readily admit the natural government of God, while they deny his moral government, is, that the former is thought to be kept in order only by the general laws of mechanism impressed on matter at its creation; so that here he works neither immediately nor particularly, but leaves every thing to the government of these general laws. This supposed distance and separation of the great artist from his work, after having once set the machine agoing by the first impression of his general laws, is the gratuitous conclusion of a talking philosophy. The latter and more correct enquiries into the material system, on the unerring experience of the Newtonian physics, have clearly discovered that God is intimately present to every particle of matter, at every point of space, and in every instance of being. For a vis inertia, or resistance to the change of its present state, being an essential quality of matter, and inconsistent with any motive, force, or power in that substance, all those effects commonly ascribed to a certain essence residing in it, such as gravity, attraction, elasticity, repulsion, or whatever other tendencies to motion are observed in matter, are not powers naturally belonging to it, or what can possibly be made inherent in it; so that these qualities, without which matter would be utterly unfit for use, must needs be produced by the immediate influence of the First Cause, incessantly performing, by his Almighty finger, the minutest office in the material economy, working still near us, round us, within us, and in every part of us.” What is called the usual course of nature, then, is nothing else but the will of God, producing certain effects in a continued, regular, constant, and uniform manner; which course or manner of acting being in

every moment perfectly arbitrary, is as easy to be altered at any time as to be preserved.

It is only atheism, therefore, in one form or other, which, inducing men to deny that God has power to interfere in the regulation of his own works, leads to the conclusion, that a miracle, or a departure from, or suspension of, the usual course of his proceedings, is impossible. On any ground, indeed, to assert the impossibility of a miracle, is absurd; for no man can prove, nor is there any reason to believe, that to work a miracle is a greater exertion of power than those usual operations which we daily witness. To restore life to a dead body, and to bring it forth from the grave, is not attended with more difficulty than to communicate life to a fœtus, and to bring it forth from the womb. Both are equally beyond the power of man; both are equally possible with God. In respect of the power of God, all things are alike easy to be done by him. The power of God extends equally to great things as to small, and to many as to few, and the one makes no more difficulty, or resistance to his will, than the other. The idea that any successful resistance can arise to the will and operation of God, either from mind or from matter, is absurd.

If the possibility of miracles cannot be denied, there can be but one other ground for the assertion that they cannot be proved by human testimony, namely, that in their nature they are incredible. But this can never be established. It is readily admitted that the manner in which God acts in upholding the universe is the best possible, and that its uniformity and regularity are the result of infinite wisdom. This uniformity and regularity are likewise necessary, in order that, by comparing the future with the past, we may know what to antici

pate, and how we ought to conduct ourselves; and were there no such regularity, there could be no miracle. But if all this arrangement is ordered, as we must believe, for the improvement and happiness of the moral world, then, so far from being incredible, it is in the highest degree probable, that when any important end is to be attained in the latter, the laws of the natural world, either in their uniform course, or temporary alteration, should be made subservient to it. And this subserviency of the natural world to the moral system, and the analogy of every part of the divine government, render it so probable, that, when any important end is to be served in the moral world, the laws of the natural world should be made to promote it, that no man can consistently doubt the evidence of testimony on this point.

It is at the same time evident that, if what are called the laws of nature be under the management of a legislator, not only may that legislator modify these laws, but those modifications may be palpable facts, and so become the direct subject of testimony, and of such testimony, that if it could be proved to be false, it would be a more palpable violation of moral order than miracles can in any view be shown to be of natural order. Imposture in a number of men whose aim is evidently virtuous, who persevere with constancy in their testimony, by which they expose themselves to the greatest calamities, and even to death, would undoubtedly be a violation of moral order, and such an exception to its general course as cannot be produced in the history of the world. Human testimony is sufficient for all the purposes of transmitting from generation to generation well authenticated facts, of whatever kind they may be. Testimony is no proof of opinions, but it must be

\admitted to be a proof of facts; and nothing can destroy /

the proof of testimony in any case, but a proof or probability that the persons who testify are not competent judges of the facts to which they give testimony, or that they are actually under some indirect influence in giving it in such particular case.

There is no conceivable way in which a divine revelation could be made, unless accompanied by miracles. There is, therefore, the same probability of the occurrence of miracles, as there is of a revelation from God, and the same necessity for the one as for the other. If ever the enjoyment of that intercourse with God which man has forfeited, is to be restored, it must obviously be by supernatural means. If God afterwards speaks audibly and visibly to men, it can only be in a way out of the common course. If he sends messengers to declare his will, they must possess credentials to prove that they come from him. If a particular people are made, in the first instance, the depositaries of his written word, and the medium of communication to the rest of the world, and are for this purpose subjected to a singular constitution of civil laws and religious services, that people must be made sensible, by manifest tokens, that in what they thus adopt, in itself so unprecedented, they are not the dupes of artifice and fraud. On the other hand, it could not be expected that these sensible tokens, or marks of Divine interposition, should be renewed in every age, or to every individual in the world. This would be to subvert the established order of things, without answering an adequate end, since, like any other fact, they may be the subject of testimony.

If, however, men, through prejudice or inattention, and from having their minds preoccupied, or from being

opposed to the nature of such facts, will not believe them, when transmitted in this way, they would not be convinced of that truth which these tokens or miracles infer, although they themselves had been present when they were wrought. The carcasses of that generation which witnessed the thunders of Sinai, and entreated that they might not hear God speak any more lest they should die, fell in the wilderness on account of their unbelief. Some of those Jews who were present at the resurrection of Lazarus, reported it to the enemies of Jesus Christ, with a view to obtain their favour. The Jewish rulers, who witnessed his miracles, and who never denied them, put him to death. The Roman soldiers who guarded the sepulchre, and felt the terrors of Christ's glorious resurrection, accepted a bribe to circulate a false report. An attentive observation of human nature, of the motives which actuate the world, and of the general objects of men's ambition and pursuits, will oblige us fully to admit the truth of that weighty declaration," If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead."

The miracles related in the Scriptures, are entirely different from the absurd and insulated pretences to any thing of the kind, either among heathens or others. Who could examine the accounts of the works ascribed to Apollonius Tyanæus; of the Emperor Vespasian's having opened the eyes of a blind man at Alexandria; of the wonders said to be performed at the tomb of the Abbé Paris, which ceased when, in consequence of an order from the king, the sepulchre was enclosed with a wall; or of the French prophets in England, without at once rejecting them? When such counterfeits have been brought forward, as by Hume, to confront the