, after he has raised 
 our attention and prepared us to expect something 
 great and miraculous, tells us onely of stones shed- 
 ding tears for the iinpieties of men, he debases the 
 gravity of History, and makes miracles themselves 
 contemptible. 
 
 Mr. Dodwell, as I have before said, has, with 
 great diligence, deduced the History of the primitive 
 miracles down to these very times of Eusebius, which 
 he then shuts up with the establishment of Chris- 
 tianity by human laws, declaring, "that many things 
 concurred to recommend the credit of the preceding 
 ages, which have no place in those that followed :" 
 and speaking of the Life of Gregory, called the 
 wonder -worker, written by Gregory of Nyssa, a 
 Bishop of the greatest piety and gravity, he says 
 "in this Life there are many things which breath 
 the air of imposture and the genius of the fourtli 
 
101 
 
 century^ so that I dare not mix them with what is 
 more genuin, for fear of hurting the credit of all/' 
 For this reason therefore, it was my first intention, 
 to confine my inquiries also to the same period ; but 
 having since perceived, that several of our learned 
 Divines and principal advocates of the Christian 
 faith have not scrupled to assert the succession of 
 true miracles to the end even of the fifth century, 
 I thought it necessary to extend my argument to the 
 same length, lest I should seem to neglect any evi- 
 dence which could be offered to me, and especially 
 such as is declared to be convincing and decisive by 
 men of their character. But from every step that 
 we advance forward, we shall readily perceive, that 
 Mr. Dodwell, who had as much piety and more 
 learning than any of them, has in this respect shewn 
 more judgement too, by restraining the miraculous 
 powers of the Church to the three first centuries. 
 
 In the fourth century, we find some of the principal 
 Fathers delivering themselves on this subject so vari- 
 ously and inconsistently, as shews, that tho' they were 
 ashamed to deny what they knew to be true, yet they 
 were desirous to inculcate what they knew to be false . 
 For on some occasions, when they are pressed, they 
 plainly confess that miracles were then ceased ; yet 
 on others, they appeal to them again as common, 
 and performed among them every day. For example, 
 St. Chrysostom observes, " that in the infancy of the 
 Church, the extraordinary gifts of the spirit were 
 bestowed even on the unworthy, because those early 
 times stood in need of that help for the more easy 
 propagation of the Gospel ; but now, says he, they 
 
102 
 
 are not given even to the worthy, because the pre- 
 sent strength of the Christian faith is no longer in 
 want of them." In another place, speaking of the 
 miraculous powers of the Apostles, and of the force 
 which they had in converting the Gentile world, 
 "wherefore," adds he, "because no miracles are 
 wrought now, we are not to take it for a proof that 
 none were wrought then ; for then they were of use, 
 but now they are not ; for the first planters of the 
 Gospel were simple and ignorant men, and had 
 nothing to teach from themselves, but what they 
 received from God, that they delivered to the world ; 
 so we likewise of these times, bring nothing indeed 
 of our own, but what we received from them, that 
 we declare to all. Nor do we yet persuade by the 
 force of our reason, but evince the truth of our 
 doctrines from the Holy Scriptures and the miracles 
 then wrought in confirmation of them." Again, 
 speaking of the Jews, in our Saviour^s time, who 
 desired a sign, he says, "there are some also even 
 now, who desire and ask why are not miracles per- 
 formed still at this day ? and why are there no per- 
 sons who raised the dead and cure diseases ?" To 
 which he replies, " that it was owing to the want of 
 faith and virtue and piety in those times." On ano- 
 ther occasion also he declares, " that St. Paul's 
 Handkerchiefs could once do greater miracles than 
 all the Christians of his days could do with ten 
 thousand prayers and tears." Lastly, in his books of 
 consolation, addressed to his friend Stagirius, who 
 was supposed to be possessed and horribly tormented 
 by an evil spirit, it is expressly signified, " that 
 
103 
 
 neither the tombs of the Martyrs, to which he had 
 often applied for relief, nor the repeated endeavours 
 of the most holy and celebrated Exorcists of those 
 days, were able to drive the Devil out of him." 
 
 There are several other passages in this Father of 
 the same strain ; in which he allows the cessation of 
 miracles, and speaks of them even with contempt, 
 " as proper onely to rouse the dull and sluggish, but 
 useless to men of philosophical minds ; that they 
 were frequently liable to sinister suspicions, of being 
 mere phantasms and illusions, and that it was a 
 proof of the greater generosity of that age, to take 
 God^s word without such pledges." 
 
 From these testimonies, one would necessarily 
 conclude, upon the authority of St. Chrysostom, that 
 miracles were ceased in his days : yet in other parts 
 of his works we find him in a different story, and 
 haranguing on the mighty wonders, which were 
 performed among them every day, by the reliques of 
 the Martyrs, in casting out Devils, curing all diseases, 
 and drawing whole Cities and people to their Sepid- 
 chers. He displays also the miraculous cures wrought 
 by the use of consecrated oil, and by the sign of the 
 Cross; which last he calls a defence against all evil, 
 and a medicine against all sickness, and affirms it to 
 have been miraculously impressed, in his own time, on 
 people's garments. 
 
 St. Austin also, who lived at the same time, tho* 
 in a different part of the world, takes notice of the 
 same objection, made by the Sceptics, with which 
 the Christians were commonly urged in this age. 
 " They ask us, says he, ivhy are not those miracles 
 
104 
 
 performed now, which you declare to have been wrought 
 formerly ? I could tell them, that they were then 
 necessarj^, before the world believed, for this very 
 purpose, that the world might believe ; but he, who 
 still requires prodigies, that he may become a be- 
 liever, is himself a great prodigy, who does not be- 
 lieve now, when the world does believe." One 
 would not imagine, that these words, which seem to 
 imply a cessation of miracles, were the preface to an 
 elaborate narrative and solemn attestation of great 
 numbers of them, said to have been wrought in these 
 very times : which, if true, as they are here affirmed 
 by St. Austin from his own knowledge, must have 
 been more illustrious, both for the number and the 
 excellence of them, than all which were wrought by 
 the Apostles themselves. 
 
 But before we descend to particulars, I cannot 
 forbear observing, what this Father has delivered 
 concerning the general state and credit of them 
 among the Christians themselves, at the very time 
 when they were wrought. He tells us then, that 
 tho' miracles were frequently wrought, either by the 
 name of Jesus, or by his Sacraments, or by the prayer's 
 or the memorials of the Martyrs; jet the fame of 
 them was not so illustrious as of those of the Apos- 
 tles, since they were scarce ever known to the whole 
 City or place where they happened to be performed, 
 but for the most part to a very few onely ; while all 
 the rest were utterly ignorant of them ; especially if 
 the city was large : and if ever they were told abroad 
 to other people, yet they were not recommended 
 with such authority, as to be received without diffi- 
 
105 
 
 culty aud doubting, tho^ reported by true believers 
 to true believers/^ 
 
 That he might put an end therefore to this strange 
 negHgence of the Christians, with regard to their 
 own miracles, he took care, as oft as he heard of 
 any miracle, " that the parties concerned in it should 
 be examined, and a verbal proces, or authentic nar- 
 rative be drawn of the fact, which was afterwards 
 publicly read to the people. Yet all this caution, as 
 he says, was not sufficient to make the miracles 
 known, or at all regarded : because those who were 
 present at the recital of such narratives heard them 
 but once, while the greater part were absent ; and 
 even those who heard them, retained nothing a 
 few days after of what they had heard, and seldom 
 or never took the pains to tell it to any body else 
 whom they knew to be absent/^ This account of 
 the matter would be very surprizing, were it not 
 explained to us by the miracles themselves, of which 
 I have here added a few specimens, whence we shall 
 easily collect the reason of that coldness and indiffer- 
 ence, which the people of those days expressed to- 
 wards them. 
 
 Por instance, among many other stories of the 
 same kind, he I'elates these, which follow : " A 
 pious old Cobler of Hip2)o, where he himself was 
 Bishop, having lost his old coat, and wanting money 
 to buy a new one, betook himself to the twenty Mar- 
 tyrs, whose chappel or memorial was famous in that 
 city ; where he prayed to them very earnestly, that 
 he might be enabled hj them to get some cloaths. 
 Some young Fellows, who overheard him, began to 
 
 E 3 
 
106 
 
 make sport with him, and pursued him with their 
 scoffs, for begging money to buy a coat. But as 
 the old man walked away, without minding them, 
 he saw a large fish lie gasping on the shore, which 
 he caught by the help of the young men, and sold 
 to a Christian Cook, for three hundred pence ; and 
 laying out the money on wooll, set his wife to work, 
 to provide cloaths for him : but the Cook, cutting 
 open the fish, found a gold ring also in the belly of 
 it ; which out of compassion to the poor man, and 
 the terror also of religion, he presently carried to 
 the Cobler, saying, see here is the cloathing, which 
 the twenty Martyrs have given you. 
 
 There was one HesjJerius likewise, as he tells us, 
 a man of Tribunician quality, whose country house 
 near Hippo was haunted by evil spirits, and his cat- 
 tel also and servants afflicted by them : upon which 
 he sent a message to the Priests at Hippo, when 
 Austin happened to be absent, that some of them 
 would come over to him, and drive the evil Spirits 
 away by their prayers. One of them accordingly 
 went, and offered the sacrifice of Chrisfs body upon 
 the spot, praying at the same time, as fervently as 
 he was able, that this vexation might be removed ; 
 upon which by God^s mercy it instantly ceased. 
 
 " The same Hesperius had received from a friend 
 some holy earth, brought from Jerusalem, where 
 Christ rose from his grave on the third day ; which 
 earth he hung up in his bedchamber, to secure him- 
 self from the mischief of those evil spirits. But 
 since his house was now cleared of them, he was 
 considering, what he should do with this earth, being 
 
107 
 
 unwilling, out of reverence to it, to keep it any 
 longer in his bedchamber. It happened, that St. 
 Austin and another Bishop, called Maximinus, were 
 then in the neighbourhood ; so that Hesperius sent 
 them an invitation to come to his house ; which they 
 immediately accepted ; and after he had acquainted 
 them with the whole affair, he desired, that the 
 sacred earth might be deposited somewhere in the 
 ground, and an Oratory built over it, where the 
 Christians might assemble for the performance of 
 divine service : the two Bishops had no objection, so 
 that his project was presently executed. There was 
 at the same place a country lad, afflicted with the 
 palsy ; who having heard what was done, begged of 
 his parents, that they would carry him without de- 
 lay to that holy place : whither as soon as he was 
 brought, he put up his prayers, and presently re- 
 turned back on foot in perfect health." 
 
 There are many more tales of this sort, as con- 
 temptible as any in the Popish legends, and all at- 
 tested by this celebrated Father, from his own know- 
 ledge : yet these are nothing to the extravagant 
 things which he goes on to relate of the reliques of 
 the Martyr Stephen, For as reliques were now be- 
 come the most precious treasure of the Church, so 
 these of St. Stephen, after they had lain buried and 
 unknown for near four centuries, were reveled in a 
 vision to one Lucianus, a Priest, by Gamaliel, the 
 celebrated Doctor of the Law, at whose feet St. Paul 
 had been bred, and being found by his direction, were 
 removed with great solemnity and many miracles 
 into Jerusalem. The fame of these reliques was soon 
 
108 
 
 spread tlirougli tlie Christian world ; and many little 
 portions of them brought away by holy Pilgrims, to 
 enrich the particular Churches of their own countries. 
 For wherever any reliques were deposited, an Oratory 
 or Chappel was always built over them, which was 
 called a Memorial of that Martyr whose reliques it 
 contained. Several reliques therefore of St. Stephen 
 having been brought by different people into Afric, 
 as many Memorials of him were consequently erected 
 in different places, of which three were peculiarly 
 famous : one at Hippo, where St. Austin was Bishop; 
 a second at Calama, and a third at Uzalis, two other 
 Episcopal Cities ; and many great and illustrious mi- 
 racles were continually wrought in them all. 
 
 St. Austin has given us a particular relation of 
 some of them, by which the gout, the stone, and fis- 
 tulas were instantly cured ; the blind restored to sight ; 
 and five different persons raised even fro7n death to life. 
 Two of whom were carried dead to the reliques, and 
 brought back alive ; two more restored to life, by 
 the virtue of their garments onely, which had touched 
 the reliques ; and a fifth, by the oil of the Martyr^s 
 lamps. After all which wonderfull stories, he adds 
 the following apology, not for telling us so many of 
 them, but so few, out of the infinite number which 
 were publicly known and recorded. 
 
 " What shall I do ?" says he ; "I am engaged by 
 promise to finish the present work, so that it is not 
 possible for me in this place to relate all the miracles 
 which I know ; and our people without doubt, when 
 they read these, will be grieved that I have omitted 
 so many, which they know to be true as well as I. 
 
109 
 
 But I beg them to excuse me, and to consider what 
 a tedious piece of work it would be, to do that, 
 which the nature of my argument does not oblige 
 me to do here. For were I to relate onely the mira- 
 cles of cures, without mentioning the rest which 
 have been performed by this Martyr, the most glori- 
 ous Stephen, in the colony of Calama, and in our 
 own, it would fill a great number of volumes. Nor 
 would it be possible to collect them all, but such of 
 them onely of which certificates have been made and 
 read to the people. For this I ordered to be done, 
 when I saw the effects of the di\dne powers, like to 
 those of the ancients, so frequently exerted also in 
 our own times, which ought not to be lost from the 
 notice of the multitude. It is not yet two years 
 since this Memorial was founded at Hippo, and tho' 
 I am certain that no account was taken of many of 
 the miracles, yet at the time when I wrote this, the 
 number of certificates publicly made amounted to 
 near seventy : but at Calama, where the Memorial 
 is of longer standing, and certificates more fre- 
 quently taken, they reach to a far greater number. 
 
 "At Uzalis also, we know many eminent mi- 
 racles wrought by the same Martyr ; whose Me- 
 morial was instituted there by their Bishop Evodius, 
 much earlier than with us. But it is not the custom 
 with them to take certificates, or it was not rather, 
 because now it is probably begun. For when I 
 was lately there, I exhorted Petronia, a celebrated 
 Matron, who had been miraculously cured of a great 
 and lingering illness, in which the physicians were 
 not able to help her, to get a certificate drawn of the 
 
no 
 
 case; and read publicly to the people ; to which, by 
 the advice also of the said Bishop of the place, she 
 willingly consented, and inserted in it another mi- 
 racle, which, notwithstanding the hast that I am 
 in to put an end to this work, I cannot forbear relat- 
 ing, &c/^ 
 
 I have dwelt the longer on these miracles than the 
 importance of them perhaps may be thought to re- 
 quire ; but they are so precisely described and au- 
 thentically attested by one of the most venerable 
 Fathers in all antiquity, who affirms them to have 
 been wrought within his own knowledge, and under 
 his own eyes, that they seem of all others the best 
 adapted to evince the truth of what I have been ad- 
 vancing, and to illustrate the real character of all 
 the other miracles of the primitive times, both before 
 and after them. Dr. Chapman, however, speaking 
 of the very same miracles, roundly declares them all 
 to be so strongly attested, both by the effects and the 
 relators of them, that to doubt their reality, were to 
 doubt the evidence of sense. On these then I am con- 
 tent to rest the fate of my whoje argument ; and if 
 either Dr. Chapman or Dr. Berriman can maintain 
 these miracles to be credible, shall no longer dispute 
 the credibility of any, from the apostolic times down 
 to our own. But, on the other hand, if miracles so 
 strictly examined by a most \\o\j Bishop, confirmed 
 by the certificates of eye-wdtnesses, and rehearsed 
 publicly to the people, at the time when they are 
 said to have been wrought cannot command our be- 
 lief, these doctors must needs confess, nay, they have 
 already confessed, that the Christian Church can shew 
 
in 
 
 no otlier, except those of Christ and his Apostles, 
 which can make any better pretensions to it. 
 
