Christianity, when nothing but miracles could
decide its authority, is it certain that such miracles would be repeated
so often, and in so many places, as to become objects of general
experience? Is it a probability approaching to certainty? Is it a
probability of any great strength or force? Is it such as no evidence
can encounter? And yet this probability is the exact converse, and
therefore the exact measure, of the improbability which arises from the
want of experience, and which Mr. Hume represents as invincible by human
testimony.

It is not like alleging a new law of nature, or a new experiment in
natural philosophy; because, when these are related, it is expected
that, under the same circumstances, the same effect will follow
universally; and in proportion as this expectation is justly
entertained, the want of a corresponding experience negatives the
history. But to expect concerning a miracle, that it should succeed upon
a repetition, is to expect that which would make it cease to be a
miracle, which is contrary to its nature as such, and would totally
destroy the use and purpose for which it was wrought.

The force of experience as an objection to miracles is founded in the
presumption, either that the course of nature is invariable, or that, if
it be ever varied, variations will be frequent and general. Has the
necessity of this alternative been demonstrated? Permit us to call the
course of nature the agency of an intelligent Being, and is there any
good reason for judging this state of the case to be probable? Ought we
not rather to expect that such a Being, on occasions of peculiar
importance, may interrupt the order which he had appointed, yet, that
such occasions should return seldom; that these interruptions
consequently should be confined to the experience of a few; that the
want of it, therefore, in many, should be matter neither of surprise nor
objection?

But, as a continuation of the argument from experience, it is said that,
when we advance accounts of miracles, we assign effects without causes,
or we attribute effects to causes inadequate to the purpose, or to
causes of the operation of which we have no experience of what causes,
we may ask, and of what effects, does the objection speak? If it be
answered that, when we ascribe the cure of the palsy to a touch, of
blindness to the anointing of the eyes with clay, or the raising of the
dead to a word, we lay ourselves open to this imputation; we