all, took place during the procuratorship
of Pilate. If that is not a matter about which evidence ought to be
required, and not only legal, but strict scientific proof demanded by
sane men who are asked to believe the story--what is? Is a reasonable
being to be seriously asked to credit statements which, to put the
case gently, are not exactly probable, and on the acceptance or
rejection of which his whole view of life may depend, without asking
for as much "legal" proof as would send an alleged pickpocket to goal,
or as would suffice to prove the validity of a disputed will?

"Infidel authors" (if, as I am assured, I may answer for them) will
decline to waste time on mere darkenings of counsel of this sort; but
to those Anglicans who accept his premises, Dr. Newman is a truly
formidable antagonist. What, indeed, are they to reply when he puts
the very pertinent question:--

whether persons who not merely question, but prejudge the
Ecclesiastical miracles on the ground of their want of
resemblance, whatever that be, to those contained in
Scripture--as if the Almighty could not do in the Christian
Church what He had not already done at the time of its
foundation, or under the Mosaic Covenant--whether such
reasoners are not siding with the sceptic,

and

whether it is not a happy inconsistency by which they
continue to believe the Scriptures while they reject the
Church[90] (p. liii).

Again, I invite Anglican orthodoxy to consider this passage:--

the narrative of the combats of St. Anthony with evil
spirits, is a development rather than a contradiction of
revelation, viz. of such texts as speak of Satan being cast
out by prayer and fasting. To be shocked, then, at the
miracles of Ecclesiastical history, or to ridicule them for
their strangeness, is no part of a scriptural philosophy
(pp. liii-liv).

Further on, Dr. Newman declares that it has been admitted

that a distinct line can be drawn in point of character and
circumstance between the miracles of Scripture and of Church
history; but this is by no means the case (p. lv) ...
specimens are not wanting in the history of the Church, of
miracles as awful in their character and as momentous in
their effects as those which are recorded in Scripture. The
fire interrupting the rebuilding of the Jewish temple, and
the death of Arius, are i