Part IV, Chapter 14: Application of the preceding Rule to the Belief of Miracles
THE rule which has been explained is, without doubt, very important for the right direction of reason in the belief of particular facts; and it must be observed that, in relation to these, we are in danger of falling into the dangerous extremes of credulity and scepticism.
There are some, for example, who make it a point of conscience to question no miracle, because they think they would be obliged to question all if they question any, and they persuade themselves that it is enough for them to know that everything is possible with God, to believe everything which is told them as the effects of his omnipotence.
Others, on the contrary, foolishly imagine that strength of mind is displayed in doubting of all miracles, without having any other reason for doing so, except that some are often reported which are not found true, and that they have no more reason to believe the one than the other.
The disposition of the former is much better than that of the latter; but it is true, nevertheless, that the reasoning of both is equally bad.
Both parties fall back on common places. The first rest on the power and goodness of God, on certain miracles which they bring to prove those which are doubtful, and on the blindness of the libertines, who will believe nothing but what is proportionate to their reason. All this is very good in itself, but very feeble when adduced to persuade us of any miracle in particular, since God does not do all that he is able to do; it is no argument that a miracle happened from what had happened like it on other occasions; and we may be very well disposed to believe what is above reason, without being obliged to believe all that men choose to relate to us as being above reason.
The last rest on common places of another kind. " Truth,” says one of them, " and error are alike in countenances, carriage, style, and demeanour—we regard them with the same eye. I have seen the birth of many miracles in my time. Though they were strangled in their birth, we may yet foresee the train which they would have had if they had lived to manhood; for it is only to find the end of the thread, and, wander as far as we may, it is much farther from nothing to the smallest thing in the world than from it to the greatest. Now the first who were deluded at the commencement of the extravagance, when they came to spread their story, discovered, by the opposition which they met with, where the difficulty of persuasion lay, and supplied, without scruple, what was wanting to produce conviction. Thus particular error first produces public error; and in its course afterwards, public error produces particular error. And thus, also, this fabric of falsehood is built up in such a way, that the most distant witness understands the matter better than he who is near, and the last informed is more thoroughly convinced than the first.”
This discourse is ingenious, and may be useful to restrain us from being carried away with all kinds of rumours. But it would be extravagant to conclude generally from it that we ought to suspect all that is said of miracles. For it is plain that it relates rather to what we know only through vulgar rumours, without inquiring into their origin; and, it must be confessed that we have no good ground to be assured of what we know only in this way.
But who does not see that we may make also a common place opposed to this which would be, at least, as well founded? For as there are some miracles which may be found to have little truth, if we remount to their source, there are also others which are destroyed in the memory of men, or which find little credit in their mind, because they will not take the trouble to inform themselves of them. Our mind is not subject to one kind of malady alone, it is exposed to different and conflicting kinds; there is a foolish simplicity which believes things the least credible; but there is also a foolish presumption which condemns, as false, everything which passes beyond the narrow limits of the mind. We have often curiosity about trifles and none about important things. False histories flourish everywhere, and the most faithful have no circulation.
Few people know the miracle which happened in our time at Faremoutier, in the person of a nun so blind that the form of her eye scarcely remained, who recovered her sight in a moment by touching the relics of St Fara, as I know from the person who saw her both before and after.
St Augustine says that there were in his time many miracles most certain, which were known to few people, and which, although very remarkable and astonishing, did not pass from one end of the city to the other. This led him to describe and relate before the people those which he had found true; and he remarks in the Twenty-second Book of the City of God, that there happened, in the single city of Hippo, near seventy, within two years after the building of a chapel in honour of St Stephen, besides many others which he had not described, which he testifies, nevertheless, to have been certainly known.
We see, therefore, clearly, that there is nothing less reasonable than to guide ourselves by common places in relation to these occurrences, whether in accepting all miracles, or rejecting all, but that it is necessary to examine their particular circumstances, and the faithfulness and knowledge of the witnesses who relate them.
Piety does not oblige a man of good sense to believe all the miracles related in the Golden Legend, or in Metaphrastes, since these authors are full of so many fables that we have no ground to be assured of anything on their testimony alone, as Cardinal Bellarmin has readily confessed of the latter.
But I maintain that every man of good sense, though he has no piety, ought to receive, as true, the miracles which St Augustine relates in his Confessions, and in the City of God, as having happened before his eyes, or of which he testifies himself to have had most minute information from the persons themselves to whom these things had happened—as, for example, of a blind person cured at Milan, in the presence of all the people, by touching the relics of St Gervais and St Protais, and of which he says, in the Twenty-second Book of the City of God, chap. 8,—" Miraculum quod factum est cum illic essemus, quando illuminatus est caecus, ad multorum notitiam potuit pervenire; quia et grandis est civitas, et ibi erat tunc imperator, et immenso populo teste, res gesta est, concurrente ad corpora martyrum Gervasii et Protasii.”
Of a woman cured in Africa by flowers which had touched the relics of St Stephen, as he testifies in the same place.