 For not to insist on the objections which might 
 reasonably be made to the probability of the facts 
 themselves ; to the incompetency of the instruments 
 by which, and of the ends for which, they are said 
 to have been performed ; to the credulity of a preju- 
 diced, or the fidelity rather of an artfull and inte- 
 rested relator; it seems evident, from the neglect 
 with which they were treated by the Christians them- 
 selves ; from the obscurity in which they lay ; from 
 the diligence of St. Austin to search them out ; to get 
 certificates of them, and to publish them to the peo- 
 ple; and from the insufficiency of all his pains to make 
 them still regarded or at all remembered ; that the 
 people themselves saw or suspected the cheat, and 
 were tired with the repeated frauds of this kind which 
 their Bishops were imposing upon them. For it is 
 not possible to conceive any other reason of so sur- 
 prizing a coldness, in a case of all others the most 
 warming, but a general persuasion, grounded on ex- 
 perience, that these pretended miracles were nothing 
 else but forgeries, contrived to enforce some favorite 
 doctrine or rite, which the rulers of the Church were 
 desirous to establish. 
 
 Yet these are not the stories which chiefly shock 
 Mr. Dodwell, and oblige him to reject the miracles 
 of the fourth century ; but others still more extrava- 
 gant, tho^ attested likewise by persons of equal emi- 
 nence and authority ; by St. Athatiasius, St. Gregory 
 of Nyssa, St. Jerom, St. Epiphanius, &c. Of which, 
 
112 
 
 therefore, it will be necessary to add a specimen or 
 two from each of those Fathers. 
 
 St. Athanasius, in the Preface to his Life of St. 
 Antony the Monk, declares, " that he had inserted 
 nothing in it, but what he either knew to be true, 
 having often seen the saint himself, or what he had 
 learnt from one who had long ministered to him, 
 and poured water upon his hands. ^^ In this life then, 
 after a great number of monstrous stories concerning 
 the personal conflicts which this Saint continually 
 sustained with all the several Devils and powers of 
 hell, who assaulted him in every shape which could 
 imprint terror, and exerted every art and even cor- 
 poral punishments to drive him from the monastic 
 life, which threatened the speedy ruin of their king- 
 dom, he tells us ; " that somebody knocking one day 
 at his cell, Antony went to the door, where he saw a 
 tall meagre person, who being asked his name, an- 
 swered, that he ivas Satan. His business, it seems, 
 was to beg a truce of the Saint, and to expostulate 
 with him on account of the perpetual reproaches and 
 curses which the Monks so undeservedly bestowed 
 upon him, when he was no longer in condition to 
 give them any trouble : for since the desert was now 
 filled with Monks, and the Christians spread into all 
 places, he was disarmed of all power to do them any 
 mischief: so that the Christians had nothing more to 
 do but to take care of themselves, and to forbear 
 their needless curses against him." The rest of this 
 piece is filled with many other miracles of the same 
 stamp, too trifling to deserve any regard. 
 
113 
 
 St. Gregory of Nyssa, in the life of his namesake, 
 called the wonder-worker, has this story ; " that the 
 Virgin Mary, accompanied by St. John the Evange- 
 list, appeared to Gregory in a vision, and explaned to 
 him the mystery of Godliness, in a short creed or 
 divine summary of faith, which he took down in 
 writing as they dictated it to him, and left the copy 
 of it a legacy to the Church of Neoccesarea, of which 
 he was Bishop : and if any one, says he, has a mind 
 to be satisfied of the truth of this, let him inquire of 
 that Church, in which the very words, as they were 
 written by his blessed hand, are preserved to this 
 day : which, for the excellency of the divine grace, 
 may be compared with those tables of the law made 
 by God and dehvered to Moses,'' 
 
 Dr. Waterland has given us a translation of this 
 creed, and Dr. Berriman, an abstract of it ; which is 
 as express as possible, they say, for the doctrine of the 
 Trinity, as it was tavght afterwards by Athanasius. 
 They both however intimate, that the genuineness 
 of the creed had been called in quaestion, tho^ with- 
 out any sufficient cause. Yet the learned Cave, who 
 for zeal and orthodoxy, and facility of believing, was 
 scarce inferior to any, declares, that notwithstanding 
 the authority of Gregory Nyssen, who was apt to be 
 too credulous, this short exposition of the Christian 
 faith loill hardly find credit with prudent and sensible 
 men. But whatever may be alledged to persuade us, 
 that this creed was actually professed and taught by 
 Gregory, in his Church of Neoccesarea, yet no man 
 surely but Dr. Berriman could have any scruple to 
 own, that the story of the vision, and of it^s delivery 
 
114 
 
 to him from heaven, was a forgery, contrived to sup- 
 port the Athanasian doctrine^ at a time when it was 
 warmly controverted, and in danger of being sup- 
 pressed. But as the revelation of it, if admitted to 
 be true, would put an end at once to all dispute, and 
 give a divine sanction to the doctrine itself, so the 
 doctor seems resolved not to part with it : for in his 
 Historical Account of the TrinUarian Controversy, 
 speaking on this very point, he says ; " there are 
 many arguments to convince us of the genuineness 
 and authority of this Creed of St. Gregory ; I do not 
 mean of it^s being taught him by revelation, (tho^ 
 that may be well attested too, and tvill not seem in- 
 credible to those who shall consider how highly this 
 great person was distinguished by the charismata, or 
 extraordinary gifts of the Holy Ghost,) but I mean, 
 as to the certainty of it^s having been taught by St. 
 Gregory/' &c. From which we see, that tho' his sole 
 business in this place was to prove the creed to have 
 been really Gregory's, yet he could not forbear to ac- 
 quaint us, that, if there was occasion, he could prove 
 the revelation also to be genuin: since it cannot enter 
 into his head how any one should think it incredible, 
 that in those miraculous ages a person of Gregory's 
 exalted character might be favored with a visit from 
 heaven, by the Virgin Mary and St. John the 
 Apostle. 
 
 The same Gregory of Nyssa relates likewise, "how 
 his namesake, being upon a journey, was forced one 
 night to take shelter in an heathen temple, famed 
 for an oracle and divination ; where the Daemons 
 used to appear visibly and offer themselves to the 
 
115 
 
 priests. But tlie holy Father, by invoking the name 
 of JesuSj put them all to flight ; and by making the 
 sign of the cross, purified the air, polluted by the 
 steam of their sacrifices. The next morning, when 
 the Priest came to perform his usual functions, the 
 Devils appeared, and acquainted him that they had 
 been driven out the night before by a stranger, and 
 had not the power to return : nor was he able to re- 
 call them by all the charms of his expiatory sacri- 
 fices. Upon this, the Priest pursued Gregory in 
 great wrath, and overtaking him on the road, threat- 
 ened him most terribly for what he had done. But 
 Gregory, despising his threats, gave him to under- 
 stand that he had a power superior to that of De\'ils, 
 and could drive them whithersoever he pleased. The 
 Priest, amazed at what he said, began to beg, that 
 for a proof of his power he would fetch them back 
 again into the temple ; to which Gregory consenting, 
 wrote this short note onely upon a schedule of paper, 
 Gregory to Satan. Enter. With this, the Priest was 
 dismissed ; and laying the little schedule upon the 
 altar, brought the Devils back again immediately to 
 their old seats. ^^ The miracle however had the good 
 eff'ect of converting the Pagan Priest. 
 
 I have already given a passage from the Life of 
 St. Hilarion the Monk, written by St. Jerom, as a 
 specimen of the fidelity of the writer. But for a 
 proof of the fabulous genius of the fourth century, 
 Mr. Dodwell refers us to another Life of the Hermit 
 Pauly compiled by the same Father, which is filled 
 with stories still more monstrous ; " of SatTjrs and 
 Fauns presenting themselves to the Hermit, and 
 
116 
 
 confessing their own mortality, and the folly of the 
 Gentiles in paying them any worship, and begging 
 his recommendation of them to their common Lord, 
 who came to save the world ; of a raven bringing 
 half a loaf for sixty years successively to the Hermit, 
 for his dayly food in the wilderness ; and then a 
 whole loaf, when St. Antony came to visit him : of 
 two lions coming to assist Antony in the burial of 
 Paulj by digging a grave for him with their feet, 
 and then departing with the blessing of Antony. '^ 
 
 St. Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis in Cyprus, wdio 
 is said to have wrought miracles himself, both in his 
 life-time and after it, affirms several false and absurd 
 miracles from his own knowledge, which his advo- 
 cates gently pass over by remarking onely, that this 
 most holy Father was too credulous, or not so accurate, 
 as we could wish. He declares, " that in imitation 
 of our Saviour^s miracle at Cana in Galilee, several 
 fountains and rivers in his days were annually turned 
 into wine. A fountain of Cibyra, a City of Caria, 
 says he, and another at Gerasa in Arabia, prove the 
 truth of this. I myself have drunk out of the 
 fountain of Cibyra, and my brethren, out of the 
 other at Gerasa ; and many testify the same thing 
 of the river Nile in ^gyptJ' Should we then be 
 asked here, as we were before in a similar case, ivill 
 ye not believe a most holy Bishop, in a fact attested 
 by his own senses ? the answer is clear and short, 
 the fact is not credible. 
 
 St. Chrysostom, celebrating the acts of the Martyr 
 St. Babylas, Bishop of Antioch, says, "the Gentiles 
 will laugh to hear me talk of the acts of persons 
 
117 
 
 dead and buried^ and consumed to dust ; but they 
 are not to imagine, that the bodies of Martyrs, like 
 to those of common men, are left destitute of all 
 active force and energy, since a greater power than 
 that of the human soul is superadded to them, the 
 power of the Holy Spirit ; which, by working mira- 
 cles in them, demonstrates the truth of the resurrec- 
 tion/^ He then procedes to inform us, " how the 
 remains of this Martyr were removed by a certain 
 Emperor, out of the City of Antioch, into a suburb 
 of it, called Daphne, famous for the delights of it^s 
 situation, and the variety of pleasures which it af- 
 forded to it^s inhabitants, as well as for a celebrated 
 Temple and Oracle of Apollo Daphneus ; to which 
 the body of the Saint was thought proper to be 
 removed, for the sake of giving some check to the 
 lewdness and licentiousness that reigned in the place. 
 The coffin therefore was no sooner deposited in a 
 chappel provided for it, than the Oracle of Apollo 
 was struck dumb at once ; so that when Julian the 
 Apostate came afterwards to consult it, he could 
 receive no other answer from Apollo^ but that the 
 dead ivould not suffer him to speak any longer. Where- 
 fore Julian commanded the bones of St. Babylas to 
 be conveyed back again into Antioch ; but in the 
 very moment when they entered into the City, the 
 Statue of the God and the roof of his Temple were 
 destroyed by lightning, upon the intercession of the 
 Saint. '^ St. Chrysostom employs an intire Homily, 
 and a larger discourse, which follows it, in haran- 
 guing on this same subject of Babylas, and on the 
 blessings and dayly miracles wrought by the reliques 
 
118 
 
 of the Martyrs to the edification of the Church and 
 the confusion of unbehevers. Yet his History of 
 this Saint is so evidently fabulous and romantic, that 
 the Benedictin Monks, who published the last and 
 best edition of his works, found it necessary to ad- 
 monish the reader, that if is written in a declamatory 
 stile, overflowing with rhetorical figures, and for the 
 most part destitute of truth. In which those learned 
 Papists have shewn more candor as well as judge- 
 ment than our Protestant Doctor Cave ; who, in his 
 Life of the same Babylas, after relating the parti- 
 cular story just described, which he calls one of the 
 most memorable occurrences that Church antiquity has 
 conveyed to us, adds the following attestation to it. 
 
 " The reader ^tis like may be apt to scruple this 
 story, as savouring a little of superstition, and giving 
 too much honor to the r cliques of saints. To which 
 I shall say no more than that the credit of it seems 
 unqusestionable ; it being reported not onely by 
 Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret, who all lived very 
 near that time, but by Chrysostom, who was born at 
 Antioch, and was a long time Presbyter of that 
 Church, and was scholar there to lAbanius the 
 Sophist at the very time when the thing was done, 
 and an eye-witness of it ; and who not onely preached 
 the thing, but wrote a discourse against the Gentiles 
 on this very subject, where he appeals to the know- 
 ledge both of young and old then alive, who had 
 seen it, and challenges them to stand up and con- 
 tradict, if they could, the truth of what he had 
 related. Nay, which farther puts the case past all 
 peradventure, Libanius the Orator evidently confesses 
 
119 
 
 it," &c. Whereas all which that Orator confesses, 
 and which the Benedictins allow to be well grounded 
 in the whole relation, is, that the reliques of Babylas 
 were carried back again, by Julianas order, out of 
 Daphne into the City, and that the Temple of the 
 Daphnean Apollo was soon after destroyed in the 
 night by fire ; which the Christians declared to have 
 been sent from heaven by the power of the Saint, 
 and the Heathens ascribed to the revenge and con- 
 trivance of the Christians. 
 
 A Popish writer, with whom I have been engaged, 
 in order to reprove my raillery on their fictitious 
 saints and image- worship, has alledged also a most 
 notable miracle, from this fourth century; which I 
 shall here add to the specimens already given. 
 
