of the several witnesses of them, in the places of their respective residence, namely, in Staffordshire, Lancashire, and Wales; they being persons of different counties, no less than of different religions and situations in life. The authentic documents of the examination, and of the whole process of the cure, are contained in the work referred to above. Several of the witnesses are still living, as is Winefrid White herself. (1)

I am, &c.

J. M.

LETTER XXIV.

To JAMES BROWN, Esq. &c.

OBJECTIONS ANSWERED.

DEAR SIR,

I SUBSCRIBE to the objection, which you say has been suggested to you by your learned friend, on the subject of miracles. Namely, I admit that a vast number of incredible and false miracles, as well as other fables, have been forged by some, and believed by other Catholics in every age of the Church, including that of the Apostles.

(1) She has since departed this life, namely on the 13th of January, in the present year, 1824, being the 19th year since the cure of her hemiplegia. She died of a consumption.

(1) I agree with him and you in rejecting the Legenda Aurea of Jacobus de Voragine, the Speculum of Vincentius Belluacensis, the Saints' Lives' of the Patrician Metaphrastes, and scores of similar legends, stuffed, as they are, with relations of miracles of every description. But, Sir, are we to deny the truth of all history, because there are numberless false histories? Are we to question the four Evangelists, because there have been several fabri-' cated Gospels? Most certainly not: but we must make the best use we can of the discernment and judgment which God has given us, to distinguish false accounts of every kind from those which are true; and we ought, I allow, to make use of redoubled diligence and caution, in examining alleged revelations and events contrary to the general laws of nature.

Your friend's second-objection, which impeaches the diligence, integrity, and discernment of the Cardinals, Prelates, and other Ecclesiastics at Rome, appointed to examine into the proofs of the miracles there published, shows, that he is little acquainted with the subject he talks of. In the first place, then, a juridical examination of each reported miracle must be made in the place where it is said to have happened, and the depositions of the several witnesses must be given upon oath; this examination

(1) St. Jerom, in rejecting certain current fables concerning St. Paul and St. Thecla, mentions a Priest- who was deposed by St. John the Evangelist, for inventing similar stories. De Script. Apost.-Pope Gelasius, in the 5th cen tury, condemned several apocryphal Gospels and Epistles, as also several false legends of Saints, and among the latter the common ones of St. George.

is generally repeated two or three different times, at1 intervals. In the next place, the examiners at Rome are unquestionably men of character, talents, and learning, who, nevertheless, are not permitted to pronounce upon any cure or other effect in natúre, till they have received a regular report of physicians and naturalists upon it. So far from being precipitate, it employs them whole years to come to a décision, on a few cases, respecting each Saint; this is printed and handed about among indifferent persons, previously to its being laid before the Pope. In short, so strict is the examination, that according to an Italian proverb: It is next to a miracle to get a miracle proved at Rome. It is reported by F. Daubenton, that an English Protestant Gentleman, meeting, in that city, with a printed process of forty miracles, which had been laid before the Congregation of Rites, to which the examination of them belonged, was so well satisfied with the réu spective proofs of them, as to express a wish that Rome would never allow of any miracles, but such as were as strongly proved as those appeared to be; when, to his great surprise, he was informed › that every one of these had been rejected by Rome as not sufficiently proved!

that

Nor can I admit of the third objection of your friend, by which he rejects our miracles, on the alleged ground, that there was not sufficient cause for the performance of them; for "not to mention 3 many of them were performed for the conver sion of infidels, I am bound to cry out with the Apostle: Who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been his counsellor Rom. xi. 34. Thus much is certain from Scripture, that the same Deity

who preserved Jonas in the whale's belly, to preach repentance to the Ninivites, created a gourd to shelter his head from the heat of the sun, Jonas, iv. 6; and that as he sent fire from heaven to save his prophet Elias, so he caused iron to swim, in order to enable the son of a prophet to restore the axe which he had borrowed, 2 Kings, vi. 6. In like manner, we are not to reject miracles, sufficiently proved, under a pretext that they are mean, and unworthy the hand of Omnipotence; for we are assured, that God equally turned the dust of Egypt into lice, and the waters of it into blood, Exod. viii.

Having lately perused the works of several of the most celebrated Protestant writers, who, in defending the Scripture-miracles, endeavoured to invalidate the credit of those they are pleased to call Popish Miracles, I think it just, both to your cause and my own, to state the chief arguments they make use of, and the answers which occur to me, in refutation of them. On this head, I cannot help expressing my surprise and concern that writers of character, and some of them of high dignity, should have published several gross falsehoods; not, I trust, intentionally, but from the blind precipitancy and infatuation which a panic fear of Popery generally produces. The late learned Bishop of Salisbury, Dr. J. Douglas, has borrowed from the infidel Gibbon what he calls, A most satisfying proof that the miracles ascribed to the Romish Saints are forgeries of an age posterior to that they ay claim to.' (1) The latter says: 'It may seem

(1) The Criterion, or Rules by which the true Miracles of the New Testament are distinguished from the spurious Miracles of Pagans and Papists, by John Douglas, D. D. Lord Bishop of Salisbury, p. 71, note.

remarkable, that Bernard of Clairvaux, who records so many miracles of his friend St. Malachy, never takes notice of his own, which, in their turn, however, are carefully related by his companions and disciples. In the long series of Ecclesiastical History, does there occur a single instance of a Saint asserting that he himself possessed the gift of miracles?' (1) Adopting this objection, the Bishop of Salisbury says: I may safely challenge the admirers of the Romish Saints to produce any writing of any of them, in which a power of working miracles is claimed.' (2) Elsewhere he says: 'From Xaverius himself (namely, from his published letters) we are furnished, not only with a negative evidence against his having any miraculous power, but also with a positive fact, which is the strongest possible presumption against it.' (3) Nevertheless, in spite of the confident assertions of these celebrated authors, it is certain (though the last things which true saints choose to speak of, are their own supernatural favours) that several of them, when the occasion required it, have spoken of the miracles, of which they were the instruments; (4) and among the rest, those two identical saints, St. Bernard and St. Francis Xaverius, whom Gibbon and Dr. Douglas instance, to prove their assertion. I have already referred to the passages in the works of St. Bernard, where he speaks of his miracles as of notorious

(1) Hist. of Decline and Fall, chap. xv. (2) Criterion, p. 369. (3) Ibid. p. 76. (4) The great St. Martin acknowledged his own miracles, since, according to his friend and biographer, Sulpicius, Dialogue 2, he used to say, that he was not endowed with so great a power of working them, after he was a Bishop as he had been before.