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we receive it; if otherwise, no miracles could give it authority.
‘For instance, (p. 53,) if a person pretends to bring a revelation from heaven that directly recommends and encourages intemperance, injustice, and cruelty, and such like notorious and hurtful immoralities, I cannot see how any common man, who makes the least use of that understanding which God hath given him, can be imposed upon to embrace a scheme so destructive of the plainest obligations of virtue, and of the peace and happiness of the world, by ten thousand miracles.
He has it in his power easily to detect the falsehood of all such doctrines, how pompously so ever they are supported.
From what has been said, it appears that miracles alone do not prove the truth of any religion, because we cannot pretend to say of any miraculous effects, at least not of most of the miracles which are recorded in the
Old and New Testaments, that they are performed by God only.’
To all this it seems enough to reply, that if absurd suppositions are made, it cannot be wondered at, that absurd conclusions should follow.
We deny, not only that the case here supposed ever did happen, but that it ever could happen.
It is a supposition inconsistent with the views we cannot but form of the infinite wisdom which directs the moral government of the world.
In fact, we have no ground, either from reason or revelation, to suppose that superior created beings are empowered, at their own discretion, to take any part in the affairs of this earth, or in any manner to influence the condition or conduct of mankind, still less to alter or controul the ordinary course of events, so as to produce effects