 '^ When Julian the Apostate was pursuing his 
 Persian expedition, and at the very time when he 
 is supposed to have been destroyed by the immediate 
 hand of God, the Great St. Basil was standing before 
 the Image of the Blessed Virgin, on which there was 
 painted likewise the figure of St. Mercurius, an emi- 
 nent Martyr : and while St. Basil was fervently 
 praying that the impious and atheistical Julian 
 might be cut off, he received this revelation from 
 the picture ; out of which the figure of the Martyr 
 quite vanished for a little while, but presently ap- 
 peared again and held out a bloody spear, as a token 
 of what had happened in the same moment to Julian.'* 
 
 But Julian's death was foretold likewise by visions 
 and divine revelations, as the Ecclesiastical writers 
 inform us, to several other Saints and holy men, in 
 different parts of the world, who were severally 
 
120 
 
 addressing their prayers to God for his destruction. 
 Whence we cannot but observe, what a total change 
 there was, both of principles and practice, between 
 the Fathers of the fourth and those of the preceding 
 ages ; or between the Church when persecuted, and 
 when established in power and authority. For in 
 the earlier times, under the very worst of the Heathen 
 Emperors and the cruellest persecutors of the Church, 
 when the Christians were treated every where, as 
 traitors to the government, all their Apologists, 
 through the three first centuries, declare with one 
 voice, that they were obliged by the precepts of 
 their religion to be of all men the most loyal to their 
 Princes, and that it was their dayly practice to put 
 up their united prayers for their prosperity. We 
 pray, says Tertullian, for every Emperor, that he may 
 have a long life, secure reign, a safe house, strong 
 aymies, faithfull Senate, honest people, a quiet ivorld, 
 and whatsoever else, man, or Ccesar himself can loish. 
 Yet after the Church had gained a firm establish- 
 ment, it^s temper was quite altered, and the Em- 
 perors no sooner began to give them any disturbance 
 than their prayers were turned into curses, and the 
 divine vengeance confessedly implored to destroy 
 them. So true it is, what all the Popish writers 
 have not scrupled to affirm, from Fope Gregory the 
 Great down to Cardinal Bellarmine, that it was not 
 the ivant of ivill but of the power onely to rebel, 
 lohich made the primitive Christians so patient under 
 the persecuting Emjjerors, and particularly under 
 Julian, because the Church had not yet acquired 
 strength enough to controul the Princes of the earth. 
 
121 
 
 Now it is agreed by all, that these Fathers whose 
 testimonies I have just been reciting, were the most 
 eminent lights of the fourth Century ; all of them 
 sainted by the Catholic Church, and highly re- 
 verenced at this day in all Churches, for their piety, 
 probity, and learning : yet from the specimens of 
 them above given, it is evident that they would not 
 scruple to propagate any fiction, how gross soever, 
 which served to promote the interest either of Chris- 
 tianity in general, or of any particular rite or doctrine 
 which they were desirous to recommend. St. Jerom 
 in effect confesses it ; for after the mention of a silly 
 story, concerning the Christians of Jerusalem, who 
 used to shew, in the ruins of the Temple, certain 
 stones of a reddish color, which they pretended to 
 have been stained by the blood of Zacharias the Son 
 of Barachias, who was slain hetiueen the Temple and 
 the Altar, he adds, hut I do not find fault with an 
 error, which floivs from an hatred of the Jews and a 
 pious zeal for the Christian faith. 
 
 If the miracles then of the fourth centurv, so 
 solemnly attested by the most celebrated and revered 
 Fathers of the Church, are to be rejected after all 
 as fabulous, it must needs give a fatal blow to the 
 credit of all the miracles even of the preceding cen- 
 turies ; since there is not a single Father whom I 
 have mentioned in this fourth age, who for zeal and 
 piety, may not be compared with the best of the 
 more ancient, and for knowledge and learning be 
 preferred to them all. For instance, there was not 
 a person in all the primitive Church, more highly 
 respected in his own days, than St. Epiphanius, for 
 
 f 
 
122 
 
 the purity of his life, as well as the extent of his 
 learning. He was a Master of five languages, and 
 has left behind him one of the most usefuU works, 
 which remain to us from antiquity. St. Jerom, who 
 personally knew him, calls him, the Father of all 
 Bishops, and a shining Star among them; the pat- 
 tern of ancient sanctity ; the man of God of blessed 
 memory ; to whom the people used to flock in crouds, 
 offering their little children to his benediction ; kissing 
 his feet ; and catching the hem of his garment. 
 
 All the rest were men of the same character, who 
 spent their lives and studies in propagating the faith, 
 and in combating the vices and heresies of their 
 times. Yet none of them have scrupled, we see, to 
 pledge their faith for the truth of facts which no 
 man of sense can believe, and which their warmest 
 admirers are forced to give up as fabulous. If such 
 persons then could willfully attempt to deceive ; and 
 if the sanctity of their characters cannot assure us 
 of their fidelity ; what better security can we have 
 from those, who lived before them ? or what cure 
 for our Scepticism with regard to any of the miracles 
 above mentioned ? Was the first Assertor of them, 
 Justin Martyr, more pious, cautious, learned, judi- 
 cious, or less credulous than Epiphanius ? or were 
 those virtues more conspicuous in Iren&us, Tertullian, 
 Cyprian, Arnobius, and Lactantius, than in Atha- 
 nasius, Gregory, Chrysostom, Jerom, Atistin? No 
 body, I dare say, will venture to affirm it. If these 
 later Fathers then, biassed by a false zeal or interest, 
 could be tempted to propagate a known lie ; or with 
 all their learning and knowledge, could be so weakly 
 
123 
 
 credulous, as to believe the absurd stories, which 
 they themselves attest ; there must always be reason 
 to suspect, that the same prejudices would operate 
 even more strongly in the earlier Fathers ; prompted 
 by the same zeal and the same interests, yet indued 
 with less learning, less judgement, and more cre- 
 dulity. 
 
 But whatever light the fourth Century may give 
 us, in discovering the real character of the earlier 
 ages, it affords us at least a sure presage, of what 
 we are to expect from the fifth, into which we are 
 now entering. Dr. Waterland himself allows, on 
 the authority of NazianzeUj that the state of the 
 Church towards the end of the fourth century was 
 become very corrupt: for that reason, as we have 
 elsewhere seen, he durst not venture to appeal, in 
 the case of it^s miracles, to any of the celebrated 
 Fathers above mentioned, as being evidently infected 
 with that corruption. The learned Mosheim also, a 
 foreign Divine, and zealous advocate of Christianity, 
 who, by his writings against the Freethinkers, as 
 Dr. Chapman tells us, has deserved the esteem of all 
 good and learned men^ intimates his fears, " that 
 those, who search with any attention into the writ- 
 ings of the greatest and most holy Doctors of the 
 fourth century, will find them all without exception, 
 disposed to deceive and to liCj whenever the interest 
 of religion requires it." Since the degeneracy there- 
 fore of this age has obliged the most devoted admirers 
 of antiquity, not onely to suspect but to reject it^s 
 miracles as spurious, we cannot be at a loss what 
 judgement we ought to form on the miracles of the 
 
 r2 
 
124 
 
 following age, which is allowed by all to have been 
 still more corrupt. ' 
 
 The succeding Fathers, however, go on still as 
 before, to assert the same miraculous gifts, and even 
 more of them to the fifth than to any of the preceding 
 ages. Whence a certain infidel writer has taken 
 occasion to censure the credit of Ecclesiastical His- 
 tory as being /w// of miracles, wrought by such mad- 
 men as Symeon Stylites, a Monk of the fifth century, 
 who spent the greatest part of his life on the top of 
 a pillar, from which he drew his surname; and 
 whose wonderfuU acts are particularly related by 
 Theodoret. Now whether this Symeon was a mad- 
 man or not, the credit of Christianity is no way 
 affected by it. The History of the Gospel, I hope 
 may be true, though the History of the Church be 
 fabulous. And if the ecclesiastic Historians have 
 recorded many silly fictions under the name of mira- 
 cles, as they undoubtedly have, the blame must be 
 charged to the writers, not to their religion. But 
 the censure came from an Infidel, and for that 
 reason, was at all events to be confuted; since to 
 allow a grain of truth to one of that class, is to 
 betray the cause of Christianity and to strengthen 
 the hands of it^s enemies. 
 
 This is the principle which generally animates 
 the zeal, and glares through the Avritings of the 
 modern advocates of our religion ; and which in 
 reality has done more hurt and discredit to it than 
 all the attacks of it's open adversaries : and it was 
 the same principle without doubt that gave birth 
 to the defence of Symeon Siylites, which Dr. Chap- 
 
125 
 
 man^ in his remarks on the Author referred to, has 
 thought fit to attempt in the following words : 
 
 " I know our Author too well to take his judge- 
 ment either of madness or sense. ^Tis more than 
 probable, that it is madness with him to believe any 
 miracles at all, of any person, or at any time. So 
 that we are not to wonder if Symeon and his miracles 
 have no sort of credit with him. For this reason I 
 address myself here, not to him, but to those who 
 distinguish between truth and imposture, between 
 clear and indisputable evidence, and that which is 
 dark and suspicious. The great Theodoret, whose 
 character for sense, learning, and piety, is abundantly 
 known and confessed, was himself contemporary 
 with Sj^meon Stylites, was personally and intimately 
 acquainted with him, conversed with him for many 
 years together, and declares himself an eye-witness 
 to the wonderfuU things related of him. He has 
 given us an account of a great part of his Life, which 
 he wrote while Symeon was yet alive, and appeals 
 to all the world for the truth of what he says of him. 
 He farther tells us that Symeon by his miracles con- 
 verted many thousands of Pagans, especially the 
 Ishmaelites or Saracens^ to the Christian religion; 
 that he himself, at Symeon's desire, gave many of 
 them the Sacerdotal benediction, and was in manifest 
 danger of losing his life by the impatience and 
 eagerness of the Barbarians to receive it from him. 
 If we may not admit such evidence as this in proof 
 of a matter of fact, I am afraid we must shake the 
 evidence of all human testimony, and beheve nothing 
 
126 
 
 but what we see^ and feel, and know ourselves. Nay 
 farther, our Author cannot prove that there ever 
 existed such a man as Symeon Stylites, by better 
 evidence than that which I have produced to prove 
 his miracles/^ 
 
 Here we see what a sort of character and language 
 is prepared for those who dare to reject the miracles 
 of Symeon. They must be men who know not how 
 to distinguish between truth and imposture ; between 
 indisputable and suspicious evidence; who shake the 
 credit of all human testimony, and believe nothing but 
 what they see themselves. And all this assurance is 
 grounded on the single testimony of Theodoret, to 
 whom, in order to enhance his authority, he has 
 added, according to his usual way, the title of the 
 Great. But as the Doctor has carried his defence of 
 monks and their miracles much farther than any 
 other protestant, I believe, would venture to do, so 
 it was natural to suspect that he had been drawn 
 into it by some popish writer, of whom he had con- 
 ceived a favorable opinion, and we find accordingly, 
 that he has borrowed, not onely his notions, but his 
 ver}^ expressions, from Mons. Tillemont, who talks in 
 the same pompous strain of Le Grand Theodoret, 
 whose evidence cannot be slighted, he says, without shak- 
 ing the credit of all human testimony. 
 
 But let him borrow them from whomsoever he 
 pleases ; my business is, to inquire onely whether 
 what he has borrowed and so peremptorily affirmed 
 be true, or credible, or fit for a protestant divine to 
 impose upon the consciences of Christians. This 
 
127 
 
 therefore is the point which I shall now precede to 
 consider^ from the authority of those very testimonies 
 to which he himself has referred us. 
 
 We are told then by Theodoret, " that this Symeon 
 spent the first part of his life in certain monasteries 
 near Antioch, in S7jria, mortifying his body by hor- 
 rible austerieSj not onely beyond the rules of their 
 ordinary discipline, but above the force even of na- 
 ture itself; till for his perseverance in these extrava- 
 gancies, contrary to the admonitions of his rulers, 
 he was turned out of the society, as giving an exam- 
 ple that might be dangerous or fatal to those who 
 attempted to imitate it. Upon this he retired to a 
 separate cave or hut, where he took a fancy, after 
 the example of Moses and Elias, to keep a fast and 
 total abstinence from food for forty intire days. But 
 when another holy man, called Bassus, represented 
 to him the danger and even sin of an attempt which 
 would probably destroy him, he complied so far as to 
 suffer ten loaves and a pitcher of water to be im- 
 mured with him in his cell, with a promise to make 
 use of them if he happened to want any refreshment. 
 Bassus then closed up his door with mud, and left 
 him for forty days ; at the end of which he returned, 
 and clearing away the mud from the door, found the 
 ten loaves intire, and the pitcher also full, but 
 Symeon stretched upon the ground, quite spiritless 
 and unable to speak or stir, till by the care of his 
 friend, and the application of the symbols of the 
 holy mysteries, he was gradually restored to his 
 strength and former health. From which time, as 
 Theodoret adds, he had then persevered twenty-eight 
 
128 
 
 years in the same practice of fasting forty days in 
 each year. During the first part of which days he 
 used constantly to stand : and when through want 
 of nourishment he grew too weak to endure that 
 posture, he then began to sit ; but at the last, was 
 forced to lie down half dead and almost spent/^ 
 
 His next whim was, " to fix his perpetual station 
 on the top of a pillar, whose circumference was 
 hardly of two cubits ; and after he had spent many 
 years in that position, like a statue upon it^s pedes- 
 tal, on several difi'erent pillars, he mounted one at 
 last thirty-six cubits high, and lived thirty years 
 upon it ; being placed in the middle region, as it 
 were, between heaven and earth; where he conversed 
 with God, and glorified him with angels ; offering up 
 for the men on earth his supplications to God, and 
 drawing down from heaven the blessings of God 
 upon men." But because these pillars allowed no 
 other posture but that of standing, he contrived a 
 method which enabled him to endure still the fatigue 
 of his usual fasts. " For he got a beam fixed to the 
 top of his pillar, to which he tied himself, and by 
 that support held out the whole forty days with- 
 out changing his position; till being strengthened 
 by heaven with a larger measure of grace, he no 
 longer wanted that help, but stood all the time, 
 without tasting the least food, j^et with ease and 
 chearfulness." 
 
 The manner of passing his time on the pillar was 
 this : " all the nights and days also, till three in the 
 afternoon, were spent by him in prayer, in which he 
 used continual bowings of his body, and always 
 
129 
 
 touched his very toes with his head. For this, says 
 Theodoret, was easy to him, because he made but 
 one meal in the week, and that a very light one, so 
 that his belly being generally empty, gave him no 
 obstruction in bending his back. One of those who 
 stood by, looking upon him with Theodoret, had 
 the curiosity to count the number of his bowings, 
 but when he had counted to twelve hundred and 
 forty-four, he was tired and would count them no 
 longer. On solemn festivals, he stood with his hands 
 stretched out towards heaven, from the setting of 
 the sun to it^s rising, without a wink of sleep the 
 whole night. 
 
