Supernatural Religion Volume I Part 18

Hilarion, again, a disciple of St. Anthony, performed many miracles, an account of some of which is given by St. Jerome. He restored sight to a woman who had been blind for no less than ten years; he cast out devils, and miraculously cured many diseases. Rain fell in answer to his prayers; and he further exhibited his power over the elements by calming a stormy sea. When he was buried, ten months after his death, not only was his body as perfect as though he had been alive, but it emitted a delightful perfume. He was so favoured of G.o.d that, long after, diseases were healed and demons expelled at his tomb.(2) St. Macarius, the Egyptian, is said to have restored a dead man to life in order to convince an unbeliever of the truth of the resurrection.(3) St. Martin, of Tours, restored to life a certain catechumen who had died of a fever, and Sulpicius, his disciple, states that the man, who lived for many years after, was known to himself, although not until after the miracle.

He also restored to life a servant who had hung himself.(4) He performed a mult.i.tude of other miracles, to which we need not here more minutely refer. The relics of the two martyrs Protavius and Gervasius, whose bones, with much fresh blood, the miraculous evidence of their martyrdom and ident.i.ty, were discovered by St. Ambrose, worked a

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number of miracles. A man suffering from demoniacal possession indicated the proximity of the relics by his convulsions. St. Augustine states that he himself was in Milan when a blind man, who merely touched the cloth which covered the two bodies as they were being moved to a neighbouring church, regained his sight.(1) Paulinus relates many miracles performed by his master, St. Ambrose, himself. He not only cast out many demons and healed the sick,(2) but he also raised the dead.

Whilst the saint was staying in the house of a distinguished Christian friend, his child, who, a few days before, had been delivered from an unclean spirit, suddenly expired. The mother, an exceedingly religious woman, full of faith and the fear of G.o.d, carried the dead boy down and laid him on the saint's bed during his absence. When St. Ambrose returned, filled with compa.s.sion for the mother and struck by her faith, he stretched himself, like Elisha, on the body of the child, praying, and restored him living to his mother. Paulinus relates this miracle with minute particulars of name and address.(3)

St. Augustine a.s.serts that miracles are still performed in his day in the name of Jesus Christ, either by means of his sacraments or by the prayers or relics of his saints, although they are not so well-known as those of old, and he gives an account of many miracles which had recently taken place.(4) After referring to the miracle performed by the relics of the two martyrs upon the blind man in Milan, which occurred when he was there, he goes on to narrate the miraculous cure of a friend of

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his own, named Innocent, formerly advocate of the prefecture, in Carthage, where Augustine was, and beheld it with his own eyes (_ubi nos interfuimus et oculis aspeximus nostris_). A lady of rank in the same city was miraculously healed of an incurable cancer, and St. Augustine is indignant at the apathy of her friends, which allowed so great a miracle to be so little known.(1) An inhabitant of the neighbouring town of Curubis was cured of paralysis and other ills by being baptized.

When Augustine heard of this, although it was reported on very good authority, the man himself was brought to Carthage by order of the holy bishop Aurelius, in order that the truth might be ascertained. Augustine states that, on one occasion during his absence, a tribunitian man amongst them named Hesperius, who had a farm close by, called Zubedi, in the Fussalian district, begged one of the Christian presbyters to go and drive away some evil spirits whose malice sorely afflicted his servants and cattle. One of the presbyters accordingly went, and offered the sacrifice of the body of Christ with earnest prayer, and by the mercy of G.o.d, the evil was removed. Now Hesperius happened to have received from one of his friends a piece of the sacred earth of Jerusalem, where Jesus Christ was buried and rose again the third day, and he had hung it up in his room to protect himself from the evil spirits. When his house had been freed from them, however, he begged St. Augustine and his colleague Maximinus, who happened to be in that neighbourhood, to come to him, and after telling them all that had happened, he prayed them to bury the piece of earth in some place where Christians could a.s.semble for the worship of G.o.d. They consented, and did as he desired. A young peasant of the neighbourhood, who was paralytic, hearing of this, begged that he might be carried without delay to the holy spot, where he offered up prayer, and rose up and went away on his feet perfectly cured.

