Secondly.  As  Mr.  Hume  promised  himself,  that  he  had
discovered  an  argument  whi^h  would  put  an  everlasting
check  to  all  kinds  of  superstitious  delusion,  under  which  he
no  doubt  included  Judaism  and  Christianity,  we  think  we
may  avail  ourselves  of  the  principles  we  have  prescribed,  to
put  an  end  to  superstitious  delusion,  without  having  an  ill
aspect  upon  the  system  of  our  holy  religion.  Before  we  be-
lieve any  miracles  in  future,  let  us  put  them  to  the  same
test,  which  we  have  seen  the  scripture  miracles  so  well  sus-
tain, and  if  they  can  bear  it  we  will  receive  them.  I  need
scarcely  remark,  that  so  severe  a  test  as  this  will  at  once  ex-
clude the  pretensions  of  all  those  impostors  who  have  at-
tempted thus  to  trifle  with  the  interests  of  mankind,  com-
mencing with  Simon  Magus,  and  continuing  down  through
the  whole  line  of  his  successors  to  the  present  day.  This
view  of  the  subject,  renders  an  object  of  ridicule  rather  than
serious  consideration,  those  stories  of  a  blind  man  cured  by
the  emperor  Vespasian  in  Egypt;  and  that  of  a  lame  one
cured  at  Saragossa,  as  related  by  the  cardinal  De  Retz,  as
well  as  the  tales  of  the  cures,  which  were  said  to  be  per-
formed at  the  tomb  of  the  Abbe  de  Paris.  These  accounts,
under  this  philosophical  view  of  the  subject,  are  too  frivol-
ous to  be  rendered  worthy  of  a  serious  discussion;  and  could
have  been  brought  forward,  and  considered  by  Mr.  Hume
in  connexion  with  the  scripture  miracles,  only  from  the  mere'
wantonness  of  opposition,  and  pruriency  of  debate.
Finally:  If  the  fact  be  established,  that  miracles  were  per-
formed by  Christ  and  his  Apostles,  the  infallibility  of  their


390  Upon  Miracles.