 " From three in the afternoon it was his practice 
 to preach and to give divine lectures, to answer all 
 qusestions and petitions which were offered to him, 
 to cure diseases and to compose differences ; but at 
 sun-setting he began to converse again with God. 
 He wrought innumerable miracles ; giving health to 
 the sick, children to the barren, and dispensing sa- 
 cred oil to those likewise who desired it.^^ To many 
 of which miracles Theodoret declares himself to have 
 been an eye-witness, as well as to his gift of pro- 
 phecy, for he heard "him foretell a famine and a 
 pestilence, and an irruption of locusts, and the death 
 of one of Theodorefs enemies fifteen days before it 
 happened." One of the miracles which Theodoret 
 saw, was this : " an eminent Ishmaelite and believer 
 in Christ, made a vow to God in the presence of 
 Symeon that he would abstain from all animal food 
 during the rest of his life ; but being tempted after- 
 wards to break his vow, he resolved to eat a fowl, 
 
 F 3 
 
130 
 
 and ordered it to be dressed for Mm accordingly; 
 but when he sat down to eat, he found the flesh of it 
 turned into stone. The barbarian, amazed at this 
 miracle, ran away in all hast to the saint, proclaming 
 his secret crime to all people, and imploring the 
 saint, by the omnipotence of his prayers, to release 
 him from the bond of this sin. There were many 
 eye-witnesses of this miracle, who handled the fowl, 
 and found the part of it about the breast to be com- 
 pounded of bone and of stone." 
 
 By these miracles and austerities the fame of 
 Symeon, as Theodoret says, was spread through the 
 whole world ; so that people of all nations and lan- 
 guages flocked to him in crouds from the remotest 
 parts of the earth ; from Spain and Gaul, and even 
 Britain itself; and his name was so celebrated at 
 Rome, that the artificers of all kinds had little images 
 of him placed in the entrance of their shops, as 
 a guard and security to them against all sorts of 
 7nischief. 
 
 This is the account in short of the Life of Symeon 
 Stylites ; the bare recital of which, tho^ attested by 
 ten Theodorets, must needs expose the absurdity of 
 believing that it could in any manner be suggested 
 or directed by divine inspiration. Yet Dr. Chapman 
 contends, that there is no better evidence for the very 
 existence of Symeon, than we have for his miracles. 
 By which he means, I suppose, that we have the 
 same evidence for both ; the testimony of the same 
 Theodoret, which he imagines to be as good in the 
 one case as in the other : not reflecting that the same 
 witness, of whatever character he be, will necessarily 
 
131 
 
 find a very different degree of credit, according to 
 the different nature of the facts which he attests; 
 and tho' credible in some, may be justly contempti- 
 ble in others. For example, when we are told by 
 Theodoret, and after him by Evagrius, that a certain 
 monk called Symeon, who was personally known to 
 them, took a fancy to live upon a pillar, where he 
 was seen every day by many thousands ; we have no 
 reason to doubt of it ; the thing was notorious ; and 
 there were many such enthusiasts in the same age ; 
 and every one of those thousands who saw him were 
 as good witnesses of it as Theodoret himself. But 
 when we are told by the same writers that Symeo)i 
 loas inspired by God, and performed many things above 
 the force of human nature ; this is a different case, 
 which cannot command the same belief; being a 
 matter of opinion, rather than of fact ; of which very 
 few could judge, fewer still be certain, and scarce 
 one perhaps of all the thousands who saw him could 
 be a competent witness : while the character of Sy- 
 meon on the one side, and of Theodoret on the other, 
 suggest many obvious reasons against the credibihty 
 of it. 
 
 To illustrate this more clearly by a similar instance 
 from profane history. Two classical writers of un- 
 doubted credit, Suetonius and Tacitus, have each 
 written the life and acts of the Emperor Vespasian ; 
 who alone, they say, of all the Princes before him, 
 ivas made a better man by his advancement to the 
 Empire. But the same writers also declare, that 
 this good Emperor, by a divine admonition from the 
 God Serapis, publicly restored a blind man to his 
 
132 
 
 sight, and a cripple to his limbs, in the vieio of the 
 people of Alexandria ; and that many years after his 
 death, when there was no reward or temptation for 
 telling such a lie, several ivitnesses were still living 
 who had seen those miracles performed, and bore tes- 
 timony to the truth of them. Now it is certain^ that 
 no body in any age ever doubted of the existence of 
 Vespasian, yet many probably in all, and every single 
 man in the present, not onely doubt but reject the 
 story of his miracles ; tho' these last be affirmed by 
 the same writers who assure us of the first ; to 
 whose authority still we pay all the regard that is 
 due, by believing them in every thing that is credi- 
 ble j in every thing of which they were competent 
 witnesses; and charging the absurd and fabulous 
 part to the superstition, prejudices, and false prin- 
 ciples which prevailed in those ages. 
 
 The case is the same with Theodoret and all the 
 Ecclesiastical Historians, who have transmitted to 
 us the lives and miracles of the Monks, and other 
 pious men of their own times. We take their word 
 as far as reason and religion will permit us, and 
 ascribe the rest to the credulity, the prejudices, and 
 erroneous principles, which infected all the writers 
 of those days. The Romanists indeed roundly em- 
 brace and espouse all the absurd and fictitious stories 
 ^vliich they have delivered to us, and are under a 
 necessity of doing so, since they teach the same 
 corrupt doctrines, retain the same superstitious rites, 
 and exercise the same usurped powers, for the sake 
 of which those very stories were originally forged. 
 But no Protestants, as far as \ have observed, except 
 
133 
 
 the two Doctors above mentioned, have ever at- 
 tempted to defend either the miracles or the princi- 
 ples of the fifth century ; but on the contrary, have 
 constantly signified either their suspicion or utter 
 contempt of them. 
 
 Mr. Dodwell, whose piety and zeal for the honor 
 of Christianity were as conspicuous as his learning, 
 declares, " that nothing does so much discredit to 
 the cause of miracles in general, among the Infidels 
 and Atheists, as the impostures of the later ages ; 
 meaning the fourth, fifth, and following centuries. 
 These, says he, they oppose to the undoubted credit 
 of the earlier ages, and because these false prodigies 
 deceived the whole world, they infer, that the ancient 
 ones likewise, tho' false, might impose in the same 
 manner upon the credulity of mankind.^^ 
 
 J)v. Cave, the large extent of whose faith shines 
 through every page of his writings, yet plainly inti- 
 mates his suspicion of what Theodoret has attested 
 concerning this very Symeon ; for speaking of the 
 amazing austerities which he practised, he adds, 
 moreover J if the Greek writers are to be regarded, he 
 wrought innumerable miracles. 
 
 Mr. Collier also, whose Ecclesiastical History 
 shews, that miracles even of the grossest kind were 
 of no hard digestion with him, could not yet digest 
 these of our Symeon, but declares them to be wholly 
 fabulous, and such as render the truth itself suspected. 
 
 Dr. Hody, so highly esteemed for his critical and 
 theological learning, observes, " that stories con- 
 cerning miracles are common to all the writers of 
 lives, among the Christians of the middle ages, tho^ 
 
134 
 
 otherwise good authors ; and that the professed His- 
 torians themselves^ as Theodoret and EvagriuSj are 
 full of relations, which were the result of a super- 
 stitious piety. 
 
 Since the most learned then as well as orthodox of 
 our divines, and the most conversant also in Eccle- 
 siastical antiquity, have so strongly signified their 
 distrust both of the testimony of Theodoret and the 
 particular acts of this Symeon, it is surprizing that 
 Dr. Chapman should think it of service to Chris- 
 tianity, to lay so great a stress upon them, and in 
 so peremptory a manner to vindicate the credit of 
 miracles, whose sole tendency is to recommend, as 
 a perfect pattern of the Christian life, the most 
 extravagant enthusiasm and contemptible supersti- 
 tion that any age or history perhaps has ever pro- 
 duced. For that this was really the case, is evident 
 from the writings of Theodoret himself, whose life 
 of Symeon Stylites is a part onely of his religious 
 history, as it is called, filled with the lives of thirty 
 Monks, of the same class and character, distin- 
 guished by their peculiar austerities, and vying with 
 each other who could invent the most whimsical 
 methods and painful arts of mortifying their bodies. 
 
 One of these called Baradatiis, contrived a sort of 
 cage for his habitation, coarsely formed of lattice 
 work, so wide and open as to expose him to all the 
 inclemencies of the weather, and so low at the same 
 time that it could not admit the full height of his 
 body, but obliged him to stand always in the posture 
 of stooping. 
 
 Another of them called ThalaleuSj of a very bulky 
 
135 
 
 size, suspended himself in the air, in a cage of a 
 different kind, contrived by himself, and made so 
 low and so strait also that it left him no more room 
 than to sit with Ms head perpetually bent down be- 
 tween his knees ; in which posture he had spent ten 
 years when Theodoret first saw him. Yet all these 
 ridiculous whims and extravagancies are considered 
 by Tlieodoret as the suggestions of the Holy Spirit^ 
 and divine inventions, to baffle the artifices of the 
 Devil ; or so many ladders, as he tells us, by which 
 they mounted up to heaven; and which were all 
 confirmed by miracles as a proof of the divine ap- 
 probation. 
 
 These were the wonder-workers, and these the 
 miracles of the fifth century ; the character of which 
 Dr. Chapman summs up to this effect in the following 
 articles. 
 
 1. That they were of a public nature, and per- 
 formed in such a manner, as left no room for 
 delusion. 
 
 2. That they were attended with beneficial effects, 
 which could not possibly have gained credit, unless 
 the strongest evidence of sense had proved them to 
 be true. 
 
 3. That the end of them was not to confirm any 
 idle errors or superstitions, but purely to advance 
 the glory of truth and virtue. 
 
 4. That the accounts of them are given by men 
 
136 
 
 of unquestionable integrity, piety, and learning, who 
 were eye-witnesses of many of the facts, and declare 
 in the most solemn manner that they knew them to 
 be true. 
 
 5. That they were far from being vain and unne- 
 cessary, so as to render them doubtfull to after ages, 
 but were attested by the strongest moral evidence, 
 equal to that by which most of the ancient miracles 
 are supported. 
 
 6. That they are incapable of giving any coun- 
 tenance to the fabulous pretences of the Papists; 
 and that a Protestant of common capacity will dis- 
 cern as much difference between them and the 
 Popish miracles, as between gold and brass, between 
 light and darkness. 
 
 Yet from the short specimen of these miracles 
 already given, and much more, from a full list of 
 them, which, if it were required, may hereafter be 
 given, the very contrary character of them, I am 
 persuaded, will appear to be the true one, to all un- 
 prejudiced readers, in every one of those articles. 
 
 1. That they were all of such a nature, and per- 
 formed in such a manner, as would necessarily inject 
 a suspicion of fraud and delusion. 
 
 2. That the cures and beneficial effects of them, 
 were either false, or imaginary, or accidental. 
 
137 
 
 3. That they tend to confirm the idlest of all 
 errors and superstitions. 
 
 4. That the integrity of the witnesses is either 
 highly questionable, or their credulity at least so 
 gross, as to render them unworthy of any credit. 
 
 5. That they were not onely vain and unneces- 
 sary, but generally speaking, so trifling also, as to 
 excite nothing but contempt. 
 
 And lastly, that the belief and defence of them, 
 are the onely means in the world that can possibly 
 support, or that does in fact give any sort of coun- 
 tenance, to the modern impostures in the Eomish 
 Church. 
 
 Then as to the Monks also, who are said to have 
 wrought those miracles, the Doctor is not less zealous 
 in defending and extolling all their extravagancies. 
 He declares, " that they were intended for the best 
 and most excellent purposes. That all the friends 
 to Christianity must think, that in their voluntary 
 austerities, they shewed such prudence, virtue, and 
 greatness of mind, as deserve the highest encomiums 
 of posterity. And that the ancient Monasteries were 
 very diff'erent from the modern, quite remote from 
 the corruptions of Popery, and deserving the appro- 
 bation of the strictest Protestants.^'' Yet for my 
 own part, notwithstanding all his panegyric on those 
 primitive Monks and monasteries, I shall not scruple 
 to own, 1st, That I look upon the whole institution 
 
138 
 
 of monkery, from what age or wliat Saint soever it 
 drew it^s origin, to be contrary not onely to the 
 principles of the Gospel, but to the interests of all 
 civil society, and the chief source of all the corrup- 
 tions which have ever since infested the Christian 
 Church. 2dly, That by all which I have ever read 
 of the old, and have seen of the modern Monks, 
 I take the preference to be clearly due to the last, 
 as having a more regular discipline, more good 
 learning, and less superstition among them than 
 the first. 
 
 Before we take leave of this subject, I shall just 
 add a word or two concerning the character of 
 Theodoret himself, to whose testimony Dr. Chapman 
 pays so extraordinary a regard, and whose authority 
 he declares to be decisive in the case before us. The 
 learned Mons. Du Pin, in his account of him, ex- 
 tracted from his writings, says, " that he was born 
 at Antioch, A.D. 386; that his birth was accom- 
 panied by miracles, both before and after it, which 
 he himself relates in his religious history : that, if 
 toe may believe him, his mother was healed of an in- 
 curable disease in her eye, by one Peter a Monk ; 
 that upon the prayers of another Monk, called Ma- 
 cedonius, God granted her to conceive a son, after 
 thirteen years of barrenness, and to bring him safely 
 into the world : that by the prayers of the first of 
 those Monks, Peter, she was preserved also from 
 death after her delivery ; and that her husband and 
 her son had often felt the eflPects of Peter's virtue 
 and sanctity, and were cured of their distempers by 
 touching onely his girdle.^'' 
 
139 
 
 This account^ I say, is drawn from Tkeodoret him- 
 self; whence we learn, that he was nursed and 
 trained in all the bigottry and superstition with 
 which that age abounded; taught from his very 
 cradle to venerate Monks and their miracles ; and 
 made to believe, with the first knowledge which he 
 received, that he owed his very existence to the 
 efficacy of their prayers. He tells us, "that his 
 mother sent him once every week to beg the bless- 
 ing of the Monk, Peter ; and that he went as often 
 also to receive the instructions and benediction of 
 the other ]\Ionk, Macedonius, who never failed to 
 remind him of the great pains which it had cost to 
 bring him into the world, and how many nights he 
 had spent in praying to God for nothing else but his 
 birth/^ And as TJieodoret is said to have been very 
 tenacious of the principles which he had once im- 
 bibed, so it was his constant practice through his 
 whole life to visit the cells and habitations of all the 
 celebrated Monks of those times, with whose lives 
 and miracles he has filled his religious history ; from 
 which I shall here transcribe a story or two, out of 
 the great number which he has recorded, of the 
 same sort and of his own knowledge, as a specimen 
 both of the judgement and the fidehty of the com- 
 piler. 
 
