The argument which assumes an enormous distinction between Gospel and other miracles betrays the prevalent scepticism, even in the Church, of all miracles except those which it is considered an article of faith to maintain. If we inquire how those think who are more logical and thorough in their belief in the supernatural, we find the distinction denied. "The question," says Dr. Newman, "has hitherto been argued on the admission, that a distinct line can be drawn in point of character and circumstances, between the miracles of Scripture and those of Church history; but this is by no means the case. It is true, indeed, that the miracles of Scripture, viewed as a whole, recommend themselves to our reason, and claim our veneration beyond all others, by a peculiar dignity and beauty; but still it is only as a whole that they make this impression upon us. Some of them, on the contrary, fall short of the attributes which attach to them in general; nay, are inferior in these respects to certain ecclesiastical miracles, and are received only on the credit of the system of which they form part. Again, specimens are not wanting in the history of the Church, of miracles as awful in their character, and as momentous in their effects, as those which are recorded in Scripture."(1) Now here is one able and thorough supporter of miracles denying the enormous distinction between those of the Gospel and those of human history, which another admits to be essential to the former as evidence of a revelation.
Dr. Mozley, however, meets such a difficulty by asserting that there would be no disadvantage to the Gospel miracles, and no doubt regarding them involved, if for some later miracles there was evidence as strong as for those of the Gospel. "All the result would be," he says, "that we should admit these miracles over and above the Gospel ones."(1) He denies the equality of the evidence, however, in any case. "Between the evidence, then, upon which the Gospel miracles stand, and that for later miracles we see a broad distinction arising, not to mention again the nature and type of the Gospel miracles themselves—from the contemporaneous date of the testimony to them, the character of the witnesses, the probation of the testimony; especially when we contrast with these points the false doctrine and audacious fraud which rose up in later ages, and in connection with which so large a portion of the later miracles of Christianity made their appearance."(2) We consider the point touching the type of the Gospel miracles disposed of, and we may, therefore, confine ourselves to the rest of this argument. If we look for any external evidence of the miracles of Jesus in any marked effect produced by them at the time they are said to have occurred, we find anything but confirmation of the statements of the Gospels. It is a notorious fact that, in spite of these miracles, very few of the Jews amongst whom they were performed believed in Jesus, and that Christianity made its chief converts not where the supposed miracles took place, but where an account of them was alone given by enthusiastic missionaries. Such astounding exhibitions of power as raising the dead, giving sight to the blind, walking on the sea, changing water into wine, and indefinitely multiplying a few loaves and fishes, not only did not make any impression on the Jews themselves, but were never heard of out of Palestine until long after the events are said to have occurred, when the narrative of them was slowly disseminated by Christian teachers and writers.
Dr. Mozley refers to the contemporary testimony "for certain great and cardinal Gospel miracles which, if granted, clear away all antecedent objection to the reception of the rest," and he says: "That the first promulgators of Christianity asserted, as a fact which had come under the cognizance of their senses, the Resurrection of our Lord from the dead, is as certain as anything in history."(1) What they really did assert, so far from being so certain as Dr. Mozley states, must, as we shall hereafter see, be considered matter of the greatest doubt. But if the general statement be taken that the Resurrection, for instance, was promulgated as a fact which the early preachers of Christianity themselves believed to have taken place, the evidence does not in that case present the broad distinction he asserts. The miracles recounted by St. Athanasius and St. Augustine, for example, were likewise proclaimed with equal clearness, and even greater promptitude and publicity at the very spot where many of them were said to have been performed, and the details were much more immediately reduced to writing. The mere assertion in neither case goes for much as evidence, but the fact is that we have absolutely no contemporaneous testimony at all as to what the first promulgators of Christianity actually asserted, or as to the real grounds upon which they made such assertions. We shall presently enter upon a thorough examination of the testimony for the Gospel narratives, their authorship and authenticity, but we may here be permitted, so far to anticipate, as to remark that, applied to documentary evidence, Dr. Mozley's reasoning from the contemporaneous date of the testimony, and the character of the witnesses, is contradicted by the whole history of New Testament literature. Whilst the most uncritically zealous assertors of the antiquity of the Gospels never venture to date the earliest of them within a quarter of a century from the death of Jesus, every tyro is aware that there is not a particle of evidence of the existence of our Gospels until very long after that interval—hereafter we shall show how long;—that two of our synoptic Gospels at least were not, in any case, composed in their present form by the writers to whom they are attributed; that there is, indeed, nothing worthy of the name of evidence that any one of these Gospels was written at all by the person whose name it bears; that the second Gospel is attributed to one who was not an eye-witness, and of whose identity there is the greatest doubt even amongst those who assert the authorship of Mark; that the third Gospel is an avowed later compilation,(1) and likewise ascribed to one who was not a follower of Jesus himself; and that the authorship of the fourth Gospel and its historical character are amongst the most unsettled questions of criticism, not to use here any more definite terms. This being the state of the case it is absurd to lay such emphasis on the contemporaneous date of the testimony, and on the character of the witnesses, since it has not even been determined who those witnesses are, and two even of the supposed evangelists were not personal eye-witnesses at all.(2) Surely the testimony of Athanasius regarding the miracles of St. Anthony, and that of Augustine regarding
1 Luke i. 1—4.
2 We need scarcely point out that Paul, to whom so many of the writings of the New Testament are ascribed, and who practically is the author of ecclesiastical Christianity, not only was not an eye-witness of the Gospel miracles but never even saw Jesus.
his list of miracles occurring in or close to his own diocese, within two years of the time at which he writes, or, to refer to more recent times, the evidence of Pascal for the Port-Royal miracles, must be admitted, not only not to present the broad distinction of evidence of which Dr. Mozley speaks, but on the contrary to be even more unassailable than that of the Gospel miracles. The Church, which is the authority for those miracles, is also the authority for the long succession of such works wrought by the saints. The identity of the writers we have instanced has never been doubted; their trustworthiness, in so far as stating what they believe to be true is concerned, has never been impugned; the same could be affirmed of writers in every age who record