About thirty miles from Hippo, at a farm called Victoriana, there was a memorial to the two martyrs Protavius and Gervasius. To this, Augustine relates, was brought a young man who, having gone one summer day at noon to water his horse in the river, was possessed by a demon. The lady to whom the place belonged came according to her custom in the evening, with her servants and some holy women to sing hymns and pray. On hearing them the demoniac started up and seized the altar with a terrible shudder, without daring to move, and as if bound to it, and the demon praying with a loud voice for mercy confessed where and when he had entered into the young man. At last the demon named all the members of his body, with threats to cut them off as he made his exit, and, saying these words, came out of him. In doing so, however, the eye of the youth fell from its socket on to his cheek, retained only by a small vein as by a root, whilst the pupil became altogether white. Well pleased, however, that the young man had been freed from the evil spirit, they returned the eye to its place as well as they could, and bound it up with a handkerchief, praying fervently, and one of his relatives said: "G.o.d who drove out the demon at the prayer of his saints can also restore the sight." On removing the bandage seven days after, the eye was found perfectly whole. St. Augustine knew a girl of

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Hippo who was delivered from a demon by the application of oil with which had mingled the tears of the presbyter who was praying for her. He also knew a bishop who prayed for a youth possessed by a demon, although he had not even seen him, and the young man was at once cured.

Augustine further gives particulars of many miracles performed by the relics of the most glorious martyr Stephen.(1) By their virtue the blind receive their sight, the sick are healed, the impenitent converted, and the dead are restored to life. "Andurus is the name of an estate,"

Augustine says, "where there is a church and in it a shrine dedicated to the martyr Stephen. A certain little boy was playing in the court, when unruly bullocks drawing a waggon crushed him with the wheel, and immediately he lay in the agonies of death. Then his mother raised him up, and placed him at the shrine, and he not only came to life again, but had manifestly received no injury.(2) A certain religious woman, who lived in a neighbouring property called Caspalia.n.u.s, being dangerously ill and her life despaired of, her tunic was carried to the same shrine, but before it was brought back she had expired. Nevertheless, her relatives covered the body with this tunic, and she received back the spirit and was made whole.(3) At Hippo, a certain man named

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Ba.s.sus, a Syrian, was praying at the shrine of the same martyr for his daughter who was sick and in great peril, and he had brought her dress with him; when lo! some of his household came running to announce to him that she was dead. But as he was engaged in prayer they were stopped by his friends, who prevented their telling him, lest he should give way to his grief in public. When he returned to his house, which already resounded with the wailing of his household, he cast over the body of his daughter her mantle which he had with him, and immediately she was restored to life.(1) Again, in the same city, the son of a certain man among us named Irenaeus, a collector of taxes, became sick and died. As the dead body lay, and they were preparing with wailing and lamentation to bury it, one of his friends consoling him suggested that the body should be anointed with oil from the same martyr. This was done, and the child came to life again.(2) In the same way a man amongst us named Eleusinus, formerly a tribune, laid the body of his child, who had died from sickness, on a memorial of the martyr which is in his villa in the suburbs, and after he had prayed, with many tears, he took up the child living."(3)

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We shall meet with more of these miracles in considering the arguments of Dr. Mozley. In a note he says: "Augustine again, long after, alludes in his list of miracles (De Civ. Dei, xxii. 8,) to some cases in which persons had been raised to life again by prayer and the intercession of martyrs, whose relics were applied. But though Augustine relates with great particularity and length of detail some cases of recoveries from complaints in answer to prayer, his notices of the cases in which persons had been raised to life again, are so short, bare, and summary, that they evidently represent no more than mere report, and report of a very vague kind. Indeed, with the preface which he prefixes to his list, he cannot be said even to profess to guarantee the truth or accuracy of the different instances contained in it. 'Haec autem, ubicunque fiunt, ibi sciuntur vix a tota ipsa civitate vel quoc.u.mque commanentium loco.

Nam plerumque etiam ibi paucissimi sciunt, ignorantibus eseteris, maxime si magna sit civitas; et quando alibi aliisque narrantur, non tantum ea commendat auctoritas, ut sine difficultate vel dubitatione credantur, quamvis Christianis fidelibus a fidelibus indicentur.' He puts down the cases as he received them, then, without pledging himself to their authenticity. 'Eucharius presbyter... mortuus sic jacebat ut ei jam pol-lices ligarentur: opitulatione memorati martyris, c.u.m de memoria ejus reportata fuisset et supra jacentis corpus missa ipsius presbyteri tunica, suscitatus est... Andurus nomen est &C.",(1) and then Dr. Mozley gives the pa.s.sage already quoted by us. Before continuing,

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we must remark with regard to the pa.s.sages just quoted, that, in the miracle of Eucharius, Dr. Mozley, without explanation, omits details.

