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it follow, that we could never infer the possibility of any events by arguments drawn from reason, or from the nature of the thing. Our author was aware of this, and, therefore, to obviate such an objection, he endeavours to prove that the distinction usually made betwixt arguments drawn from experience and those drawn from reason is, at the bottom, erroneous; and asserts, "that all those arguments, "which are supposed to be the mere effects of reasoning and reflection, will be found to terminate, "at last, in some general principle and conclusion, "for which we can assign no reason, but observation "and experience." But is it possible for any serious man to reason thus in earnest? For if reason antecedent to experience can in no instance point out a connexion betwixt cause and effect, then must we say that there is no foundation in reason for believing that a fabric, consisting of a variety of parts, nicely and regularly put together, is the effect of a designing cause, rather than that it sprang from blind chance. We universally assent to the truth of this proposition, that whatever had a beginning arose from a cause prior to it, and producing it. But will our author assert that we could never have known the certainty of this, unless we had drawn it from experience? Will he assert that experience is our sole ground for concluding that life, consciousness, and reason, could not be communicated but by a cause vested with such perfections? Strange as these doctrines are, they are the obvious consequences of the position that experience alone points out the connexion between cause and effect. Nor indeed are these consequences such as our author

k P. 74.

will disown; for he expressly tells us, that if we reason a priori, any thing may appear able to produce any thing; the falling of a pebble may, for aught we know, extinguish the sun, or the wish of a man controul the planets in their orbits and again, that not only the will of the Supreme Being may create matter, but, for aught we can know, a priori, the will of any other being might create it, or any other cause that the most whimsical imagination can assign'. I need say no more to you, I am sure, nor indeed to any person of sound judgment, to make you disclaim this author as a guide, whose argument against miracles, if it has any weight, is equally an argument against the existence of an intelligent first Cause.

The sophistry of our author's argument, by which he would prove, that without experience we never can discover the connexion between cause and effect, lies here, that he brings his instances from the laws of matter and motion established in the world; which laws being, confessedly, arbitrary constitutions of the Creator, the manner of their operations cannot, to be sure, be deduced from any previous reasoning, but must be drawn solely from experience; and from these particular instances he infers his universal conclusion, which is evidently false. For does it at all follow, that, because there is no connexion discoverable a priori betwixt cause and effect, in some cases, there is no connexion discoverable a priori in any case? Because God (and I pretend to reason with none but believers of a God) has established such and such laws in the universe; for instance, that fire should consume, and water

1 P. 254.

suffocate, and a heavy body descend; will it follow that, in this case, we cannot discover from reason, independent of all experience, that God could have established laws different from these at first, and can, when he thinks fit, suspend them now that they are established. This was what our author ought to have proved, and for this plain reason: Every one who has admitted the existence of a God, will be apt to urge that we can discover, by reasoning, a priori, that there is a connexion between an Almighty cause, and every effect that is the object of power, and, consequently, that we can discover, by reasoning, a priori, the possibility of miracles, because it requires the exertion of no greater power to reverse the established laws of nature (in the doing of which consists a miracle) than, at the beginning, to establish them. Our author foresaw some such objection as this might be urged; for he tells us that," though "the Being to whom the miracle is ascribed be Al

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mighty, it does not, upon that account, become a "whit more probable; since it is impossible for us "to know the attributes or actions of such a Being, "otherwise than from the experience which we have “of his productions in the usual course of nature." Here he presents us again with some of his paradoxes. Who would not have thought that an Almighty Being could produce every possibility, and consequently depart from his productions in the usual course of nature? A person of a plain ordinary understanding would have thought, that the very idea of omnipotence implied the power of doing this and will expect to hear it demonstrated, that nothing is possible but what is established in the usual course of nature, before he alters his opinion.

Unless, therefore, our author can demonstrate this, which, however enterprising, he has not pretended to do; unless he can shew that an event, contrary to the usual course of things, is not an object of power; the idea of the omnipotence of God will lead us to admit the possibility of such events, and if once their possibility be admitted, in spite of all the quibbles of the sophist, and all the art of the sceptic, common sense will teach us, that such events, which are what we call miracles, may be made credible by testimony; because they are supposed to be matters of fact, of the certainty of which spectators may have all the assurance they can have for the certainty of the most common events.

But why need I take so much pains to prove that miracles may become credible by testimony, when I can bring in our author as concurring in the same conclusion? It is frequently the fate of writers, especially of such as aim at something new and singular, to confute themselves in their own works; and that the author of the Essay on Miracles has done this, will appear from the following quotation : "I beg the limitations here made may be remarked, "when I say that a miracle can never be proved so

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as to be the foundation of a system of religion. "For I own that otherwise there may possibly be "miracles, or violations of the usual course of nature, of such a kind as to admit of proof from hu

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man testimony, though, perhaps, it will be impos"sible to find any such in all the records of history. “Thus, suppose all authors, in all languages, agree, "that from the first of January, 1600, there was a "total darkness over the whole earth for eight days; suppose that the tradition of this extraordinary

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" event is still strong and lively among the people : "that all travellers, who return from foreign coun

tries, bring us accounts of the same tradition, with"out the least variation or contradiction; it is evi"dent that our present philosophers, instead of "doubting of that fact, ought to receive it for certain, and ought to search for the causes whence it might be derived "."

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Not to insist on the obvious inconsistency of recommending it to the philosophers, to search for the causes of an event contrary to uniform and constant experience, when, according to our author's doctrine, such a search would be absurd and useless, because experience alone points out the connexion between cause and effect; not to insist on this, I shall beg leave to observe, that in the above quotation he himself pulls down his own favourite scheme. For I appeal to every reader, whether we have not here a confession, that human testimony may, in some cases, give credibility to miracles, or violations of the laws of nature? He forgets then that he had laid it down as a principle, "that no testimony for any kind of “miracle can ever possibly amount to a probability, "much less a proof"; that it is experience only "which gives authority to human testimony °, that "a miracle, supported by any human testimony, is "more properly a subject of derision than of ar

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gument P." For here he allows that testimony, under certain circumstances, may give credibility to a stranger prodigy than ever happened. Perhaps he will say, that the universality of the miracle and

m P. 199.

any

n Ibid. The evidence" that no testimony for kind of miracle has ever amounted," &c.