Of a lady of quality cured of a cancer (which had been pronounced incurable) by the sign of the cross, which had been made on it by one newly baptised, according to the revelation which she had had.
Of an infant, who had died without baptism, being restored to life by the prayers which his mother had presented to St Stephen, saying to him with a strong faith,—Holy ‘martyr, restore to me my son. Thou knowest that I only ask his life, in order that he may not be for ever separated from God. That saint relates this as a thing of which he was quite assured, in a sermon which he preached to his people on the subject of another very remarkable miracle which had happened in the church at the very time in which he was preaching, which he describes at length in that part of the City of God.
He says that seven brothers and three sisters, of an honourable family of Cesarea in Cappadocia, having been cursed by their mother for an injury which they had done her, God punished them with a disease through which they were continually, even in sleep, agitated by fearful trembling all over the body, which was so deformed, that, not being able to endure the sight of those who knew them, they had all left their own country to go in different directions, and that thus one of the brothers, called Paul, and one of the sisters, called Palladia, had come to Hippo, and, being noticed by all the city, the cause of their misfortune had been learnt from them; that, the day before Easter, the brother, praying to God before the gates of the chapel of St Stephen, fell all at once into a stupor, during which it was observed that he trembled no longer, and being, when he awoke, perfectly well, there arose in the church a great shout from the people, who praised God for that miracle, and who ran to St Augustine (who was preparing to say mass), to tell him what had happened.
“After,” says he, “the cries of rejoicing were over, and the holy scripture had been read, I said little to them on the festival and on this great subject of rejoicing, because I wished rather to leave them, not to hear, but to contemplate the eloquence of God in that divine work. I then led away with me the brother who had been cured; I made him recount all his history; I compelled him to write it; and on the morrow I promised the people that I would cause him to relate it the day after. Thus, the third day after Easter, having placed the brother and the sister on the step of the rood loft, in order that the people might see in the sister, who still had that fearful trembling, the malady from which the brother had been delivered by the goodness of God, I made him read the story of their history before the people, and let them go. I then began to preach on this subject (the sermon which is the 323d), and all at once, while I was still speaking, a great cry of joy arose from the side of the chapel, and the sister was brought to me, who (having gone from me into an aisle), had been perfectly cured in the same way as her brother, which caused such joy amongst the people that it was scarcely possible to bear the shout which they made.”
I wished to relate all the particulars of this miracle, in order to convince the most incredulous that they would be guilty of folly in questioning its truth, as well as that of the many others which this saint relates in the same place. For, supposing the things to have happened which he relates, all reasonable persons must acknowledge the finger of God in them; and thus all that would be left to the incredulous would be to question the testimony of St Augustine himself by imagining that he altered the truth, in order to give authority to the Christian religion in the minds of the pagans. Now this cannot be said with the slightest colour of truth.
Firstly, because it is not probable that a wise man would have attempted to lie about things so public, in which he would have been convicted of falsehood by a multitude of witnesses, which would have brought disgrace on the Christian religion. Secondly, because there never was any one a greater enemy to falsehood than this saint, especially in matters of religion, having established through whole books, not only that it is never permissible to lie, but that it is an awful crime to do so, under the pretext of converting men more easily to the faith thereby.
Hence, it must produce excessive astonishment to see that the heretics of the present time, regarding St Augustine as a very intelligent and sincere man, have not considered that the manner in which they speak of the invocation of saints and the veneration of relics as a superstitious worship derived from idolatry, and tending to the ruin of all religion; for it is plain that we take away from him one of his most solid foundations when we take away from true miracles the authority which they ought to have in the confirmation of the truth; and it is clear that the authority of these miracles is utterly destroyed when we say that God works them in return for superstitious and idolatrous worship. Now this is truly what the heretics do, in treating, on the one hand, the reverence which the catholics render to saints and to their relics, as a criminal superstition; and not being able to deny, on the other, that the greatest friends of God, such as was (by their own confession) St Augustine, have assured us that God has cured incurable diseases, opened the eyes of the blind, and restored the dead to life, as a reward for the devotion of those who have invoked the saints and reverenced their relics.
Indeed, this consideration alone ought to lead every man of good sense to acknowledge the falsity of the pretended reformed religion.
I have enlarged somewhat on this celebrated example, of the judgment which we ought to make on the truth of facts, in order that the rule may be employed in similar occurrences, because we fall into the same error in relation to them. Each one thinks that it is enough, in order to decide on them, to make a common place which is often wholly composed of maxims which, so far from being universally true, are often not even probable, when they are joined with the particular circumstances of the facts which we examine. It is necessary to unite these circumstances, and not to separate them, since it often happens that a fact which is scarcely probable in connection with a single circumstance, which is commonly a mark of falsehood, must be reckoned certain in connection with other circumstances, and that, on the contrary, a fact which may appear to us true in connection with a given circumstance which is commonly a mark of truth, ought to be judged false in connection with others, which destroy this, as we shall explain in the following chapter.