as well as
of the Gothic mythology; a great part of the legendary history of Popish
saints, the very best attested of which is extracted from the
certificates that are exhibited during the process of their
canonization, a ceremony which seldom takes place till a century after
their deaths. It applies also with considerable force to the miracles of
Apollonius Tyaneus, which are contained in a solitary history of his
life, published by Philostratus above a hundred years after his death;
and in which, whether Philostratus had any prior account to guide him,
depends upon his single unsupported assertion. Also to some of the
miracles of the third century, especially to one extraordinary instance,
the account of Gregory, bishop of Neocesarea, called Thaumaturgus,
delivered in the writings of Gregory of Nyssen, who lived one hundred
and thirty years after the subject of his panegyric.

The value of this circumstance is shown to have been accurately
exemplified in the history of Ignatius Loyola, founder of the order of
Jesuits. (Douglas's Criterion of Miracles, p. 74.) His life, written by a
companion of his, and by one of the order, was published about fifteen
years after his death. In which life, the author, so far from ascribing
any miracles to Ignatius, industriously states the reasons why he was
not invested with any such power. The life was republished fifteen years
afterwards, with the addition of many circumstances which were the
fruit, the author says, of further inquiry, and of diligent examination;
but still with a total silence about miracles. When Ignatius had been
dead nearly sixty years, the Jesuits, conceiving a wish to have the
founder of their order placed in the Roman calendar, began, as it should
seem, for the first time, to attribute to him a catalogue of miracles
which could not then be distinctly disproved; and which there was, in
those who governed the church, a strong disposition to admit upon the
slenderest proofs.

II. We may lay out of the case accounts published in one country, of
what passed in a distant country, without any proof that such accounts
were known or received at home. In the case of Christianity, Judea,
which was the scene of the transaction, was the centre of the mission.
The story was published in the place in which it was acted. The church
of Christ was first planted at Jerusalem itself. With that church others
corresponded. From thence the primitive teachers of the institution we