etc., and in order to inspire the conviction that
such divinities were weak and inconstant, or changeable, told how they
themselves were under the sway of an invisible God, and narrated their
miracles, trying further to show that the God whom they worshiped
arranged the whole of nature for their sole benefit. This idea was so
pleasing to humanity that men go on to this day imagining miracles, so
that they may believe themselves God's favorites and the final cause for
which God created and directs all things.

What pretensions will not people in their folly advance! They have no
single sound idea concerning either God or Nature, they confound God's
decrees with human decrees, they conceive Nature as so limited that
they believe man to be its chief part! I have spent enough space in
setting forth these common ideas and prejudices concerning Nature and
miracles, but in order to afford a regular demonstration I will show:

1. That Nature cannot be contravened, but that she preserves a fixed and
immutable order, and at the same time I will explain what is meant by a
miracle.

2. That God's nature and existence, and consequently His providence,
cannot be known from miracles, but that they can all be much better
perceived from the fixed and immutable order of Nature.

3. That by the decrees and volitions, and consequently the providence of
God, Scripture (as I will prove by Scriptural examples) means nothing
but Nature's order following necessarily from her eternal laws.

4. Lastly, I will treat of the method of interpreting Scriptural
miracles, and the chief points to be noted concerning the narratives of
them.

Such are the principal subjects which will be discussed in this chapter,
and which will serve, I think, not a little to further the object of
this treatise.

Our first point is easily proved from what we showed in Chapter V about
Divine law--namely, that all that God wishes or determines involves
eternal necessity and truth, for we demonstrated that God's
understanding is identical with His will, and that it is the same thing
to say that God wills a thing, as to say that He understands it; hence,
as it follows necessarily from the Divine nature and perfection that God
understands a thing as it is, it follows no less necessarily that He
wills it as it is. Now, as nothing is necessarily true save only by
Divine decree, it is plain that the universal laws of Nature are decrees
of God following from the necessity