n the following passage:--

If the miracles of Church history cannot be defended by the
arguments of Leslie, Lyttleton, Paley, or Douglas, how many
of the Scripture miracles satisfy their conditions? (p. cvii).

And, although the answer is not given in so many words, little doubt
is left on the mind of the reader, that, in the mind of the writer,
it is: None. In fact, this conclusion is one which cannot be resisted,
if the argument in favour of the Scripture miracles is based upon that
which laymen, whether lawyers, or men of science, or historians, or
ordinary men of affairs, call evidence. But there is something really
impressive in the magnificent contempt with which, at times, Dr.
Newman sweeps aside alike those who offer and those who demand such
evidence.

Some infidel authors advise us to accept no miracles which
would not have a verdict in their favour in a court of
justice; that is, they employ against Scripture a weapon
which Protestants would confine to attacks upon the Church;
as if moral and religious questions required legal proof,
and evidence were the test of truth[89] (p. cvii).

"As if evidence were the test of truth"!--although the truth in
question is the occurrence, or the non-occurrence, of certain
phenomena at a certain time and in a certain place. This sudden
revelation of the great gulf fixed between the ecclesiastical and the
scientific mind is enough to take away the breath of any one
unfamiliar with the clerical organon. As if, one may retort, the
assumption that miracles may, or have, served a moral or a religious
end, in any way alters the fact that they profess to be historical
events, things that actually happened; and, as such, must needs be
exactly those subjects about which evidence is appropriate and legal
proofs (which are such merely because they afford adequate evidence)
may be justly demanded. The Gadarene miracle either happened, or it
did not. Whether the Gadarene "question" is moral or religious, or
not, has nothing to do with the fact that it is a purely historical
question whether the demons said what they are declared to have said,
and the devil-possessed pigs did, or did not, rush over the heights
bounding the Lake of Gennesaret on a certain day of a certain year,
after A.D. 26 and before A.D. 36; for vague and uncertain as New
Testament chronology is, I suppose it may be assumed that the event in
question, if it happened at