he like, in Baxter and in a hundred others. See also
Luther's Table Talk.

6. The earlier part of this volume is interesting as materials for
medical history. The state of medical science in the reign of Charles I.
was almost incredibly low.

The saddest error of the theologians of this age is, [Greek: hos emoige
dokei], the disposition to urge the histories of the miraculous actions
and incidents, in and by which Christ attested his Messiahship to the
Jewish eye-witnesses, in fulfilment of prophecies, which the Jewish
Church had previously understood and interpreted as marks of the
Messiah, before they have shewn what and how excellent the religion
itself is including the miracles as for us an harmonious part of the
internal or self-evidence of the religion. Alas! and even when our
divines do proceed to the religion itself as to a something which no man
could be expected to receive except by a compulsion of the senses, which
by force of logic only is propagated from the eye witnesses to the
readers of the narratives in 1820--(which logic, namely, that the
evidence of a miracle is not diminished by lapse of ages, though this
includes loss of documents and the like; which logic, I say, whether it
be legitimate or not, God forbid that the truth of Christianity should
depend on the decision!)--even when our divines do proceed to the
religion itself, on what do they chiefly dwell? On the doctrines
peculiar to the religion? No! these on the contrary are either evaded or
explained away into metaphors, or resigned in despair to the next world
where faith is to be swallowed up in certainty.

But the worst product of this epidemic error is, the fashion of either
denying or undervaluing the evidence of a future state and the survival
of individual consciousness, derived from the conscience, and the holy
instinct of the whole human race. Dreadful is this:--for the main force
of the reasoning by which this scepticism is vindicated consists in
reducing all legitimate conviction to objective proof: whereas in the
very essence of religion and even of morality the evidence, and the
preparation for its reception, must be subjective;--'Blessed are they
that have not seen and yet believe'. And dreadful it appears to me
especially, who in the impossibility of not looking forward to
consciousness after the dissolution of the body ('corpus phoenomenon',)
have through life found it (next to divine grace.) the strongest and
indeed only effi