Again, we are told that “there is not in reality a gradation of breach of law that is not followed by an equivalent gradation of punishment.” This may be the case in some Utopia in which the author lives, but it certainly neither is nor ever has been the condition of this world. Does villany, I ask, always receive adequate punishment in this world? It has been the all but universal opinion of mankind that it does not. Did not Fouché die quietly in his bed, possessed of wealth and honours, and a darkened conscience? Did not Philip II. of Spain, after all his crimes, die under the delusions of self-approbation? In a controversy like this the most confident assertions will not supply the want of facts on which to ground our reasonings.
It follows, therefore, that the assertion that the Christian argument involves reasoning in a circle, or else that it assumes the point at issue, is disproved.
Chapter IX. Demoniacal Miracles—General Considerations.
It has been objected that the admission which the New Testament is alleged to make as to the reality of demoniacal miracles weakens, if it does not destroy, the value of miracles as an attestation of a revelation. In order to do full justice to the force of this objection I will state it in the words of the author of “Supernatural Religion:”—
“The necessity of asserting the dependence of miracles on doctrines is thrust upon divines by the circumstance, that the Bible narrates so many cases of false miracles, and contains so many warnings against them.”
“The first thought which must occur to any unprejudiced mind is amazement that an Almighty God should select as a guarantee of his supposed communications signs and wonders which can be so easily imitated by others, that there must always be a doubt whether the message be from the kingdom of heaven, or from the kingdom of lies. It seems à priori absolutely incredible that a divine revelation which is so important, and which it is intended that man should believe, should be made in such obscure language, and with such doubtful attestation. That heaven should condescend to use the same arguments as hell, and with so little difference in the degree of the power [pg 200] exhibited, that man can scarcely, if at all, discriminate between them, is a theory of the most startling description.”
“Does not the necessity of this theory of false miracles, of the power of God thus placed on a level with the power of Satan, in a matter where the distinct purpose is to authenticate by miraculous testimony a miraculous revelation, rather betray the unreality of miracles altogether, and indicate that the idea of such supernatural intervention originates solely from the superstitious ignorance of men in ages when every phase of nature was attributed to direct supernatural interference, and ascribed with arbitrary promptness to God or to the devil? It is certain that as miracles are represented as being common both to God and Satan, they cannot be considered as a distinctive attestation of a divine revelation.”
After quoting Dr. Mozley to the effect that “Miraculous evidence cannot oblige us to accept any doctrine contrary to our moral nature”—an abstractly true statement, but quite inapplicable to the New Testament, which no where affirms that miracles have been wrought in attestation of doctrines—the author continues: “The assertion that evidence emanating from God is in some cases to be rejected is a monstrous proposition; and the evidential force of miracles is totally destroyed by the logical inference from it, and from the double character of miracles as Divine and Satanic; that God is not only capable of exerting supernatural power to attest what is true, but that Satan equally possesses and exercises the same power in opposition to God for purposes of deception. If miraculous evidence is indifferently employed to certify truth and error, it is at once degraded by such common service into contempt.”