elf-idolatry or of blasphemy,--as
supposed by every body, Trinitarian or Unitarian, except Mr. Foxton. He
accounts for it by the 'wild sublimity of human emotion, when the rapt
spirit first feels the throbbings of the divine afflatus,' &c. &c. A
singular afflatus which teaches a man to usurp the name and prerogatives
of Deity, and a strange 'inspiration' which inspires him with so
profound an ignorance of his own nature! This interpretation, we
believe, is peculiarly Mr. Foxton's owe.

The way in which he disposes of the miracles, is essentially that of a
vulgar, undiscriminating, unphilosophic mind. There have been, he tells
us in effect, so many false miracles, superstitious stories of witches,
conjurors, ghosts, hobgoblins, of cures by royal touch, and the
like,--and therefore the Scripture miracles are false! Why, who denies
that there have been plenty of false miracles? And there have been
as many false religions. Is there, therefore, none true? The proper
business in every such case is to examine fairly the evidence, and
not to generalise after this absurd fashion. Otherwise we shall never
believe any thing; for there is hardly one truth that has not its half
score of audacious counterfeits.

Still he is amusingly perplexed, like all the rest of the infidel world,
how to get rid of the miracles--whether on the principle of fraud, or
fiction, or illusion. He thinks there would be 'a great accession to
the ranks of reason and common sense by disproving the reality of the
miracles, without damaging the veracity or honestly of the simple,
earnest, and enthusiastic writers by whom they are recorded;' and
complains of the coarse and undiscriminating criticism of most of the
French and English Deists, who explain the miracles 'on the supposition
of the grossest fraud acting on the grossest credulity.' But he soon
finds that the materials for such a compromise are utterly intractable.
He thinks that the German Rationalists have depended too much on some
'single hypothesis, which often proves to be insufficient to meet the
great variety of conditions and circumstances with which the miracles
have been handed down to us.' Very true; but what remedy? 'We find one
German writer endeavouring to explain away the miracles on the mystical
(mythical) theory; and another riding into the arena of controversy
on the miserable hobby-horse of "clairvoyance" or "mesmerism"; each of
these, and a host of others of the same class, rejecti