If, however, it is admitted, that the Divine Being has, under certain circumstances, permitted the influence of Satanic agency: it will still be evident that the miracles of Christianity were not works of this class. To suppose that they were, would involve a variety of conclusions, unsupported by reason or analogy.
For, if they were, then God, contrary to the whole course of his dispensations, has suffered his laws to be suspended, in order to betray millions of his creatures, for a succession of ages, into a false theology.—If they were; then, contrary also to all precedent, he has suffered the interpositions of devils to outstrip his own. Even the magicians of Egypt, { 30a} were compelled to recognise the supremacy of God.—If they were; then, contrary to all experience, a large body of men, through a long period of time, have been found willing to incur reproach, { 30b} to endure pain, and even to suffer death, in the support of miracles which they knew to be the grossest frauds.—If they were; then the kingdom of Satan { 30c} must, in the most signal manner, have been “divided against itself;” since, upon this hypothesis, miracles which were wrought by devils, were employed to dispossess them, and finally accomplished the subversion of the Pagan Mythology, the most formidable system of machinery, by which Satan ever perpetrated his designs upon mankind.
The evidence then furnished by this Work, on the subject of Miracles, is considerable. Celsus admits their existence; Origen appeals to them, as what he, and many others had seen. There is indeed incontrovertible evidence for their existence, till the conversion of the Roman Empire invested Christianity with temporal power, and raised her to universal dominion. With the necessity, the possession of the miraculous powers ceased. From this period the Gospel was left to the ordinary grace of God, to its own resources, and to the human powers of its followers. When a body of illiterate fishermen were commissioned to publish it to all nations, then God supplied the powers by which all men “heard them speak in their own language.” { 31} Now that learning and wealth are the handmaids of religion, they are left in a great measure to do the work of miracles. All our faculties should be therefore bent to this sacred cause, and all our spoils be offered at the foot of the cross. Nor is the evidence furnished even now to Christianity through the channel of miracles by any means small. Although miracles of one class have ceased, men may see in the true Christian, the greatest of all miracles; a man by nature, cold, corrupt, indolent, selfish, transformed under the creative hand of the Gospel, into the bold, generous, active, disinterested, enterprizing, apostle of truth.