ce of his own, which, in their turn, however, are
carefully related by his companions and disciples. In the long series of
ecclesiastical history, does there exist a single instance of a saint
asserting that he himself possessed the gift of miracles?]

[Footnote 82: The conversion of Constantine is the aera which is most
usually fixed by Protestants. The more rational divines are unwilling to
admit the miracles of the ivth, whilst the more credulous are unwilling
to reject those of the vth century. * Note: All this appears to proceed
on the principle that any distinct line can be drawn in an unphilosophic
age between wonders and miracles, or between what piety, from their
unexpected and extraordinary nature, the marvellous concurrence of
secondary causes to some remarkable end, may consider providential
interpositions, and miracles strictly so called, in which the laws of
nature are suspended or violated. It is impossible to assign, on one
side, limits to human credulity, on the other, to the influence of the
imagination on the bodily frame; but some of the miracles recorded in
the Gospels are such palpable impossibilities, according to the known
laws and operations of nature, that if recorded on sufficient evidence,
and the evidence we believe to be that of eye-witnesses, we cannot
reject them, without either asserting, with Hume, that no evidence can
prove a miracle, or that the Author of Nature has no power of suspending
its ordinary laws. But which of the post-apostolic miracles will bear
this test?--M.]

Whatever opinion may be entertained of the miracles of the primitive
church since the time of the apostles, this unresisting softness of
temper, so conspicuous among the believers of the second and third
centuries, proved of some accidental benefit to the cause of truth and
religion. In modern times, a latent and even involuntary scepticism
adheres to the most pious dispositions. Their admission of supernatural
truths is much less an active consent than a cold and passive
acquiescence. Accustomed long since to observe and to respect the
variable order of Nature, our reason, or at least our imagination, is
not sufficiently prepared to sustain the visible action of the Deity.

But, in the first ages of Christianity, the situation of mankind was
extremely different. The most curious, or the most credulous, among the
Pagans, were often persuaded to enter into a society which asserted an
actual claim of miraculous pow