restoring maimed members, which could not be done without exerting a creative power. I need not in

of Jesus and his apostles, over the inhabitants of the invisible world, might be the better demonstrated? This permission of the Deity cannot be charged with any absurdity, but by the scorner, who can with equal ease dress up the most evident deductions of reason in a garb of ridicule. Nor can the suspicions of fraud and collusion, so visible, as I observed above, in the exorcising of demoniacs, amongst the papists, be applicable to the instances of such cures recorded in the New Testament, because Jesus did not rest his claim to be a worker of miracles on them alone, (which is the case in the instances where we suspect fraud,) but performed also a vast variety of other cures, and, besides cures, many works which were in their own nature miraculous, and which remove all grounds of suspicion as to there being any fraud or collusion in the performance of this.

But while I think myself sufficiently warranted to defend the commonly received notion about the demoniacs of the New Testament from the ridicule of the infidel, I must at the same time observe, that the very learned and able author of the Enquiry into the Meaning of the Demoniacs has taken another way of putting a stop to the objections of cavillers on this head, by his attempt to prove that the demoniacs cured by Jesus did not labour under any disease supernaturally inflicted. And indeed this seems to be certain, that all the symptoms ascribed to them by the Evangelists are such as belong to diseases whose natural causes we can assign. Insanorum hæc sunt omnia, (all the particular symptoms of the demoniacs are to be met with in persons who are frantic,) says Dr. Mead in his Medica Sacra, p. 66. And if one of his skill in medicine gives this judgment, few will care to dispute it.

But the greatest difficulty in this scheme is still behind. For admitting that all the symptoms ascribed to the scripture demoniacs are to be found in mad people, yet does not the scripture positively say that this madness was supernaturally inflicted? And how can the many texts in which mention is made of Jesus's rebuking the unclean spirits, of his conversing with them, of his casting them out, be reconciled with the opinion which makes the disease of these patients a mere natural madness?

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form you, who are acquainted with the force of the original word, that this was the case with regard to

For an answer to these seemingly insuperable difficulties, I refer the learned reader to the Enquiry into the Meaning of the Demoniacs, and the Farther Enquiry, by the same eminent hand, who has done more than at first sight one could imagine possible, to remove these difficulties, by giving such interpretations of the texts, which stand most in the way of his scheme, as when compared with certain opinions and prejudices, entertained by the Jews in our Saviour's time, will, in his opinion, reconcile them to his hypothesis, that the demoniacs of the New Testament laboured under diseases merely natural. He has observed, what must be allowed to be true, that the Jews attributed to the influence of evil spirits all diseases whose symptoms were extraordinary, and in particular those by which the body was distorted, and the mind disturbed with melancholy or phrensy. Dr. Lightfoot's words are, Judæis usitatissimum "erat morbos quosdam graviores, eos præsertim quibus vel dis"tortum est corpus, vel mens turbata et agitata phrenesi, malis 'spiritibus attribuere." Hor. Heb. ad Matth. xvii. 15. And Maimonides is quoted by the same writer, Hor. Heb. ad Luk. xiii. 11, as telling us that the Jews called every sort of melancholy an evil spirit, and as explaining evil spirit to mean only disease. That the idea of being possessed with a demon was always annexed to that of madness by the Jews, the author of the Enquiry shews also from several passages in the New Testament, see John vii. 20. Matth. xi. 18. John viii. 48-52, and John x. 20. In the last text we read, Many said, He hath a devil, and is mad. Here madness is imputed to our Saviour, and the imagined cause is he hath a devil.

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This then being the case; every madman being thought, by those with whom Jesus conversed, and to whom the Evangelists wrote, to be possessed with a demon, Jesus in curing such patients, and the Evangelists in relating their cures, according to the plan of the author of the Enquiry, makes use of the terms which custom had made technical. When once words are applied by universal custom to such and such disorders, however ill grounded, silly, or superstitious the words be, originally, they must be made use of by every one who speaks of these disor

the Kuλol, the maimed, who, as we learn from St. Matthew, ch. xv. ver. 30, were amongst the persons who received their cures from Jesus; and one would indeed be a caviller, who could assert that a blindness from the mother's womb, (and such blindness was cured by Jesus,) when it arises from some original defect in the organs of vision, not merely from some obstruction in the humours of the eye, did not also require a power of creation in order to be removed.

