Supernatural Religion (Discovering the Reality of Divine Revelation). Walter Richard Cassels

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СКАЧАТЬ by virtue of divine influence and not by human persuasion. He contends that it is ridiculous to speak of the false divinity of Romulus when Christians speak of Christ. If, in the time of Romulus, some 600 years before Cicero, people were so enlightened that they refused to believe anything of which they had not experience, how much more, in the still more enlightened days of Cicero himself, and notably in the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius, would they have rejected belief in the resurrection and ascension of Christ, if divine truth and the testimony of miracles had not proved not only that such things could take place, but that they had actually done so. When the evidence of prophecy joined with that of miracles, and showed that the new doctrines were only contrary to experience and not contrary to reason, the world embraced the faith.(1) "Why, then, say they, do these miracles which you declare to have taken place formerly, not occur now-a-days?" Augustine, in replying, adopts a common rhetorical device: "I might, indeed, answer," he says, "that miracles were necessary before the world believed, in order that the world might believe. Any one who now requires miracles in order that he may believe, is himself a great miracle in not believing what all the world believes. But, really, they say this in order that even those miracles should not be believed either."

      And he reduces what he considers to be the position of the world in regard to miracles and to the supernatural dogmas of Christianity to the following dilemma: "Either things incredible which nevertheless occurred, and were seen, led to belief in something else incredible, which was not seen; or that thing was in itself so credible that no miracles were required to establish it, and so much more is the unbelief of those who deny confuted. This might I say to these most frivolous objectors." He then proceeds to affirm that it cannot be denied that many miracles attest the great miracle of the ascension in the flesh of the risen Christ, and he points out that the actual occurrence of all these things is not only recorded in the most truthful books, but the reasons also given why they took place. These things have become known that they might create belief; these things by the belief they have created have become much more clearly known. They are read to the people, indeed, that they may believe; yet, nevertheless, they would not be read to the people if they had not been believed. After thus stating the answer which he might give, Augustine now returns to answer the question directly:—"But, furthermore," he continues, "miracles are performed now in his name, either by means of his sacraments, or by the prayers or relics of his saints, but they are not brought under the same strong light as caused the former to be noised abroad with so much glory; inasmuch as the canon of sacred scriptures, which must be definite, causes those miracles to be everywhere publicly read, and become firmly fixed in the memory of all peoples;"(l) and then follows Dr. Mozley's quotation: "but these are scarcely known to the whole of a city itself in which they are performed, or to its neighbourhood. Indeed, for the most part, even there very few know of them, and the rest are ignorant, more especially if the city be large; and when they are related elsewhere and to others, the authority does not so commend them as to make them be believed without difficulty or doubt, albeit they are reported by faithful Christians to the faithful." He illustrates this by pointing out in immediate continuation, that the miracle in Milan by the bodies of the two martyrs, which took place when he himself was there, might reach the knowledge of many, because the city is large, and the Emperor and an immense crowd of people witnessed it, but who knows of the miracle performed at Carthage upon his friend Innocent, when he was there also, and saw it with his own eyes? Who knows of the miraculous cure of cancer, he continues, in a lady of rank in the same city? at the silence regarding which he is so indignant. Who knows of the next case he mentions in his list? the cure of a medical man of the same town, to which he adds: "We, nevertheless, do know it, and a few brethren to whose knowledge it may have come."(1) Who out of Curubus, besides the very few who may have heard of it, knows of the miraculous cure of the paralytic man, whose case Augustine personally investigated? and so on. Observe that there is merely a question of the comparative notoriety of the Gospel miracles and those of his own time, not a doubt as to the reality of the latter. Again, towards the end of his long list, immediately after the narrative of the restoration to life of the child of Eleusinus, which we have quoted, Augustine says:—"What can I do? The promise of the completion of this work is pressing, so that I cannot here recount all (the miracles) that I know; and without doubt many of our brethren when they read this work will be grieved that I have omitted so very much, which they know as well as I do. This I even now beg that they will pardon, and consider how long would be the task of doing that which, for the completion of the work, it is thought necessary not to do. For if I desired to record merely the miracles of healing, without speaking of others, which have been performed by this martyr, that is to say, the most glorious Stephen, in the district of Calama, and in ours of Hippo, many volumes must be composed, yet will it not be possible to make a complete collection of them, but only of such as have been published for public reading. For that was our object, since we saw repeated in our time signs of divine power similar to those of old, deeming that they ought not to be lost to the knowledge of the multitude. Now this relic has not yet been two years at Hippo-Regius, and accounts of many of the miracles performed by it have not been written, as is most certainly known to us, yet the number of those which have been published, up to the time this is written, amounts ta about seventy. At Calama, however, where these relics have been longer, and more of the miracles were recorded, they incomparably exceed this number."(1)

      Augustine goes on to say that, to his knowledge, many very remarkable miracles were performed by the relics of the same martyr also at Uzali, a district near to Utica, and of one of these, which had recently taken place when he himself was there, he gives an account. Then, before closing his list with the narrative of a miracle which took place at Hippo, in his own church, in his own presence, and in the sight of the whole congregation, he resumes his reply to the opening question:—"Many miracles, therefore," he says, "are also performed now, the same God who worked those of which we read, performing these by whom he wills and as he wills; but these miracles neither become similarly known, nor, that they may not slip out of mind, are they stamped, as it were like gravel, into memory, by frequent reading. For even in places where care is taken, as is now the case amongst us, that accounts of those who receive benefit should be publicly read, those who are present hear them only once, and many are not present at all, so that those who were present do not, after a few days, remember what they heard, and scarcely a single person is met with who repeats what he has heard to one whom he may have known to have been absent"(1)

      So far from casting doubt upon the miracles which he narrates, the "Preface" of Augustine is clearly intended to establish them. These "signs of divine power similar to those of old," are not less real and important, but merely less known, because the eyes of the world are not directed to them, and they have not the advantage of being everywhere published abroad by means of canonical scriptures constantly read to the people and acknowledged as authoritative. Dr. Mozleys statement is quite unwarranted, and it seems to us gratuitously injurious to St. Augustine. This Father of the Church and Bishop must have had as little good faith as good sense, if he did what such a statement implies. In order to demonstate the truth of his assertion that miracles were still performed in his day, Dr. Mozley represents Augustine as deliberately producing a long list of instances of which "he cannot even be said to guarantee the truth," and the more important cases in which "evidently represent no more than mere report, and report of a very vague kind." We have furnished the reader with the materials for forming an opinion on these points. The judgment of Dr. Mozley may with equal justice be applied to the authors of the synoptic Gospels. They certainly do not guarantee the truth of the miracles they relate in any more precise way than Augustine. Like him, they merely narrate them as facts, and he as evidently believes what he states as they do. Indeed, as regards comparative fulness of testimony, the advantage is altogether on the side of the miracles reported by St. Augustine. These miracles occurred within two years of the time at which he wrote, and were at once recorded with the names of the subjects and of the places at which they occurred; most of them were performed in his own diocese, and several of them in his own presence; some, of which he apparently did not feel sure, he personally investigated; he states his knowledge of others, and he narrates the whole of them with the most direct and simple affirmation of the facts, without a single word indicating hesitation, or directly or indirectly attributing the narrative to mere report. Moreover, he not only advances these miracles deliberately and in writing, in support of his positive assertion that miracles СКАЧАТЬ