and folly that condemned him. I think my conscience will not give me the lie, if I say there are not many extant that in a noble way fear the face of death less than myself; yet from the moral duty I owe to the commandment of God, and the natural respects that I tender unto the conservation of my essence and being, I would not perish upon a ceremony, politick points, or indifferency; nor is my belief of that untractable temper as not to bow at their obstacles, or connive at matters wherein there are not manifest impieties. The leaven therefore and ferment of all, not only civil but religious actions, is wisdom; without which, to commit ourselves to the flames is homicide, and (I fear) but to pass through one fire into another.

XXVII. That miracles are ceased I can neither prove nor absolutely deny, much less define the time and period of their cessation; that they survived Christ, is manifest upon the record of Scripture; that they outlived the apostles also, and were revived at the conversion of nations many years after, we cannot deny, if we shall not question those writers whose testimonies we do not controvert in points that make for our own opinions. Therefore that may have some truth in it

that is reported by the Jesuits of their miracles in the Indies; I could wish it were true, or had any other testimony than their own pens; they may easily believe those miracles abroad who daily conceive a greater at home, the transmutation of those visible elements into the body and blood of our Saviour; for the conversion of water into wine, which he wrought in Cana, or what the devil would have had him done in the wilderness, of stones into bread, compared to this will scarce deserve the name of a miracle: though indeed, to speak properly, there is not one miracle greater than another, they being the extraordinary effect of the hand of God, to which all things are of an equal facility, and to create the world as easy as one single creature. For this is also a miracle, not only to produce effects against or above nature, but before nature; and to create nature, as great a miracle, as to contradict or transcend her. We do too narrowly define the power of God, restraining it to our capacities. I hold that God can do all things; how he should work contradictions I do not understand, yet dare not therefore deny. I cannot see why the angel of God should question Esdras to recal the time past, if it were beyond his

own power or that God should pose mortality in that which he was not able to perform himself. I will not say God cannot, but he will not perform many things which we plainly affirm he cannot; this I am sure is the mannerliest proposition, wherein notwithstanding I hold no paradox: for strictly, his power is the same with his will, and they both with all the rest do make but one God.

XXVIII. Therefore that miracles have been I do believe; that they may yet be wrought by the living I do not deny; but have no confidence in those which are fathered on the dead; and this hath ever made me suspect the efficacy of reliques, to examine the bones, question the habits and appertenances of saints, and even of Christ himself. I cannot conceive why the cross that Helena found, and whereon Christ himself died, should have power to restore others unto life. I excuse not Constantine from a fall off his horse, or a mischief from his enemies, upon the wearing those nails on his bridle which our Saviour bore upon the cross in his hands; I compute among your piæ fraudes, nor many decrees before consecrated swords and roses, that which Baldwyn king of Jerusalem returned the Genovese for their cost and pains in

his war, to wit, the ashes of John the Baptist. Those that hold the sanctity of their souls doth leave behind a tincture and sacred faculty on their bodies, speak naturally of miracles, and do not salve the doubt. Now one reason I tender so little devotion unto reliques is, I think, the slender and doubtful respect I have always held unto antiquities; for that indeed which I admire is far before antiquity, that is eternity, and that is God himself; who though he be styled the Ancient of days, cannot receive the adjunct of antiquity, who was before the world, and shall be after it, yet is not older than it; for in his years there is no climacter; his duration is eternity, and far more venerable than antiquity.

XXIX. But above all things I wonder how the curiosity of wiser heads could pass that great and indisputable miracle, the cessation of oracles; and in what swoon their reasons lay, to content themselves and sit down with such a far-fetcht and ridiculous reason as Plutarch alledgeth for it. The Jews that can believe the supernatural solstice of the sun in the days of Joshua, have yet the impudence to deny the eclipse, which every pagan confessed, at his death; but for this, it is evident

beyond all contradiction, the devil himself confessed it.* Certainly it is not a warrantable curiosity to examine the verity of Scripture by the concordance of human history, or seek to confirm the chronicle of Hester or Daniel, by the authority of Magasthenes or Herodotus. I confess I have had an unhappy curiosity this way, till I laughed myself out of it with a piece of Justin, where he delivers that the children of Israel for being scabbed were banished out of Egypt. And truly since I have understood the occurrences of the world, and know in what counterfeit shapes and deceitful vizards times present represent on the stage things past, I do believe them little more than things to come. Some have been of my opinion, and endeavoured to write the history of their own lives; wherein Moses hath outgone them all, and left not only the story of his life, but as some will have it, of his death also.

XXX. It is a riddle to me, how this story of oracles hath not wormed out of the world that doubtful conceit of spirits and witches; how so many learned heads should so far forget their metaphysicks and destroy the ladder and scale of

* In his oracle to Augustus.