 In his life of the Monk, Peter, he declares, '' that 
 his very garments wrought wonders like to those of 
 St. Paul ; which I do not mention, says he, by way 
 of hyperbole, but with the testimony of truth for 
 what I am saying. For his girdle, made of coarse 
 linnen, being very broad and long, he cut it into 
 
140 
 
 two parts, with the one of which he girded his own 
 loins, and mine with the other. This last my 
 mother has often applied to me and to my father, 
 when we were sick, and driven away our distempers 
 by it, and made use of it also herself, as a remedy 
 for her own health. Many of our acquaintance, 
 who knew this, frequently borrowed the girdle for 
 the service of other sick people, and always found 
 the same good effects of it^s virtue ; till a certain 
 person, who borrowed it, ungratefull to his bene- 
 factors, never restored it, and so we were deprived 
 of the benefit of this gift.^' 
 
 In the life of another Monk, called James, he 
 tells this story, "that the reliques of some of the 
 ancient Patriarchs, Prophets, and Apostles, were 
 brought to him in a chest from Phcenicia and Palces- 
 tine, and received by a public procession of all the 
 orders of the Clergy and the Layety. But the 
 Monk James did not think fit to assist at this solem- 
 nity, having conceived some doubts, it seems, whether 
 the reliques, said to be John Baptises, were really 
 so or not. Upon which, in the night following, as 
 he was praying, there appeared to him a certain per- 
 son cloathed in white, and demanded of him, why 
 he did not come out to meet them ? and when James 
 asked who they were of whom he spake ; he replied, 
 those who came the other day from Phcenicia and 
 Palcestine. The next night also the same person 
 appeared to him again ; and in order to remove all 
 his scruples, brought along with him St. John Bap- 
 tist and the Patriarch Joseph, who were severally 
 presented to him, and held discourse with him on 
 
141 
 
 the subject of tlieir reliques." With these stories, 
 I shall leave it to the reader to determine, whether 
 a writer of this turn and character can reasonably 
 be thought unprejudiced, and of an authority un- 
 contestable, or worthy indeed of any credit at all, 
 where the honor of Monks, and the reality of their 
 miracles are the points in qusestion. 
 
 The same Mons. Du Pin, after he has given us an 
 abstract of Theodoret^s 7'eUgious History, adds the 
 followincr reflection : " this History contains manv 
 things remarkable concerning the discipline of this 
 time. By it we see that great honor was given to 
 the Saints; that they were invoked; that men ex- 
 pected to be helped by their prayers; that their 
 reliques were sought after with great earnestness; 
 that people believed very easily in them ; attributed 
 great virtue and many miracles to them ; and were 
 very credulous, &c." But tho^ the whole turn 
 and purpose of Theodorefs sacred History tends to 
 strengthen the interest of the Romish, and to hurt 
 the credit of the Protestant cause, by celebrating 
 the forged miracles of Monks, and Saints, and reliques, 
 and holy ivater, and sacred oil, it is curious to ob- 
 serve with what a different temper the popish writer, 
 Mons. Du Pin, and the protestant writer. Dr. Chap- 
 man, have each expressed themselves on the subject 
 of his testimony. The papist, candidly imitating 
 his doubts, says, if we may believe Theodoret, such 
 and such miracles were performed. The protestant 
 on the contrary, contemning all doubts, declares, 
 that we must believe him, that his evidence is uncon- 
 testable, that to reject it is to destroy the faith of history. 
 
142 
 
 The fortunes of these two writers were as different 
 also as their principles : the candor of the Papist 
 being thought too favourable to Protestantism, was 
 censured and disgraced by the Popish Bishops ; the 
 zeal of the Protestant, tending directly to Popery, 
 was extolled and rewarded by the Protestant Bishops. 
 
 We have dwelt already so long on the miracles of 
 the fifth centurj^, that it must be needless to examine 
 the particular merit of that miracle which Dr. Berri- 
 man has so accurately defended. I shall employ 
 therefore but a very few words upon it. The story 
 is this : " Hunneric the Vandal, a Christian Prince of 
 the Avian heresy, in his persecution of the orthodox 
 party in Africa, ordered the tongues of a certain 
 society of them to be cut out to the roots ; but by 
 a surprizing instance of God's good Providence, they 
 were enabled to speak articulately and distinctly 
 without their tongues ; and so continuing to make 
 open profession of the same doctrine, they became 
 not onely the preachers, but living witnesses of it^s 
 truth, and a perpetual rebuke to the Arian faction.^^ 
 This miracle is attested by several contemporary 
 writers, who affirm that they had seen and heard 
 some of those Confessors speaking distinctly, after 
 they had lost their tongues. 
 
 Now it may not improbably be supposed on this 
 occasion, that tho' their tongues were ordered to be 
 cut out to the roots, and are said to have been so 
 cut, yet the sentence might not be so strictly exe- 
 cuted, as not to leave in some of them such a share 
 of that organ, as was sufficient, in a tolerable degree, 
 for the use of speech. It is remarkable also, that 
 
143 
 
 two of this company are said to have utterly lost the 
 faculty of speaking, who had been deprived perhaps 
 of their entire tongues : for tho' this be ascribed to 
 the peculiar judgement of God, for a punishment of 
 the immoralities, of which they were afterwards 
 guilty, yet that seems to be a forced and improbable 
 solution of the matter. We are told likewise, that 
 another of these Confessors ivho had been dumb from 
 his birth, yet by losing his tongue with the rest, ac- 
 quired also the use of speech: which is a circumstance 
 so singular and extraordinary, that it carries with it 
 a suspicion of art and contrivance, to enhance the 
 luster of the miracle. 
 
 But to come still more close to the point. If we 
 should allow after all, that the tongues of these con- 
 fessors were cut away to the very roots ; what will 
 the learned doctor say, if this boasted miracle, ^vhich 
 he so strenuously defends, should be found at last to 
 be no miracle at all ? The tongue indeed has gene- 
 rally been considered as absolutely necessary to the 
 use of speech : so that to hear men talk without it, 
 might easily pass for a miracle in that credulous age; 
 especially when it gave so illustrious a confirmation 
 to the orthodox faith, and so signal an overthrow to 
 the Arian heresy. Yet the opportunities of examin- 
 ing the truth of the case by experiment have been so 
 rare in the world, that there was always room to 
 doubt whether there was any thing miraculous in it 
 or not. But we have an instance in the present 
 century, indisputably attested, and published about 
 thirty years ago, which clears up all our doubts, and 
 intirely decides the qusestion. I mean the case of a 
 
144 
 
 girl horn without a tongue, who yet talked as distinctly 
 and easily as if she had enjoyed the full benefit of that 
 organ : a particular account of which is given in the 
 Memoires of the Academy of Sciences at Paris, drawn 
 up by an eminent physician who had carefully exa- 
 mined the mouth of the girl and all the several parts 
 of it, in order to discover by what means her speech 
 was performed without the help of a tongue ; which 
 he has there explaned with great skill and accuracy. 
 In the same account he refers us likewise to another 
 instance, published about eighty years before, by a 
 surgeon of Saumur, of a boy, who at the age of eight 
 or nine years, lost his tongue by a gangrene or ulcer, 
 occasioned by the small pox, yet retained the faculty of 
 speaking, in the same manner as the girl. 
 
 Let our Doctor then defend this miracle with all 
 the power of his zeal and learning : let him urge the 
 testimonies of senators, chancellors, bishops, arch- 
 bishops, and popes ; of persons, who had too much 
 learning and judgement, he says, to be deceived in so 
 important a fact, tho' they lived an hundred years after 
 it ; of ^neas also of Gaza, who opened their very 
 mouths, as he tells us, to make his obser^vations loith 
 more exactness. Yet the humble testimony of this 
 single physician, grounded on real experiment, will 
 overturn at once all his pompous list of dignified au- 
 thorities, and convince every man of judgement that 
 this pretended miracle, like all the other fictions 
 which have been imposed upon the world under that 
 character, owed it^s whole credit to our ignorance of 
 the powers of nature. 
 
 In short, when we reflect on the corrupt and dege- 
 
145 
 
 nerate state of the Church in the end of the fourth 
 century, allowed by the most diligent inquirers into 
 antiquit}^, and that this age was the pattern to all 
 that succeded it, in which the same corruptions were 
 not onely practised, but agreeably to the nature of 
 all corruption, carried still to a greater excess, and 
 improved from bad to worse down to the time of the 
 reformation ; we may safely conclude, without weigh- 
 ing the particular scruples which may arise upon 
 each single miracle, that they were all, in the gross, 
 of the same class and species, — the mere effects of 
 fraud and imposture. For we can hardly dip into 
 any part of ecclesiastical history, of what age soever, 
 without being shocked by the attestation of several, 
 wiiich fi'om the mere incredibility of them appear at 
 first sight to be fabulous. This is confessed on all 
 sides, even by the warmest defenders of the primitive 
 Fathers, and cannot be accounted for in any other 
 way than by ascribing it to the experience which 
 those Fathers, had of the blind credulity and super- 
 stition of the ages in which they lived, and which 
 had been trained by them to consider the impossibi- 
 lity of a thing as an argument for the belief of it. 
 But in whatever light we contemplate these stories, 
 Avhether as believed, or as forged by them, or as af- 
 firmed onely and not believed, it necessarily destroys 
 their credit in all other miraculous relations whatso- 
 ever. Yet it is surprizing to see with what ease the 
 advocates of these miracles overlook and contemn all 
 reflections of this kind, and think it sufficient to tell 
 us, that the Fathers, tho^ honest, ivere apt to be very 
 credulous: for with these disputants, credulity it 
 
 G 
 
146 
 
 seemSj how gross soever, casts not the least slur 
 upon their testimony ; which in all cases, where it 
 does not confute itself by it's own extravagance, they 
 maintain to be convincing and decisive, and superior 
 to all suspicion. Whereas the sole inference which 
 reason would teach us to draw from an attestation of 
 miracles so conspicuously fabulous, is, that the same 
 witnesses are not to be trusted in any; as being 
 either incapable from a weakness of judgement of 
 discerning the truth and probability of things, or de- 
 termined by craft and fraud to defend every thing 
 that was usefuU to them. In a word ; in all inquiries 
 of this nature we may take it for a certain rule, that 
 those who are conscious of the power of working true 
 miracles, can never be tempted either to invent, or 
 to propagate, any which are false ; because the de- 
 tection of any one would taint the credit of all the 
 rest, and defeat the end proposed by them. But 
 impostors are naturally drawn, by a long course of 
 success, into a security which puts them off their 
 guard, and tempts them gradually, out of mere wan- 
 tonness and contempt of those whom they had so 
 frequently deluded, to stretch their frauds beyond 
 the bounds of probability, till by repeated acts of 
 this kind they tire the patience of the most credu- 
 lous, and expose their tricks to the scorn even of the 
 populace. 
 
 I have now thrown together all which I had col- 
 lected for the support of my argument, or as much 
 at least as I thought sufficient to illustrate the real 
 state of the primitive miracles : and if we cast up 
 the summ of all that boasted e^ddence, which the 
 
147 
 
 unanimity of the Fathers, the tradition of the Catholic 
 Church, and the faith of history, have produced at 
 last on the other side, towards the confirmation of 
 the said miracles, we shall find the whole to amount 
 in reality to no proof at all. For to run over them, 
 all again in short : 
 
 The gift of raising the dead is affirmed onely by 
 the single authority of Irenceus, Bishop of Lyons; 
 and was either not known, or not believed at least, 
 in the very same age, by another Bishop, full as ve- 
 nerable, Theophilus of Antioch. The gift of tongues, 
 which rests likewise on the single testimony of the 
 same Irenceus, is confuted even by himself, who com- 
 plains of his own want of it in the very work of pro- 
 pagating the Gospel. The gift of expounding the 
 Scriptures, which is reckoned commonly with the 
 rest, and clamed in particular by Justin Martyr, is 
 allowed to have had no subsistence at all in any age, 
 or any writer of the primitive Church. The gift of 
 casting out Devils, the most celebrated of them all, 
 is reduced to nothing, by the accounts even of the 
 ancients themselves, which plainly testify that it had 
 no effect in many cases, and could not work a per- 
 fect cure in any. And as to other diseases, where oil 
 especially was applied, they might probably enough 
 be cured without a miracle ; or by the same arts with 
 which the same cures were performed among the 
 heathens : which, tho^ the undoubted effects of fraud, 
 were yet managed so dexterously, as to be constantly 
 ascribed by the Christians to the power of Daemons. 
 Lastly, the gift of prophetic visions and trances, was 
 of a kind which could not easily be proved to the sa- 
 
 g2 
 
148 
 
 tisfaction of any ; was of no service therefore to the 
 propagation of the Gospel^ or the conviction of un- 
 behevers ; being wholly exercised among the Chris- 
 tians themselveSj and owing it^s chief credit to here- 
 tics and enthusiasts; and always suspected by the 
 sober and judicious : so that after florishing for a 
 while through a visionary generation or two, it pre- 
 sently after fell into utter contempt. 
 
 This then being the real state of the miracles of 
 the primitive Church, I freely commit them once 
 more to the Chapmans, the Bemmans, and the Steb- 
 hings, to defend and enjoy them as much as they 
 please; happy without doubt, in this sceptical age, 
 to find themselves blessed with that heroic faith 
 which can remove mountains, and beat down every 
 obstacle which sense, or reason, or fact can possibly 
 oppose to it. Dr. Chapman has declared beforehand, 
 that whenever my larger work should appear, the pri- 
 mitive Fathers loould find greater friends to their me- 
 mory, and abler advocates to their cause, than I ivould 
 wish to exist. That time is now come, and those 
 abler advocates expected ; but let them appear when 
 they will, I am so far from grudging their help to 
 the Fathers, that I wish them the ablest which Po- 
 pery itself can afford : for Protestantism, I am sure, 
 can suppty none whom they would chuse to retain in 
 their cause ; none who can defend them, without 
 contradicting their own profession, and disgracing 
 their own character ; or produce anything but what 
 deserves to be laughed at, rather than answered. I 
 must however except one, who acts indeed with a 
 better grace and more consistency : for when I had 
 
149 
 
 treated him by mistake as a Protestant, he flatly dis- 
 owns the name, and calls himself a Catholic Chris- 
 tian ; the same title which a Popish writer had before 
 assumed, in his remarks on vay Letter from Rome ; 
 and what all these advocates, who hang as it were 
 between the two religions, aflPect to assume, that 
 they may evade for a while the more invidious name 
 of Papist. 
 
 V. All that remains towards the final confirmation 
 of my argument, is, to refute, as I promised, some 
 of the most plausible objections which have been 
 made to it by my antagonists ; and which by hu- 
 mouring the prejudices and prepossessions of many 
 pious Christians, seem the most likely to make an 
 impression to it^s disadvantage. 
 
 Sect. 1. In the first place then it is objected, that 
 by the character which I have given of the ancient 
 Fathers, the authority of the books of the New Testa- 
 ment, which were transmitted to us through their 
 hands, will be rendered precarious and uncertain. 
 
 To which I answer, that the objection is trifling 
 and groundless, and that the authority of those 
 books does not depend upon the faith of the Fathers, 
 or of any particular set of men, but on the general 
 credit and reception which they found, not onely in 
 all the Churches, but with all the private Christians 
 of those ages who were able to purchase copies of 
 them; among whom, tho' it might perhaps be the 
 desire of a few to corrupt, yet it was the common in- 
 terest of all to preserve, and of none to destroy them. 
 
