ch the
principal fathers of this fourth age have affirmed as true what they
themselves had either forged, or what they knew at least to be forged;
it is natural to suspect, that so bold a defiance of sacred truth could
not be acquired, or become general at once, but must have been carried
gradually to that heighth, by custom and the example of former times,
and a long experience of what the credulity and superstition, of the
multitude (i.e. of Christians) would bear."

"Secondly, this suspicion will be strengthened by considering, that
this age [the 4th century] in which Christianity was established by the
civil power, had no real occasion for any miracles. For which reason,
the learned among the Protestants have generally supposed it to have
been the very era of their cessation and for the same reason the
fathers also themselves when they were disposed to speak the truth,
have not scrupled to confess, that the miraculous shifts were then
actually withdrawn, because the church stood no longer in need of them.
So that it must have been a rash and dangerous experiment, to begin to
forge miracles, at a time when there was no particular temptation to
it; if the use of such fictions had not long been tried, and the
benefit of them approved; and recommended by their ancestors; who
wanted every help towards supporting themselves under the pressures and
persecutions with which the powers on earth were afflicting them.''

"Thirdly, if we compare the principal fathers of the fourth with those
of the earlier ages. We shall observe the same characters of zeal and
piety in them all, but more learning, more judgment, and less credulity
in the later fathers. If these then be found either to have forced
miracles themselves, or to have propagated what they knew to be forged,
or to have been deluded so far by other people's forgeries as to take
them for real miracles; (of the one or the other of which they were all
unquestionably guilty) it will naturally excite in us the same
suspicion of their predecessors, who in the same cause, and with the
same zeal were less learned and more credulous, and in greater need of
such arts for their defence and security.

"Fourthly. As the personal characters of the earlier fathers give them
no advantage over their successors, so neither does the character of
the earlier ages afford any real cause of preference as to the point of
integrity above the latter. The first indeed are generally called and
h