in private; because of the numerous copies, very early diffused throughout all Christian countries; because of the profound religious veneration, with which they were regarded; and because of the eagle-eyed watchfulness, with which contending sects guarded every passage, which furnished any inducement to corruption, or mutilation.

No other history can boast of these, or one half of these, powerful proofs of its genuineness and authenticity. If, then, we do not admit these narratives to be true, we must bid a final farewell to the admission of all historical testimony.

Mr. Hume has written an Essay, to disprove the existence of the miracles recorded in the Gospel. In the introduction to this Essay, he says, "he flatters himself, he has discovered an argument, which will prove an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion." When this Essay first appeared, it was received with universal triumph by Infidels, and with no small degree of alarm by timorous Christians. Since that time, however, it has been repeatedly answered; and triumphantly refuted by Dr. Campbell; and completely exposed, as a mere mass of sophistry; ingenious indeed, but shamefully disingenuous; and utterly destitute of solid argument, and real evidence.

After such ample refutation, it would be a useless employment for me to enter upon a formal examination of the scheme, contained in this Essay. I shall, therefore, dismiss it with a few observations.

The great doctrine of Mr. Hume is this: "That, according to the experience of man, all things uniformly exist agreeably to the laws of nature, that every instance of our experience is not only an evidence, that the thing, experienced, exists in the manner which we perceive, but that all the following events of the same kind will also exist in the same manner. This evidence he considers, also, as increased by every succeeding instance of the same experience. According to his scheme, therefore, the evidence, that any thing, which we perceive by our senses, now exists, is made up of the present testimony of our senses, united with all former testimonies, of the same nature, to facts of the same kind. The existence of any fact, therefore, instead of being completely proved, is only partially proved, by the present testimony of our senses to its existence. According to this scheme, therefore, we, who are present in this house, know, that ourselves and others are present, partly by seeing each other present at this time, and partly by remembering that we have been present heretofore. Of course, the first time we were thus present, we had not the same assurance of this fact, as the second time. This assurance became still greater the third time; greater still the fourth; and thus has gone on accumulating strength in every succeeding instance. Every person, therefore, who has been here one hundred times, has an hundred times the evidence, t'hat he is now here, which he had, when he

was here the first time, that he was then present and I, who, during twenty-four years, have been present many thousand times, know, that I am now here, with a thousand degrees of evidence, more than is possessed, concerning the like fact, by any other person who is present. A scheme of reasoning, which conducts to such a manifest and gross absurdity, must, one would think, have been seen to be false by a man, much less sagacious than Mr. Hume.

Every man of common sense knows, and cannot avoid knowing, even at a glance, that all the evidence which we possess, or can possess, of the existence of any fact, is furnished by the present testimony of our senses to that fact. Of course, every such man knows equally well, that no testimony of the senses to any preceding fact can affect a present fact in any manner whatever. The person, who is now present in this house for the first time, has all the evidence, that he is here, which is possessed by him, who has been here a thousand times before. The evidence of the senses to any single fact is all the evidence, of which that fact is ever capable. Nor can it be increased, even in the minutest degree, by the same evidence, repeated concerning similar facts, existing, afterwards, in any supposable number of instances. He, who has crossed a ferry safely, never thought of crossing it a second time, in order to know whether he was safe, or not.

The influence, which Experience is intended by Mr. Hume to have on our belief of the existence of future events, is of the same nature. Past experience is, by his scheme, the great criterion for determining on all that which is to come. An event, which has already been witnessed a thousand times, is, in his view, to be expected again, with a confidence, exactly proportioned to this number. If an event, on the contrary, has not taken place, it is not to be at all expected; but regarded as incredible. Thus, if a ferry-boat has crossed the ferry a thousand times without sinking, the probability is, as one thousand to nothing, that it will never sink hereafter.

The Analogy, here referred to, is founded on the general maxim⚫ that the same Causes produce, in the same circumstances, the sanis effects. The instances, in which causes and circumstances, apparently the same, are really such, are so few, that, in the actual state of things, it can answer Mr. Hume's purpose in a very small number of cases only. Almost always the causes themselves, or the circumstances in which they operate, are, in this mutable world, so continually changed, that analogies, founded on this maxim, are rarely exact; and are, therefore, rarely safe rules for forming conclusions. All men are so sensible of this truth, that they easily, and uniformly, admit testimony, as a sufficient proof of the fallacy of such conclusions. The smallest credible testimony will induce any man to believe, that a ferry-boat has sunk; although it may before have crossed safely, and regularly, for many years. Much

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more do we always admit beforehand, that almost all events may come to pass, contrary in their nature and appearance to those, which have already happened.

Mr. Hume exhibits to me a full conviction in his own mind, that his scheme was unsound, by the recourse which he was obliged to have to the disingenuous arts of controversy. Thus he at first uses the word Experience, which is all-important to this controversy, to denote, what alone it truly denotes, the actual evidence of a Man's own senses. In the progress of his Essay, he soon diverts it into a sense, entirely different; and means by it the experience of all who have preceded us. But of their experience we know nothing, except by Testimony; the very thing, to which Mr. Hume professedly opposes what he calls Experience. On this Testimony, styled by him Experience, he founds an argument, upon which he places great reliance, to overthrow the evidence of the same testimony. Thus he declares Miracles to be contrary to all Experience; meaning by it the experience of all mankind; when he knew, that a part of mankind had testified, that they in their own experience had been witnesses of miracles; for this testimony was the very thing, against which he wrote his Essay.

Miracles he defines to be Violations and transgressions of the laws of Nature. These words, being regularly used to denote oppositions of moral beings to moral laws, and involving, naturally, the idea of turpitude, or wrong, were, I presume, used, to attach to miracles an idea of some variation from that perfect moral conduct, which we attribute to God.