150 
 
 And we find accordingly^, that they were guarded by 
 all with the strictest care, so as to be conceled from 
 the knowledge and search of their heathen adver- 
 saries, who alone were desirous to extirpate them. 
 After such a publication therefore, and wide disper- 
 sion of them from their very origin, it is hardly pos- 
 sible that they should either be corrupted, or sup- 
 pressed, or counterfeited by a few, of what character 
 or abilities soever ; or that, according to the natural 
 course of things, they should not be handed down 
 from age to age, in the same manner, with the works 
 of all the other ancient writers of Greece and Rome, 
 which, tho' transmitted through the hands of many 
 profligate and faithless generations of men, yet have 
 suffered no diminution of their credit on that ac- 
 count : for tho' in every age there were several per- 
 haps, who from crafty and selfish motives, might be 
 disposed to deprave, or even to suppress some parti- 
 cular books, yet their malice could reach onely to a 
 few copies, and would be restrained therefore from 
 the attempt, or corrected at least after the attempt, 
 by the greater number of the same books, which 
 were out of their reach and remained still incorrupt. 
 But besides all this, there were some circumstances 
 peculiar to the books of the New Testament, which 
 insured the preservation of them more effectually 
 than of any other ancient books whatsoever; the 
 divinity of their character ; and the religious regard 
 which was paid to them by all the sects and parties 
 of Christians ; and above all, the mutual jealousies 
 of those very parties, which were perpetually watch- 
 ing over each other, lest any of them should corrupt 
 
151 
 
 the sources of that pure doctrine which they all pro- 
 fessed to teach and to deduce from the same books. 
 Let the craft therefore of the ancient Fathers be as 
 great as we can suppose it to be ; let it be capable of 
 adding some of their own forgeries for a while to the 
 canon of Scripture ; yet it was not in the power of 
 any craft to impose spurious pieces in the room of 
 those genuin ones, which were actually deposited in 
 all Churches, and preserved with the utmost rever- 
 ence in the hands of so many private Christians. 
 
 But I may go a step farther, and venture to de- 
 clare, that if we should allow the objection to be 
 true, it cannot in any manner hurt my argument ; 
 for if it be natural and necessary that the craft and 
 credulity of witnesses should always detract from the 
 credit of their testimony, who can help it ? or on 
 what is the consequence to be charged, but on that 
 nature and constitution of things from which it 
 flows ? or if the authority of any books be really 
 weakened by the character which I have given of the 
 Fathers, will it follow from thence that the character 
 must necessarily be false, and that the Fathers were 
 neither crafty nor credulous ? That surely can never 
 be pretended ; because the craft and credulity which 
 are charged upon them must be determined by ano- 
 ther sort of evidence ; not by consequences, but by 
 facts ; and if the charge be confirmed by these, it 
 must be admitted as true, how far soever the conse- 
 quences may reach. 
 
 Sect. 2. It has been alledged " that all suspicion 
 of fraud in the case of the primitive miracles seems 
 
152 
 
 to be precluded by tbat public appeal and cliallenge 
 wliicli the Christian Apologists make to their enemies 
 the Heathens, to come and see with their own eyes 
 the reality of the facts which they attest/^ But this 
 objection, tho^ it may seem plausible indeed to a 
 common reader, yet to all who are acquainted with 
 the condition of the Christians in those days, and 
 the difficulty of making their apologies known to 
 the world, will be found to have no real weight in it. 
 The Gospel indeed soon began to make a considera- 
 ble progress among the vulgar, and to gain some 
 few also of a more distinguished rank, yet continued 
 to be held in such contempt by the generality of the 
 better sort, through the three first centuries, that 
 they scarce ever thought it worth while to make any 
 inquiry about it, or to examine the merit of it^s pre- 
 tensions. The principal writers of Rome, who make 
 any mention of the Christians, about the time of 
 Trajan, plainly shew, that they knew nothing more 
 of them, or their religion, than what they had picked 
 up, as it were, by chance, from the gross misre- 
 presentation of common fame, and speak of them 
 accordingly, as a set of despicable, stubborn, and even 
 ivicked Enthusiasts. 
 
 Suetonius calls them a race of men of a new and 
 mischievous superstition. And Tacitus, describing 
 the horrible tortures which they suffered under Nero, 
 for the pretended crime of burning the City of Rome, 
 says, " that they were detested for their flagitious 
 practices; possessed with an abominable superstition; 
 and condemned, not so much for their supposed 
 crime of setting fire to the City, as for the hatred of 
 
153 
 
 all mankind ; and tho' they deserved the most exem- 
 plary punishments, yet it raised some pity towards 
 them to see them so miserably destroyed, not on 
 the account of the public utility, but to satiate the 
 cruelty of a single man/^ 
 
 Pliny also, when he was the Governor of a Province, 
 in which the Christians were very numerous, and 
 under an actual persecution in the reign of Trajan^ 
 yet in his celebrated letter to that Emperor concern- 
 ing them, declares, " that he had never been present 
 at any of their examinations, and did not so much 
 as know for what they were punished, or how far 
 they deserved punishment : that by all the enquiries 
 which he had since made, he could not discover any 
 practices among them, but what were harmless and 
 innocent. — And nothing, in short, but a wretched 
 and extravagant superstition, which had spread itself 
 very wide, among persons of both sexes, of every 
 age and condition, which might however be subdued 
 by gentler methods ; by moderating the rigor of the 
 persecution, and pardoning the penitent ; by which 
 lenity, great numbers of them had already been re- 
 called to their ancient worship/^ 
 
 This is the whole account which we have of the 
 Primitive Christians, from the best Heathen writers, 
 to the time of Antoninus Pius : in whose reign, 
 and that of his Successor, M. Aurelius, the ancient 
 Apologies of Justin Martyr, Melito, and Athenagoras, 
 were addressed to the Emperor and Senate of Pome : 
 notwithstanding which, their condition, generally 
 speaking, continued much the same through the 
 following ages, till they were established at last by 
 
 g3 
 
154 
 
 the civil power : during all which time they were 
 constantly insulted and calumniated by their Hea- 
 then Adversaries, as a stupid^ credulous, impious sect; 
 the scum of mankind, and the prey of crafty Impostors : 
 calumnies, of which all the ancient Apologists com- 
 plain, and take great pains to confute. Ter^tullian 
 expostulates very warmly with the Heathen Magis- 
 trates, "that they would not give themselves the 
 trouble to make the least inquiry into their manners 
 and doctrines; but condemned them for the mere 
 name, without examination or trial ; treating a 
 Christian of course, as guilty of every crime ; as an 
 enemy of the Gods, Emperors, laws, customs, and 
 even of nature itself- — and what, says he, can be more 
 unjust than to hate what you know nothing of, even 
 tho^ it deserved to be hated V Arnobius and Lac- 
 tantius make the same complaint near an hundred 
 years later, in the beginning of the fourth century, 
 that they were derided every where by the Gentiles, 
 as a senseless, stupid race of blockheads and by^utes, to 
 whose impieties, all the calamities, which afflicted the 
 several countries where they lived, were constantly 
 imputed. 
 
 In these circumstances, it cannot be imagined, 
 that men of figure and fortunes would pa}^ any at- 
 tention to the apologies or writings of a sect so 
 utterly despised ; especially, when on the one hand, 
 there was no elegance of stile or composition to 
 invite them to read ; and on the other, all the dis- 
 couragements, which the Government could give, to 
 deter them from reading. Much less can we believe 
 that the Emperor and Senate of Rome shou)'^ take 
 
155 
 
 any notice of those Apologies, or even know indeed 
 that any such were addressed to them. For should 
 the like case happen in our days, that any Methodist, 
 Moravian, or French Prophet, should publish an 
 apology for his brethren, addressed to the King and 
 the Parhament, is it not wholly improbable, that the 
 Government would pay any regard to it, or take it 
 at all into their consideration ? How can it then be 
 supposed, that the Emperor and Senate of Rome, 
 who had a worse opinion of the ancient Christians 
 than we of our modern Fanatics, and instead of 
 tolerating were using all methods to destroy them, 
 would give themselves the trouble to read, or to con- 
 sider the merit of their writings ? 
 
 We must add to all this, the great difficulty of 
 publishing books, or of making them known to the 
 world in those ages. The ease, which we now find 
 in providing and dispersing what number of copies 
 we please, by the opportunity of the press, make us 
 apt to imagine, without considering the matter, that 
 the publication of books was the same easy afi'air in 
 all former times as in the present But the case was 
 quite different. For when there were no books in 
 the world but what were written out by hand, with 
 great labor and expence, the method of publishing 
 them was necessarily very slow and the price very 
 dear, so that the rich onely and curious would be 
 disposed or able to purchase them ; and to such also, 
 it was often difficult to procure them,^ or to know 
 even where they were to be bought. 
 
 In the Epistle of the Church of Smyrna, men- 
 tioned above, concerning the Martyrdom of St. Poly- 
 
156 
 
 carp, tliere is a passage or two wliicli will help to 
 confirm what I am now asserting. For towards the 
 end of it, the Philadelphians, to whom it is ad- 
 dressed, are desired, as soon as they have informed 
 themselves of the contents, to send it forward to all 
 the other brethren, who lived more remote, or beyond 
 Philadelphia, that they also might read it and glo- 
 rify God. The note likewise, which is annexed to 
 the end of the Epistle, declares, " that the copy of 
 this most valued piece, which had been transcribed 
 from the book of Irenceus, had lain buried and un- 
 known at Corinth for several ages, almost destroyed 
 by time, and in danger of being lost to the world, 
 till it was discovered by a revelation from Polycarp 
 himself, made to one Pionius," from whose tran- 
 script all the copies of it now extant are derived. 
 These passages, I say, plainly intimate, how diffi- 
 cult it must have been to the Christians of those 
 days to provide such books as were wanted even for 
 their own use, and much more to disperse such a 
 number of them as was sufficient for the information 
 of the public. 
 
 Since this then was the condition of publishing 
 books in those primitive ages, in which the Chris- 
 tians were neither able to bear the expence of copy- 
 ing, nor the Heathens disposed to buy them, there 
 is great reason to believe, that their Apologies, how 
 gravely soever addressed to Emperors and Senates, 
 lay concealed and unknown to the public for many 
 years, in a few private hands, and among the faithful 
 onely ; especially, when the publication of them was 
 not onely difficult and expensive, but so criminal 
 
157 
 
 also^ as to expose them often to danger^ and even to 
 capital punishment ; and when the books themselves, 
 as oft as they were found by the magistrate, instead 
 of being read, were generally ordered to be burnt. 
 
 Sect. 3. It is urged against me, " that no sus- 
 picion of craft can reasonably be entertained against 
 persons of so exalted a piety, who exposed them- 
 selves to persecution and even to Martyrdom, in 
 confirmation of the truth of what they taught.^^ 
 But this likewise will appear to have as little solidity 
 in it as the former. For all who are conversant with 
 history know, that nothing gives so invincible a pre- 
 judice, and so strong a biass to the mind of man, 
 as religious zeal in favor of every thing that is 
 thought useful to the object which excites it. And 
 the several facts, which I have abeady stated, will 
 inable us to judge, in what manner the extraordi- 
 nary zeal of those ancients may be presumed to have 
 operated in the case now in qusestion. I shall say 
 nothing more therefore on that head ; but since 
 some of those Fathers, to whose testimony I have 
 chiefly appealed, as Papias, Justin, Irenaus, Cyprian, 
 &c., were not onely persons of the greatest piety 
 and zeal, but said to have been Martyrs also for the 
 faith of Christ, it may be proper to add a reflection 
 or two on the particular case of Martyrdom, in order 
 to shew that this venerable name made no real dif- 
 ference in the personal characters of men, nor ought 
 to give any additional weight to the authority of a 
 Christian witness. 
 
 There were various motives of diff'erent kinds, as 
 
158 
 
 Mr. Dodwell has shewn, which would naturally in- 
 duce the primitive Christians not onely to indure 
 but even to wish and aspire to Martyrdom. He ob- 
 serves, " that among the ancient Jews, the Galilcsans 
 were remarkable for the obstinacy of their temper 
 and a contempt of death ; whose example, he ima- 
 gines, might have some influence on those first 
 Christians, who drew their origin from that country, 
 and were constantly called Galilceans, and charged 
 with the same spirit of obstinacy by their adversa- 
 ries." A character which seems to be particularly 
 verified in the Christians of PalcBstine, concerning 
 whom, Tiberianus, the Governor of Syria, sends the 
 following account to the Emperor Trajan. 
 
 " I am quite tired with punishing and destroying 
 the Galilceans, or those of the sect called Christians, 
 according to your orders. Yet they never cease to 
 profess voluntarily what they are, and to offer them- 
 selves to death. Wherefore I have labored by exhor- 
 tations and threats to discourage them from daring 
 to confess to me that they are of that Sect. Yet in 
 spite of all persecution they continue still to do it. 
 Be pleased therefore to let me know what your high- 
 ness thinks proper to be done with them." 
 
 Glory also, or reputation, was another great spur 
 to Martyrdom ; for by the principles of those ages, 
 nothing was esteemed more glorious than the crown 
 of Martyrdom, as it was called. There was an anni- 
 versary festival instituted to the honor of each 
 Martyr ; in which their memories were celebrated by 
 panegyrical orations, and a veneration, next to divine, 
 paid to their reliques. In their prisons they were 
 
159 
 
 \dsited by the Christians of all ranks, proud to 
 minister to them in the very lowest offices, and to 
 kiss their chains; and if they happened to escape 
 with life from their tortures, as they frequently did, 
 their authority was ever after most highly respected 
 in the decision of all controversies ; in absolving 
 men from the ordinary discipline of the Church, in 
 granting pardon to lapsed Christians, and restoring 
 them to communion, on what terms they thought fit. 
 
 But the principal incentive to Martyrdom, was the 
 assurance not onely of an immortality of glory and 
 happiness in another world, in common with all 
 other pious Christians, but of extraordinary and 
 distinguished rewards, and a degree of happiness 
 proportionable to the degree of their sufferings. For 
 while the souls of ordinary Christians were to wait 
 their doom in some intermediate state, or pass to 
 their final bliss through a purgation by fire, it was a 
 general belief, that the Martyrs were admitted to the 
 immediate fruition of Paradise, and that the fire of 
 Martyrdom purged all their sins away at once. And 
 the opinion likewise which commonly prevailed in 
 these days, that this world was near to it's end, 
 made them the more eager still to snatch that crown 
 which would iutitle them to such high privileges ; 
 give them a power with God, so as to procure bene- 
 fits for others, and make them Assessors and Judges 
 with Christ himself at the last day. 
 
