A Series of Letters, in Defence of Divine Revelation / In Reply to Rev. Abner Kneeland's Serious Inquiry into the Authenticity of the Same. To Which is Added, a Religious Correspondence, Between the Rev. Hosea Ballou, and the Rev. Dr. Joseph Buckminster and Rev. Joseph Walton, Pastors of Congregational Churches in Portsmouth, N. H.

by Hosea Ballou

Your second proposition may now be noticed.

That part of mankind have believed and still are believing in miracles and revelations which are spurious, we have no interest in denying, but we feel under no obligation to admit this fact as any evidence against Christianity, or of any force to counterbalance the evidences which stand in its favour. What would you think of such kind of reasoning as should contend, that as it is evident that many have been, and still are imposed on by counterfeit money, it justifies serious doubts whether there ever was any true money in the world? Would you not reply, that as the counterfeit is entirely dependent on the true for its imposition, in room of being evidence that there is no true money, it demonstrates that there is?

It being well known, nor ever doubted by the friends or enemies of Christianity, that its founder and his apostles proved the divinity of their missions by miracles alone, it was nothing more than might be rationally expected, that impostors would rise up under those sacred pretensions, with a view to establish themselves. But if this religion of Jesus Christ, had not at first been built upon this foundation, impostors would never have thought of imposing on people with such pretensions. Impostors, therefore, together with all their deceptions, cannot, as I humbly conceive, be admitted as evidence against the genuineness of the gospel, but in favour of it.

As to Mahomet of whom you speak, I have always understood that he made no pretensions to miracles. He pretended to hold correspondence with the angel Gabriel, and to receive revelations from God in this way; but he never attempted to sanction his divinity by miracles; and indeed there was no need of this, for he declared he was commissioned from heaven to propagate his religion by the sword, and to destroy the monuments of idolatry. His kingdom was of this world, therefore did his servants fight; but they did not fight always alone, for he fought at nine battles or sieges in person, and in ten years achieved fifty military enterprizes. He united religion and plunder, by which he allured the vagrant Arabs to his standard. He asserted that the sword was the key of heaven and hell; that a drop of blood shed in the cause of God, a night spent in arms are of more account than two months of fasting and prayer. He assured those who should fall in battle, that their sins should be forgiven at the day of judgment, that their wounds would be resplendant as vermillion and odoriferous as myrrh, and that the loss of limbs should be supplied by the wings of angels and cherubim. But what you can find in Mahometism which in the least militates against the evidences of Christianity I know not. It is affirmed by writers, that he collected his ideas of God and of morals from the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.

From Mahomet you go to the conversion of Constantine, taking particular notice of the account given of his seeing the sign of a cross in the sun, &c. And as we are now on the subject of miracles, we must not forget the miracles of the Shakers which seem to shake your faith! Two notable miracles you have honoured with a place in your epistle, or honoured your epistle with them, which, I shall not undertake to determine. A bridge fell with a horse on it, which fell with the bridge; the rider was a woman; by the fall several of her ribs were broken, and she was otherwise bruised; but she was miraculously recovered so as to be able to dance in one evening. A boy cut his foot, the wound bled profusely; the boy was miraculously healed in a few hours. These are the miracles; but whether mother Ann, or some of her elders performed these miracles you do not inform me. It seems to be allowed that most of these Quaker miracles are inferior to the miracles recorded in the New Testament, but not more inferior to them, than they are to the miracles of Moses.

Doctor Priestley, with his usual candor, endeavours to assign a natural cause for what Constantine saw, and you are inclined to his opinion, to all of which I have no objections to make; and I am by no means certain, that a proper attention to the pretended miracles of the Shakers, might not issue in assigning a natural cause for them. But however this may be, I cannot see how the matter affects our belief in Jesus Christ. Do you not discover a difference too wide between the case of Jesus and his doctrine, and Ann Lee and her principles to admit of the comparison which you seem inclined to make? You have also mentioned the case of Mrs. A——'s seeing her husband and talking with him after he was dead, which you would draw into the same comparison. That Mrs. A—— may have satisfactory evidence of her having seen and conversed with her husband since his death, I am not at all disposed to dispute; but here the matter ends. God has not seen fit to endue her with the power of working miracles. If this woman should come into a public assembly and work astonishing miracles before all the people as an attestation of her having seen her husband, and you and I should be present, and see these marvellous things with our own eyes should we doubt the woman's testimony?

I have already, in a former communication shown that the declaration of the apostles of the resurrection of Jesus, until it was accompanied with power from on high, was never even communicated to the public, or ordered to be communicated. But in fact the disciples were strictly commanded to tarry at Jerusalem until the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Constantine would have had no occasion to depose under the solemnity of an oath, concerning the sign of the cross, &c. if he had had power to evidence his declaration by miracles. If Ann Lee's disciples will heal the sick, restore the lame, and raise the dead in so public a manner that the people at large may know these facts, then, sir, they will no longer need to purchase poor children in order to increase their societies. And if God should see fit to call me from my wife and children by such evidences as these, I hope I should not disobey his divine mandate.

But will you reply, that miracles having ceased, we have no right to expect them? In return it may be asked, how we are assured that miracles are not now necessary as they were twenty or thirty years ago? Will you retort this question and ask why miracles are not now as necessary to evince the truth of christianity as in the days of Jesus and his apostles? To this we reply: the miracles on which the gospel was founded, or propagated, were of the most extraordinary kind; they were of extensive publicity, and of ocular notoriety; they were vastly numerous, extending to the infirmed of all descriptions; and they were continued long enough to answer the purpose for which they were intended.

You will feel satisfied that the enemies of Jesus and his apostles knew for certainty, that those miracles wrought by them were realities; and that they, in room of imputing them to the divine agency, violated their own reason, by referring to an evil agent such power and acts of goodness; I say you will feel satisfied of all this, if you will set down and read all the accounts relative to this subject, in the four gospels, carefully regarding this question: Do these writers discover any marks of deception or fraud?