Miracles, he also says, are CONTRARY to our experience. In this declaration he is unhappy. They may be truly said to be aside from our Experience; but are in no sense contrary to it. All that can be said is, that we have not witnessed miracles. No man can say, that he has experienced any thing contrary to them.

Having made these observations, I proceed to examine Mr. Hume's capital doctrine, that Testimony cannot evince the reality of a miracle. His argument is this: The evidence, that any thing exists in any given case, is exactly proportioned to the number of instances, in which it is known to have happened before. If then an event have happened a thousand times, and the contrary event should afterward happen once; then there are one thousand degrees of evidence against the existence of this contrary event, and but one in its favour. We are, therefore, compelled, by a balance of nine hundred and ninety-nine degrees of evidence against nothing, to believe, that this event has not taken place. We are here, as Mr. Hume teaches, to weigh experience against experience, and to be governed in our decision by the preponderating weight. In this manner he determines, that our experience has, in the number of instances, furnished such a vast preponderation of evidence against the existence of a miracle, that if we were to witness it, we could not rationally believe it to have existed, until it had taken

place as many times, and some more, than what he calls the contrary event. For example: if we have known a thousand deceased persons to have been buried, and none of them to have been raised from the grave; we cannot rationally believe a man to have been raised from the grave, although we saw him rise; conversed with him; and lived with him ever so many years afterwards. Before we begin to believe, that a person was raised from the dead, we must have seen, at least, one more person thus raised, than the whole number who have been buried, and have not risen. Then, and not till then, we shall become possessed of one degree of evidence, that a person has been raised from the dead: the whole influence of all the preceding resurrections being to diminish, successively, the previously existing evidence against the fact, that a person has been raised from the dead. Our own experience of the existence of a miracle is, thus, not to be admitted, as a proof of its existence. But as testimony is founded on experience, and is evidence of a less certain nature; it is clear, that what experience cannot prove can never be evinced by testimony.

This reasoning has a grave and specious appearance, but is plainly destitute of all solidity. Every man knows by his own experience, that the repetition of an event contributes nothing to the proof, or certainty, of its existence. The proof of the existence of any event lies wholly in the testimony of our senses. When the event is, as we customarily say, repeated; that is, when another similar event takes place, our senses in the same manner prove to us the existence of this event. But the evidence, which they give us of the second, has no retrospective influence on the first; as the evidence, given of the first, has no influence on the second. In each instance the evidence is complete; nor can it be affected by any thing, which may precede it, or succeed it. What is once seen, and known, is as perfectly seen, and known, as it can be; and in the only manner, in which it can be ever seen, and known. If we were to see a man raised from the we grave, should know, that he was thus raised, as perfectly as it could be known by us; nor would it make the least difference in the evidence, or certainty, of this fact, whether thousands, or none, were raised afterwards.

In perfect accordance with these observations has been the conduct of mankind in every age, and country. No tribunal of justice ever asked the question, whether a crime had been twice committed in order to determine with the more certainty, and better evidence, that it had been committed once. No evidence of this nature, before any such tribunal, was ever adduced, or considered as proper to be adduced, to evince the existence of any fact, or to disprove its existence. No individual ever thought of recurring to the testimony of his senses on a former occasion, to strengthen their evidence on a present occasion.

The man born blind, (to apply this scheme directly to miracles) could not possibly feel the necessity, or advantage, of inquiring whether he had been restored to sight before, in order to determine, that he had received it from the hands of Christ; or of asking the question, whether he saw, at any time before, to prove that he saw now. The leper, who acquired his health by the command of Christ, was as perfectly conscious of his restoration, as if he had been restored on twenty former occasions. All around him, also, when they saw the scales fall off with which he had been incrusted, and the bloom of health return; when they beheld his activity renewed, and all the proofs of soundness exhibited to their eyes, perceived the cure as perfectly, as if they had been witnesses of one hundred preceding cures, of the same nature.

What is true of these, is equally true of all similar cases. Experience, therefore, is capable of completely proving the existence of a miracle.

What we experience we can declare; and declare exactly as it nas happened. Were this always done, testimony would have exactly the same strength of evidence, which experience is admitted to possess. It is not, however, always done. Errors, both intentional and unintentional, and those very numerous, accompany the declarations of men. Still the weight of testimony is very great; so great, that the conduct of almost all the important concerns of mankind is regulated entirely, as well as rationally, by the evidence which it contains. Should twelve men, known and proved to possess the uniform character of unimpeachable veracity, declare to one of us, independently, (no one of them being acquainted with the fact, that any other had made the same declaration) that they had seen, in the midst of a public assembly, a leper cleansed, and the white loathsome crust of the leprosy fall off, and the bloom and vigour of health return, at the command of a person, publicly believed to have wrought hundreds of such miracles, and to be distinguished from all men by unexampled wisdom and holiness, every one of us would believe the testimony to be true. Especially should we receive their testimony, if we saw these very men endued with new and wonderful wisdom and holiness, professedly derived from the same person; forsaking a religion for which they had felt a bigoted attachment; embracing, and teaching a religion wholly new; and in confirmation of this new religion, professedly taught by God himself, working many miracles; forsaking all earthly enjoyments; voluntarily undergoing all earthly distresses; and finally yielding their lives to a violent death. A miracle, therefore, can be proved by testimony.

I have already pursued this subject farther than I intended in this discourse. Some other considerations, relative to it, I shall probably mention hereafter. At the present time, I will only remark further, that Mr. Hume, confidently, but erroneously, supposes a presumption to lie strongly against the existence of mira