 There was another notion, diligently inculcated 
 and generally believed at the same time, which was 
 sufficient of itself to efface all the terrors of Mar- 
 tyrdom, viz. J that under all that dreadfull apparatus 
 
160 
 
 of racks and fires^ and the seeming atrocity of their 
 tortures, the Martyrs were miraculously freed from 
 all sense of pain, nay, felt nothing but transports 
 of joy from the cruelty of their tormentors. All 
 which is expressly affirmed by many of the ecclesias- 
 tical writers. The visible assistance of heaven, says 
 Dr. Chapman, relieving the pains of some, extinguish- 
 ing them in others, and converting them into pleasure 
 and rapture in many — which facts, he declares, to be 
 so well known and so well attested ; so plain and so 
 indisputable, that there was no occasion for him to 
 take the trouble of pjroving them. Socrates, the His- 
 torian, has furnished an instance of them in the case 
 of one Theodorus ; and the old Martyrologies, as 
 they are published by the Romanists, and especially 
 the Acts ofPerpetua and Felicitas, to which the Doctor 
 refers us for the indisputable proof of true miracles, 
 will supply us with many more. This Theodorus 
 was a young Christian, of eminent zeal and piety, 
 who is said to have suffered the most cruel tortures 
 by the command of the Emperor Jidian ; but after 
 he was left for dead by his tormentors, was provi- 
 dentially preserved and restored to life. " Ruffinus 
 happening to meet with him many years after, took 
 occasion to ask him whether he had been sensible of 
 any very sharp pains under the agony of his torture ; 
 to which he answered, that he had felt but very 
 little, and that a certain young person stood by him 
 all the time, wiping awa}^ the sweat which flowed 
 from him, strengthening his mind, and filling him 
 with delight rather than torment, during his con- 
 tinuance on the rack.^^ 
 
161 
 
 Lastly, we must add to these several motives, the 
 scandal of flying from persecution, and the infamy 
 which attended the lapsed Christians, so as to make 
 life hardly supportable to those, who through fear of 
 the rack and a cruel death, had been tempted to 
 deny their faith, or guilty of any compliance with 
 the idolatry of their persecutors. All which topics, 
 when displayed with art and eloquence by their ablest 
 teachers, were sufficient to inflame the multitude to 
 what pitch of zeal they pleased, so as to make them 
 even provoke and ofi*er themselves forwardly to the 
 most dreadful torments. "Who is there,^^ says 
 CypriaHj " who would not strive with all his might 
 to arrive at so great a glory, to be a friend of God, 
 enter into present joy with Christ, and after earthly 
 torments receive heavenly rewards ? If it be glorious 
 to worldly soldiers, after conquering an enemy, to 
 return triumphant into their country, how much 
 greater glory is it, after having vanquished the 
 Devil, to return triumphant into paradise, whence 
 Adam was expelled, and there to erect trophies over 
 that very enemy who expelled him ? To accompany 
 God, when he comes to take vengeance on his ene- 
 mies ; to be placed at his side when he sits in judge- 
 ment ; to be made coheirs with Christ ; equal with 
 Angels ; and together with the Apostles, Prophets, 
 and Patriarchs, to rejoice in the possession of an 
 Heavenly Kingdom. These things you are to bear 
 in your minds and memories. What persecution 
 can get the better of such meditations ? what tor- 
 ments be superior to them V^ 
 
 These principles and motives, I say, had such 
 
162 
 
 force as sometimes to animate even bad men to 
 indure a Martyrdom. For the Heretics also had 
 their Martyrs, as all history informs us^ as well as 
 the Orthodox ; who yet in their common sufferings 
 and death, continued to testify their mutual aversion, 
 and to refuse all communion with each other. But by 
 bad men, who became Martyrs, I do not mean such 
 onely as were called Heretics, for that name was 
 often given even to the best ; but the proud, the 
 contentious, the drunken, and the lewd, among the 
 orthodox Martyrs themselves : of all which kinds 
 there were many, as St. Cyprian complains, who, 
 after they had nobly sustained the trial of Martyrdom, 
 and escaped with life from the torments of their per- 
 secutors, yet by a petulant, factious, and profligate 
 behaviour, gave great scandal and disturbance to the 
 discipline of the Church. 
 
 This is expressly declared by Cyprian in several of 
 his letters : in one of which, addressed to the whole 
 body of the Confessors, after he has signified his 
 joy, "that the greatest part of them were made the 
 better by the honor of their confession, and preserved 
 their glory, by a quiet and inoffensive carriage, yet 
 he had been informed, he says, of others, who infected 
 their society, and disgraced the laudable name of 
 Confessor by their evil conversation : some of them 
 being drunken and lascivious, some puffed up and 
 swollen with pride ; while others, as he had heard 
 with the utmost grief, defiled their bodies, the tem- 
 ples of God, sanctified by their confession, with the 
 promiscuous and infamous use of lewd women. ^^ In 
 one of his letters also to the Clergy, he says, I am 
 
163 
 
 grieved when I hear how some of them run about, 
 wickedly and insolently spending their time in trifles, 
 or in sowing discord, and defiling the members of 
 Christ, and which have already confessed Christ, by 
 the unlawfull use of women." And in another trea- 
 tise, where he is touching the same subject, " let no 
 man wonder, says he, that some of the Confessors 
 commit such horrible and grievous sins; for con- 
 fession does not secure them from the snares and 
 temptations of the Devil — otherwise we should never 
 after see any frauds, and whoredoms and adulteries 
 in Confessors, which I now groan and grieve to see 
 in some of them." 
 
 It is not my design, by what is said here on the 
 subject of Martyrdom, to detract in any manner 
 from the real merit and just praise of those primitive 
 Martyrs, who with an imincible constancy, sustained 
 the cause of Christ, at the expense of their lives. It 
 is reasonable to believe, that, generally speaking, 
 they were the best sort of Christians, distinguished 
 by their exemplary zeal and piety, and the chief 
 ornaments of the Church in their several ages ; yet 
 it is certain that they were subject still to the same 
 passions, prejudices, and errors, which were common 
 to all the other pious Christians of the same age. 
 My sole view therefore is to expose the vanity of 
 those extravagant honors, and that idolatrous wor- 
 ship, which are paid to them indiscriminately by the 
 Church of Rome; and to shew especially, that the 
 circumstance of their Martyrdom, while it gives the 
 strongest proof of the sincerity of their faith 'and 
 trust in the promises of the Gospel, adds nothing to 
 
164 
 
 the cliaracter of their knowledge or their sagacity j 
 nor consequently^ any weight to their testimony, in 
 preference to that of any other just and devout Chris- 
 tian whatsoever. 
 
 Sect. 4. It has been frequently objected by my 
 Antagonists, that to reject the unanimous testimony 
 of the Fathers, in their reports of the primitive mi- 
 racles, will destroy the faith and credit of all history. 
 
 This was the constant cant of all the zealots, even 
 of the Heathen world, whenever any of their estab- 
 lished superstitions were attacked by men of sense. 
 " If these things, they cried, approved by the wisdom 
 of our ancestors, and confirmed by the consent of 
 ages, can be shewn at last to be false, we must burn 
 all our annals, and believe nothing at all.^^ And 
 the same outcry, as Eusebius tells us, w^as made by 
 them also against the Christians, when the Gospel 
 first began to spread itself among them : " that to 
 reject a belief and worship universally established by 
 Kings, Legislators, and Philosophers of all nations, 
 whether Greeks or Barbarians, was an impious apos- 
 tacy from the rites of their ancestors, and a contra- 
 diction to the sense and judgement of mankind.^' 
 The Christians on the other hand constantly derided 
 this plea, and declared, " that to follow the inventions 
 of their ancestors without any judgement or exami- 
 nation, and to be led perpetually by others, like 
 brute animals, was to preclude themselves from that 
 search of wisdom and knowledge, which is natural 
 to man." Yet when it came at last to their own 
 turn, to find the authority of ages on their side, they 
 
165 
 
 took up the same plea which they had before rejected, 
 and urge it at this day as the principal objection to 
 Protestantism ; that it is a mere novelty, which had 
 no existence in the world before Luther, contradic- 
 tory to the practice of all the primitive Saints and 
 Martyrs of the Catholic Church, and to the unani- 
 mous consent of fifteen centuries/^ 
 
 If this objection therefore had ever been found to 
 have any force in it, the ancient Christians could 
 never have over-ruled the impostures of Paganism ; 
 nor our Reformers, the superstitions of Popery. But 
 in truth, when it comes to be seriously considered, it 
 will appear to have no sense at all in it ; and if the 
 Doctors Chapman and Berriman, who now revive and 
 so zealously urge it, were called upon to explane them- 
 selves upon it, they would find it difficult, I dare say, 
 to tell us what they mean by it. If they mean that 
 a contempt of those miracles which they would per- 
 suade us to believe, w^ould necessarily derive the 
 same contempt on history itself, all experience has 
 shewn the contrary ; for tho^ there have been doubters 
 and contemners of such miracles in all ages, yet his- 
 tory has maintained it's ground through them all. 
 During the three first centuries, the whole world in 
 a manner not onely doubted, but rejected the mira- 
 cles of the primitive Christians ; yet history was 
 written and read with the same pleasure and profit 
 as before, and applied by the unbelievers themselves 
 to the confirmation of their very doubts. Our com- 
 merce with the times past, as they are represented to 
 us in history, is of much the same kind with our 
 manner of dealing with the present. We find many 
 
166 
 
 men in the world, whose fidelity we have just ground 
 to suspect ; yet a number of others, whom we can 
 readily trust, sufficient to support that credit and 
 mutual confidence by which the business of life is 
 carried on. Just so in ancient history ; we find many 
 things of which we have cause to doubt, many which 
 we are obliged to reject ; yet it^s use still subsists, 
 and from real and indisputable facts supplies suffi- 
 cient matter both of instruction and entertainment 
 to every judicious reader. 
 J^ If our Doctors therefore mean any thing by the 
 objection which we are examining, it must be this ; 
 that the same principle which induces us to suspect 
 the primitive miracles, and particularly those of 
 Symeon StylifeSj when so forcibly and credibly at- 
 tested, must induce us also, if we are consistent with 
 ourselves, to suspect every thing that is delivered to 
 us from ancient history. But they widely mistake 
 the matter, and do not at all reflect on what I have 
 intimated above, that the history of miracles is of a 
 kind totally difi'erent from that of common events ; 
 the one, to be suspected always of course, without 
 the strongest evidence to confirm it ; the other, to be 
 admitted of course, without as strong reason to sus- 
 pect it. Ordinary facts, related by a credible person, 
 furnish no cause of doubting from the nature of the 
 thing; but if they be strange and extraordinary, 
 doubts naturally arise, and in proportion as they ap- 
 proach towards the marvellous, those doubts still in- 
 crease and grow stronger. For mere honesty will 
 not warrant them ; we require other qualities in the 
 historian ; a degree of knowledge, experience, and 
 
167 
 
 discernment^ sufficient to judge of the whole nature 
 and circumstances of the case : and if any of these 
 be wanting, we necessarily suspend our belief. A 
 weak man indeed, if honest, may attest common 
 events as credibly as the wisest; yet can hardly 
 make any report that is credible of such as are mi- 
 raculous ; because a suspicion will always occur that 
 his weakness, and imperfect knowledge of the extent 
 of human art, had been imposed upon by the craft 
 of cunning jugglers. On the other hand, should a 
 man of known abilities and judgement relate to us 
 things miraculous, or undertake to perform them 
 himself, the very notion of his skill, without an 
 assurance also of his integrity, would excite onely 
 the greater suspicion of him; especially if he had 
 any interest to promote, or any favorite opinion to 
 recommend, by the authority of such works : be- 
 cause a pretension to miracles has, in all ages and 
 nations, been found the most effectual instrument of 
 impostors, towards deluding the multitude, and gain- 
 ing their ends upon them. -'■^ 
 
 There is not a single historian of antiquity, 
 whether Greek or Latin, who has not recorded ora- 
 cles, prodigies, irrophecies, and miracles^ on the occa- 
 sion of some memorable events, or revolutions of 
 states and kingdoms. Many of these are attested in 
 the gravest manner and by the gravest writers, and 
 were firmly believed at the time by the populace: 
 vet it is certain, that there is not one of them which 
 we can reasonably take to be genuin : not one, but 
 what was either wholly forged, or from the opportu- 
 nity of some unusual circumstance attending it, im- 
 
, 168 
 
 proved and aggravated into something supernatural. 
 This was undoubtedly the case of all the heathen 
 miracles ; and though it may hurt in some measure 
 the general credit of miracles, yet, as experience has 
 plainty shewn, it has not in any degree affected the 
 y/credit of common history. For example. Dionysius 
 of Halicaiiiassus is esteemed one of the most faithfull 
 and accurate historians of antiquity : we take his 
 word without scruple, and preferably even to the 
 Roman writers, in his account of the civil affairs of 
 Rome ; yet we laugh at the fictitious miracles which 
 he has interspersed in it. '' In the war with the 
 Latins,^' he tells us, "how the gods, Castor and 
 Pollux, appeared visibly on white horses, and fought 
 on the side of the Romans, who by their assistance 
 gained a complete victory ; and that for a perpetual 
 memorial of it, a temple was publicly erected, and a 
 yearly festival, sacrifice, and procession instituted to 
 the honor of those deities. ^^ Now tho^ no body at 
 this day believes a tittle of the miracle, jQt the faith 
 of history is not hurt by it. We admit the battel 
 and the victory, and take the miraculous part to be, 
 what it certainly was, the fiction of the commanders 
 or persons interested, contrived for the sake of some 
 private as well as public benefit, which the nature of 
 \ the case will easily suggest. 
 
 Thua in the narrative also, above mentioned, of 
 the Martyrdom of St. Polycarp, the point of history 
 is, that he was condemned to death at Smyrna, of 
 which he was Bishop, and there actually burnt at 
 the stake for his profession of the Christian faith. 
 We have no doubt therefore of his Martvrdom, yet 
 
169 
 
 may reasonably pause at tlie miracles which are said 
 to have attended it. The voice pretended to come 
 from heaven, was heard onlv bv a few ; and that in 
 a time of such hurry, in which nothing coidd be 
 heard distinctly. If such a voice therefore had been 
 uttered by any one in the croud, as it was hardly 
 possible to discern whence it came, so those whose 
 zeal and imagination were particularly affected by so 
 moving an occasion, might easily mistake it for mi- 
 raculous. The flame also is said to have made an 
 arch around his body, and could not burn it ; an ap- 
 pearance which might easily happen from the com- 
 mon effects of the wind, or something at least so 
 like it as to afford matter enough to a superstitious 
 fancy to supply the rest. But the circumstance of a 
 dove flying out of his body ivhen pierced by a sioord, is 
 beyond all belief : or if a dove was really seen to fly 
 out of the wood which was prepared to consume him, 
 it might have been conveyed thither, probably by 
 design, in order to be let loose at a certain moment. 
 As in the funerals of the Roman Emperors, an eagle 
 was always observed to fly out of the funeral pile as 
 soon as it began to blaze, which was supposed to 
 convey the soul of the deceased into heaven; of 
 which a solemn deposition was constantly made 
 upon oath, in order to the deification of those 
 emperors. 
 