After all, though none of the cures performed by Jesus had required the exertion of a creative power

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ders, in order to his being understood. Nor can it be thought that Jesus, by accommodating his language to the prevailing opinion about the cause of madness, gave any countenance to this superstitious hypothesis. At this rate a philosopher, who talks of the sun's rising or setting, may be said to countenance the exploded system of Ptolomy. "Jesus made use of words which custom had sanctified; and his business was to cure the diseases before him. He has said nothing to affirm or deny the power of demons, nor was it to his purpose; but he used the "language that others did, and spoke of distempers as now a physician would, that should use the common terms of art, "without affirming or denying the cause of the disease by such language." Farther Enquiry, p. 106. Such, in general, are the principles of this author; and if it should be thought that he has failed in proving his point, and that some of his interpretations are too harsh to be admitted, this at least must be allowed to him, "that the cause of Christ is not affected by the solu"tion he maintains. For in both cases a real miracle is done; "the person affected is cured; and the evidence arising from "miracles, for the truth of Christianity, is equally strong. The "miracle is the same, if the person be cured, whatever is the cause of his distemper, whether it proceeds from unclean spirits, and their operations upon human bodies; or from any de"fect, or from any preternatural and extraordinary motions in "them." Preface to the Enquiry.

to effect them, we should, nevertheless, have had infallible assurance that they were performed miraculously, and by a person vested with a supernatural power. For though Jesus went about healing every infirmity of the people, he did not rest his claim to be a worker of miracles on his power of healing alone. His history furnishes us with a variety of works performed by him, the performance of which was indisputably beyond the reach of any natural

causes.

Some, indeed, who, of late years, have written against the force of the argument drawn from miracles, in order to evade this, have urged, that we have no certain rule by which to judge whether an event be miraculous or no; because we cannot be certain how far the powers of natural causes may possibly reach. But in answer to this it has been most justly remarked, that though in some cases we have no certainty how far the powers of natural causes may extend, yet are we able to pronounce with the greatest certainty, in other cases, how far they cannot extend. Particularly, whenever an effect happens which is, evidently and sensibly, contradictory to laws known to be fixed and established in nature, we may pronounce with certainty that such an effect cannot be accounted for, but by admitting the interposition of a cause overruling and suspending the established course of things. And if we examine the works of Jesus recorded in the Gospels, we shall find many of them to be of this kind.

For can any power of natural causes convert water into wine? Can it be possible, in a natural way, to feed thousands with a few small loaves and fishes, and so as that the fragments left should

greatly exceed the original quantity of the food? Could it be owing to any natural cause that Jesus walked on the sea, and caused the tempest to cease at his command? In a word, who can be so perverse as to affirm that the dead could be raised from their graves, and the spiritual principle reunited to the lifeless corpse, but by the interposition of the same cause which first breathed into the inanimate clay the breath of life? All these, and many other such facts recorded of Jesus, are in their own nature miraculous, and consequently, though I should not have removed all your doubts with regard to the cures performed by him, we should still have the most satisfying proofs of his being a worker of miracles. But I see not why we should not insist upon all his cures as so many miracles; for though the circumstances of them, which I have mentioned, would not have established this to your conviction, as I hope they have, yet I should look upon it as the height of absurd scepticism, to doubt whether Jesus could cure the paralytic, or the blind, when we see him raising Lazarus, the widow's son, the ruler of the synagogue's daughter, and, lastly, himself, from the dead; or to pretend that the person who could exert a creative power, in turning water into wine, and in multiplying a few loaves and fishes, so as to be food for thousands of people, is not to be believed, when he claims to himself the power of healing the sick.

Having offered what must be looked upon as abundantly sufficient to shew, that all the extraordinary works ascribed to Jesus were such as required the exertion of supernatural power, I come now, as I proposed, to produce the proofs that such