ORDINATIONS.

UNIVERSITIES. OXFORD.

CAMBRIDGE.

JAN. 21.-BACHELORS' COMMENCEMENT. EXAMINATION FOR HONOURS.

THE

CHURCHMAN'S MONTHLY REVIEW

AND CHRONICLE.

FEBRUARY, 1843.

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY OF M. FLEURY, from A.D. 388 to A.D. 400. Translated, with an Essay on the Miracles of the Period; by J. H. NEWMAN, B.D., Fellow of Oriel College. Oxford: Parker. 1842.

MANY symptoms appear to indicate that an age of Thaumaturgy is approaching. The restless craving for new stimulants, which the general diffusion of such superficial knowledge as makes everything familiar, though little understood-the sense of hollowness and destitution which ever supervenes upon scepticism, in one party, and the enthusiastic desire of grasping the supernatural, which an imaginative religion has excited in another-impatience at the uncertainties of protracted argument, the pride of spiritual attainments, the ardour of fanaticism, the subtilty of unscrupulous ambition, the love of the marvellous, innate in the human bosom, reviving after its long depression under the spirit of physical science, while the extreme incredulity of one section inflames the kindling zeal of their opponents-all these influences, and many more, seem now in the crisis of their operation. It is not the least remarkable indication of such a tendency, that the Church of Rome, with her usual sagacity, has struck in with the temper of the times; and, not content with an ostentatious display of those old standing wonders which, though unable to drop them, she had long appeared to be ashamed of, has opened a new and imposing scene of miracles before our very eyes-that the sovereign

FEB. 1843.

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pontiff has solemnly, in the face of Europe, set his seal to the reality of such pretensions-and that the most skilful and philosophic of his agents have done their utmost to publish them to the world.

Serious thinkers have long since declared their expectation, that as, in its first working, the Spirit of Antichrist was accompanied with "lying wonders and prodigies of falsehood," so, in the last grand development of its final struggle, the same energy shall display itself in a new parade of supernatural power. Such pretensions, therefore, in such a quarter, may well alarm those who duly estimate the fearful character of that system now dominant in the churches dependent upon the Roman see; and afford an awful motive for watchfulness against the tricks of human deceit, and (what is more startling still, and yet cannot be denied to be possible) the artifices of diabolic subtlety. Nor is it a slight or trivial circumstance, that the party in the British Church which, though not as yet reduced to a dependence upon Rome, most nearly symbolizes with the tastes and doctrines of its admirers, have in this case also exhibited their affinities; and that their wellknown Coryphæus has come forward to vindicate the relic-miracles of the Post-Nicene ages, upon principles which require the supposition of a perpetual presence of miraculous power in the Church, and are obviously fitted to prepare the mind for expecting an exhibition of it in our own days. It is of importance, therefore, to consider the subject with some care.

A miracle may be said to take place when, under certain moral circumstances, a consequence follows upon an antecedent, which universal experience testifies to have no natural aptitude for producing such a consequence; or when a consequence fails to follow upon an antecedent, which is known to ensue upon it in the ordinary course of nature. A blind man's recovering his sight upon touching the relics of Saints Gervasius and Protasius, is an instance of the former ;-St. Alban's walking after the loss of his head may be given as an example of the latter, kind of miracle. Now there is always a strong antecedent improbability attaching to the notion of such occurrences in themselves. The invincible original instinct of our nature--without reliance upon which we could not venture to set one foot before another teaches, as its first lesson, to expect similar consequences upon similar antecedents; and the results of this instinctive belief, checked, modified, and confirmed by the universal experience of mankind in countless times, places, and circumstances, constitute what is called our knowledge of the laws of nature. Destroy, or even shake this knowledge, as applied to practice, and all the uses and purposes of life are at an end. Such, we say, would be the result of suppos

ing that the sequences of things were liable to random and capricious variations. If, for instance, it were a measuring chance, whether, upon immersing a candle in water, the candle should be extinguished or the water ignited, or whether inhaling the common air should support life or produce instant death, it is plain the whole course of the world would arrive at a stand-still. The strong unhesitating reliance, therefore, upon the stability of the course of things, with which men act, and are by the circumstances and even instincts of their nature compelled to act, shows the weighty antecedent improbability of a reversal of that established course. bability of uniformity increases in proportion to the mass of actually observed uniformity. How vast, then, must be the improbability of that which varies from an uniformity observed in so many instances, as the laws which the experience of mankind has attested. Nevertheless, such an improbability may be diminished by some considerations, and totally destroyed by others.

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The order and regularity which experience observes in what we call the course of Nature, leads the mind by a natural inference to the apprehension of a powerful and intelligent Being, who is the true cause of its successions; and who, by fitting our intellects to understand and construe its phenomena, has made (as it were) those phenomena the characters of a language, by which He gives us necessary directions for the ordinary purposes of life. Hence arises some reason to expect that, where important moral ends visible to us might be accomplished by an alteration in the usual sequences of things, those general rules which the Divine Providence observes, may occasionally be departed from. This, we say, may appear not improbable where there are important moral ends visible to us for such an alteration for to suppose the Divine Will to vary its mode of operation in conjunctures upon which it is impossible to calculate, would be to suppose (as before) that the course of things (however really directed by profound wisdom) was to all intents and purposes of human knowledge, altogether arbitrary and capricious. And although (within the limits which we have assigned) the consideration of God's moral attributes has a tendency to lessen, in certain cases, the antecedent improbability of miracles, yet the observed-the daily and hourly observed fact-that, in the course of Providence, the stability of the order of nature is preferred by God to the accomplishment of moral ends which we should deem of the last importance, and that physical agencies hold on their way with an apparent indifference to the moral character of those who are the subjects of their influence, must, in all fairness, be taken into the account as diminishing the value of such considerations.