 But the case of witchcraft afi*ords the most eflfec-X 
 tual proof of the truth of what I am advancing. 
 There is not in all history any one miraculous fact 
 so authentically attested as the existence of witches. 
 All Christian nations whatsoever have consented in 
 
 H 
 
170 
 
 the belief of them, and pro\ided capital laws against 
 them ; in consequence of which, many hundreds of 
 both sexes have suffered a cruel death. In our own 
 country, great numbers have been condemned to die, 
 at different times, after a public trial by the most 
 eminent judges of the kingdom : and in some places, 
 for a perpetual memorial of their diabolical prac- 
 tices, anniversary sermons and solemnities have been 
 piously instituted, and subsist at this day to propa- 
 gate a detestation of them to all posterity. Now to 
 deny the reality of facts so solemnly attested and so 
 universally believed, seems to give the lie to the 
 sense and experience of all Christendom, to the 
 wisest and best of every nation, to public monu- 
 ments subsisting to our own times : yet the incredi- 
 bility of the thing prevailed, and was found at last 
 too strong for all this force of human testimony ; so 
 that the belief of witches is now utterly extinct, 
 and quietly buried without involving history in it's 
 ruin, or leaving even the least disgrace or censure 
 upon it. 
 
 There is another instance also, within our own 
 times, more directly applicable to our present pur- 
 pose. I mean the pretended miracles of the late 
 Abbe de Paris, which made such a noise in France a 
 few years ago, and are still believed by a great part 
 of that kingdom, or by all perhaps who believe any 
 other miracles of that Church. This Abbe was a 
 zealous Jansemst, and warm opposer of that Bull or 
 Constitution of Tope Clemens XI., called Unigenitiis, 
 by which all the doctrines of his sect were expressly 
 condemned. He died in 1725, and was buried in 
 
171 
 
 the church-yard of St. Medard in Paris ; whither the 
 great reputation of his sanctity drew many people to 
 visit his tomb, and pay their devotions to him as to 
 a saint : and this concourse gradually increasing, 
 made him soon be considered as a subject proper to 
 revive the credit of that party, now utterly depressed 
 by the power of the Jesuits, supported by the au- 
 thority of the Court. Within six years therefore 
 after his death, the confident report of miracles, 
 wrought at his tomb, began to alarm not onely the 
 City of Paris, but the whole nation; while infinite 
 crouds were perpetually pressing to the place, and 
 proclaming the benefits received from the saint : nor 
 could all the power of the Government give a check 
 to the rapidity of this superstition, till by inclosing 
 the tomb within a wall, they effectually obstructed 
 aU access to it. 
 
 This expedient, tho' it put an end to the external 
 worship of the Saint, could not shake the credit of 
 his miracles ; distinct accounts of which were care- 
 fully drawn up and dispersed among the people, with 
 an attestation of them much more strong and au- 
 thentic than what has ever been alledged for the 
 miracles of arv other age since the days of the 
 Apostles. Mons. de Montgeron, a person of emi- 
 nent rank in Paris, published a select number of 
 them in a pompous volume in quarto, which he 
 dedicated to the King, and presented to him in 
 person ; being induced to the publication of them, 
 as he declares, by the incontestable evidence of the 
 facts, by which he himself, from a libertin and pro- 
 fessed Deist, became a sincere convert to the Chris- 
 
173 
 
 tian faith. But besides the collection of Mr. de 
 Montgeron, several other collections were made, con- 
 taining in the Avhole above an hundred miracles, 
 which are all published together in three volumes, 
 with their original vouchers, certificates, affidavits, 
 and letters annexed to each of them at full length. 
 
 The greatest part of these miracles were employed 
 in the cures of desperate diseases, in their last and 
 deplored state, and after all human remedies had 
 for many years been tried upon them in vain ; but 
 the patients no sooner addressed themselves to the 
 tomb of this Saint, than the most inveterate cases, 
 and complications of palsies, apoplexies, and drop- 
 sies, and even blindness and lameness, &c., were 
 either instantly cured, or greatly relieved, and within 
 a short time after wholly removed. All which cures 
 were performed in the Churchyard of St. Medarcl, 
 in the open view of the people, and with so general 
 a belief of the finger of God in them, that many 
 Infidels, Debauchees, Schismatics, and Heretics are 
 said to have been converted by them to the Catholic 
 faith. And the reality of them is attested by some 
 of the principal physicians and surgeons in France, 
 as well as the clergy of the first dignity, several of 
 whom were eye-witnesses of them, who presented a 
 verbal proces of each to the archbishops, with a 
 petition signed by above twenty cures or rectors of 
 the parishes of Paris, desiring that they might be 
 authentically registred, and solemnlj^ published to 
 the people, as true miracles. 
 
 I have seen an answer to these miracles by a Pro- 
 testant writer, Mr, Des VoeiLv ; wlio does not deny 
 
173 
 
 the facts, but the miraculous nature of them onely, 
 which by many reasons he endeavours to render sus- 
 pected. Yet another writer on the same side, de- 
 clares that all his reasons are too weak to do them 
 any hurt ; and that there is no other way of shaking 
 their credit, than by shewing them to be the works 
 of the Devil. Which he undertakes to prove, in 
 three letters to the said Mr. Des Voeux, to be the 
 genuin character of them. 
 
 Let our declamers then on the authority of the 
 Fathers, and the faith of histoiy, produce if they 
 can, any evidence of the primitive miracles, half so 
 strong as what is alledged for the miracles of the 
 Abbe de Paris ; or if they cannot do it, let them 
 give us a reason why we must receive the one and 
 reject the other : or if they fail likewise in this, let 
 them be so ingenuous at last as to confess, that we 
 have no other part left, but either to admit them all, 
 or reject them all ; for otherwise, they can never be 
 thought to act consistently. And if, from their 
 avowed principles and blind deference to authority, 
 we may guess at their real sentiments in the present 
 case, they will be as little scrupulous about the mo- 
 dern as the ancient miracles of the Church, but pa- 
 tiently admit them all ; as being more agreeable to 
 that rule which is prescribed by their primitive 
 guides, — '^^that the true disciples of Christ, have 
 nothing more to do with curiosity or inquiry ; but when 
 they are once become believers^ their sole business is to 
 believe on.'' 
 
 Again ; the celebrated historian, Mr. de Vertot, 
 whose Revolutions of Rome, of Siveden, and of For- 
 
174 
 
 tugal, afford so mucli entertainment to the public, 
 has written a defence also of a certain miracle, which 
 is imagined to do some honor to the Church and 
 kingdom of France; I mean the miracle of tJie sacred 
 vial, or sainte Ampoulle, as it is called, with which 
 their kings are anointed at their coronation. 
 
 This vial is said to have been brought from heaven 
 by a dove, for the baptismal unction of Clovis, the 
 first Christian king of France, and dropped into the 
 hands of St. Remigius, then Bishop of Rheims, about 
 the end of the fifth century ; where it has been pre- 
 served ever since for the purpose of anointing all 
 succeding kings. And it^s divine descent is said to 
 be confirmed by this miracle ; that as soon as the co- 
 ronation is over, the oil in the vial begins to wast and 
 vanish, but is constantly renewed of itself, for the ser- 
 vice of each new coronation. 
 
 The Abbe de Vortot defends the truth of this mira- 
 cle by the authority of several witnessess, who lived 
 at the time of Remigius or near to it ; and of many 
 later writers also, who give testimony to the same, 
 through each succeding age. Yet a learned Pro- 
 fessor at Utrecht, in a dissertation upon this subject, 
 treats it as a mere forgery, or pious fraud, contrived 
 to support the dignity of the Kings and Clergy of 
 France ; and ranks it in the same class with the Pal- 
 ladium of Troy ; the Ancilia of old Rome ; and the 
 Cross which Constantin pretended to see in the heavens; 
 and the rest of those poUtical fictions, which we meet 
 with in the histories of all ages. 
 
 Now- what will our Advocates of the primitive 
 miracles say to this ? Will they tell us here, as they 
 
175 
 
 have often done on similar occasions, that by rejecting 
 the authority of Mr. Vertot and his witnesses in this 
 story, we destroy the faith of all his other stories, 
 and can no longer take his word for any thing, which 
 he has related of Rome, or Sweden, or Portugal? 
 Let them talk at this silly rate as long as they please, 
 men of sense will always know how to distinguish in 
 such cases ; how to extract all the instruction, which 
 is offered to them, in one part of his writings ; yet 
 guard themselves from all the superstition which is 
 inculcated in the other. They know, that, on sub- 
 jects of common history, a writer of sense and credit 
 can hardly have any other motive of writing, but to 
 please and instruct, and to illustrate the truth of 
 facts, as far as he was able, by the perspicuitj^ of his 
 stile, and the proper disposition of his materials : 
 but on subjects of a miraculous kind, they know 
 likewise, how forcibly the prejudices of education, a 
 superstitious turn of mind, the interests of a party, 
 or the views of ambition are apt to operate on a de- 
 fender of those miracles, which the government and 
 religion of his country are engaged to support. 
 
 These few instances are sufficient to evince the 
 reasonableness and prudence of suspending our assent 
 to reports of a miraculous kind, tho^ attested by an 
 authority, which might safely be trusted in the report 
 of ordinary events. They teach us also how opinions, 
 wholly absurd and contrary to nature, may gain 
 credit and establishment through ages and nations^ 
 which, by the force of education, custom, and ex- 
 ample, have once contracted a superstitious and cre- 
 dulous turn ; till being checked from time to time 
 
176 
 
 by the gradual improvements of science^ and the 
 successive ejfforts of reason,, inquiring occasionally 
 into the uncertain grounds, and reflecting on the 
 certain mischiefs of them, they have fallen at last into 
 such utter contempt, as to make us wonder, how it 
 was possible for them, ever to have obtained any 
 credit. 
 
 But whatever be the uncertainty of ancient history, 
 there is one thing at least which we may certainly 
 learn from it ; that human nature has always been 
 the same ; agitated by the same appetites and pas- 
 sions, and liable to the same excesses and abuses of 
 them, in all ages and countries of the world ; so that 
 our experience of what passes in the present age, 
 will be the best comment on what is delivered to us 
 concerning the past. To apply it then to the case 
 before us : there is hardly a single fact, which I have 
 charged upon the primitive times, but what we still 
 see performed in one or other of the Sects of Chris- 
 tians of our own times. Among some we see dis- 
 eases cured. Devils cast out, and all the other miracles 
 which are said to have been wrought in the primitive 
 Church; among others we see the boasted gifts of 
 Tertullian^s and Cyprian's di?^^?,', pretended revelations, 
 prophetic visions, and divine impressions : now all 
 these modern pretensions we readily ascribe to their 
 true cause ; to the artifices and craft of a few, play- 
 ing upon the credulity, the superstition, and the 
 enthusiasm of the many, for the sake of some pri- 
 vate interest : when we read therefore that the same 
 things were performed by the ancients, and for the 
 same ends, of acquiring a superiority of credit, or 
 
177 
 
 wealthy or power, over their fellow creatures; how 
 can we possibly hesitate to impute theru to the same 
 cause, of fraud and imposture ? 
 
 In a word ; to submit our belief implicitely and 
 indifferently to the mere force of authority in all 
 cases, whether miraculous or natural, without any 
 rule of discerning the credible from the incredible, 
 might support indeed the faith, as it is called, but 
 would certainly destroy the use of all history; by 
 leading us into perpetual errors, and possessing our 
 minds with invincible prejudices, and false notions 
 both of men and things. But to distinguish between 
 things totally different from each other ; between 
 miracle and nature; the extraordinary acts of God 
 and the ordinary transactions of man; to suspend 
 our behef of the one, while, on the same testimony, 
 we grant it freely to the other; and to require a 
 different degree of evidence for each, in proportion 
 to the different degrees of their credibility ; is so far 
 from hurting the credit of history, or of any thing 
 else which we ought to believe, that it is the onely 
 way to purge history from it^s dross, and render it 
 beneficial to us; and by a right use of our reason 
 and judgement, to raise our minds above the low 
 prejudices and childish superstitions of the credulous 
 \TQgar. 
 
 FINIS. 
 
 The Introductory Discourse concludes thus : "The many cor- 
 ruptions which crept into the Church in those very early ages, 
 are a standing proof and admonition to all the later ages, that 
 
178 
 
 there is no way of preserving a purity of faith and worship in 
 any Church, but by reviewing them from time to time, and re- 
 ducing them to the original test and standard of the Holy 
 Scriptures." 
 
 And thus Oxford is invited to do justice in other respects to the 
 Church and itself, as well as by having raised at last an elegant 
 testimonial to the memory of those venerable Protestant martyrs 
 — Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer — who suffered there so long 
 since as 1555 and 6. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. Head concludes at page 19 
 
 II. „ » 23 
 
 III. „ » 55 
 
 IV. „ „ 149 
 
 V. Concludes the work. 
 
 • 
 Chillingwortli is particularly noticed at page 40, and 
 St. Athanasius, page 112, of this New Edition. 
 
LIST OF THE PRIMITIVE FATHERS, 
 
 TAKEN FROM TOMLINE S THEOLOGY, 
 
 Barnabas > 
 
 Clement of Rome 
 
 Hermas 
 
 Ignatius 
 
 Polycarp 
 
 Papias 
 
 Justin Martyr 
 
 Dionysius of Corinth . .. 
 
 Tatian 
 
 Hegesippus 
 
 Melito 
 
 Irenaeus 
 
 Atlienagoras 
 
 Miltiades 
 
 Theophilus 
 
 Clement of Alexandria . . 
 
 Tertullian 
 
 Miuutius Felix 
 
 Ammonius 
 
 Origen 
 
 Firmilian 
 
 Dionysius of Alexandria. 
 
 Cyprian 
 
 Novatus, or Novatian . . 
 
 Arnobius , 
 
 Lactantius 
 
 y Contemporaries of the Apostles. 
 
 J 
 116 
 
 140 
 
 170 
 
 172 
 
 173 
 
 177 
 
 178 
 
 178 
 
 180 
 
 181 
 
 194 
 
 200 
 
 210 
 
 220 
 
 230 
 
 233 
 
 247 
 
 248 
 
 251 
 
 306 
 
 306 
 
 Alexander of Alexandria 313 
 
 Eusebius 315 
 
 Athanasius 326 
 
 Cyril of Jerusalem 348 
 
 Hilary 354 
 
 Epiphanius 368 
 
 Basil 370 
 
 Gregory of Nazianzum . . 370 
 
 Gregory of Nyssa 370 
 
 Optatus 370 
 
 Ambrose 374 
 
 Philaster 380 
 
 Jerome 392 
 
 Theodore of Mopsuestia . 394 
 
 Ruffin 397 
 
 Augustine ...s 398 
 
 Chrysostom 398 
 
 Sulpitius Severus 401 
 
 Cyril of /Alexandria .... 412 
 
 Theodoret 423 
 
 Gennadius 494 
 
 Walton & Mitchell, PrinterSj 24, "Vrardonr-st., Oxfoid-st. 
 
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