The whole pa.s.sage is as follows: "Eucharius, a presbyter from Spain, resided at Calama, who had for a long time suffered from stone. By the relics of the same martyr, which the Bishop Possidius brought to him, he was made whole. The same presbyter, afterwards succ.u.mbing to another disease, lay dead, so that they were already binding his hands. Succour came from the relics of the martyr, for the tunic of the presbyter being brought back from the relics and placed upon his body he revived."(1) A writer who complains of the bareness of narratives, should certainly not curtail their statements. Dr. Mozley continues: "There are three other cases of the same kind, in which there is nothing to verify the death from which the return to life is said to take place, as being more than mere suspension of the vital powers; but the writer does not go into particulars of description or proof, but simply inserts them in his list as they have been reported to him."(3)

Dr. Mozley is anxious to detract from the miracles described by Augustine, and we regret to be obliged to maintain that in order to do so he misrepresents, no doubt unintentionally, Augustine's statements, and, as we think, also unduly depreciates the comparative value of the evidence. We shall briefly refer to the two points in question. I. That "his notices of the cases in which persons had been raised to life again are so short,

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bare, and summary that they evidently represent no more than mere report, and report of a very vague kind." II. "That with the preface which Augustine prefixes to his list, he cannot be said even to profess to guarantee the truth or accuracy of the different instances contained in it."

It is true that in several cases Augustine gives the account of miraculous cures at greater length than those of restoration to life.

It seems to us that this is almost inevitable at all times, and that the reason is obvious. Where the miracle consists merely of the cure of disease, details are naturally given to show the nature and intensity of the sickness, and they are necessary not only for the comprehension of the cure but to show its importance. In the case of restoration to life, the mere statement of the death and a.s.sertion of the subsequent resurrection exclude all need of details. The pithy _reddita est vitae_, or _factum est et revixit_ is more striking than any more prolix narrative. In fact, the greater the miracle the more natural is conciseness and simplicity; and practically, we find that Augustine gives a more lengthy and verbose report of trifling cures, whilst he relates the more important with greater brevity and force. He narrates many of his cases of miraculous cure, however, as briefly as those in which the dead are raised. We have quoted the latter, and the reader must judge whether they are unduly curt. One thing may be affirmed, that nothing of importance is omitted, and in regard to essential details they are as explicit as the ma.s.s of other cases reported. In every instance names and addresses are stated, and it will have been observed that all these miracles occurred in, or close to, Hippo, and in his own diocese. It is very certain that in

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every case the fact of the miracle is a.s.serted in the most direct and positive terms. There can be no mistake either as to the meaning or intention of the narrative, and there is no symptom whatever of a thought on the part of Augustine to avoid the responsibility of his statements, or to give them as mere vague report. If wo compare these accounts with those of the Gospels, we do not find them deficient in any essential detail common to the latter. There is in the synoptic Gospels only one case in which Jesus is said to have raised the dead. The raising of Jairus' daughter(1) has long been abandoned, as a case of restoration to life, by all critics and theologians, except the few who still persist in ignoring the distinct and positive declaration of Jesus, "The damsel is not dead but sleepeth." The only case, therefore, in the Synoptics is the account in the third Gospel of the raising of the widow's son,(3) of which, strange to say, the other Gospels know nothing. Now, although, as might have been expected, this narrative is much more highly coloured and picturesque, the difference is chiefly literary, and, indeed, there are really fewer important details given than in the account by Augustine, for instance, of the restoration to life of the daughter of Ba.s.sus the Syrian, which took place at Hippo, of which he was bishop, and where he actually resided. Augustine's object in giving his list of miracles did not require him to write picturesque narratives. He merely desired to state bare facts, whilst the authors of the Gospels composed the Life of their Master, in which interesting details were everything. For many reasons we refrain here from alluding to the artistic narrative of the raising

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of Lazarus, the greatest miracle ascribed to Jesus, yet so singularly unknown to the other three Evangelists, who, so readily repeating the accounts of trifling cures, would most certainly not have neglected this had they ever heard of it.

Dr. Mozley complains of the absence of verification and proof of actual death in these cases, or that they were more than mere suspension of the vital powers. We cordially agree with him in the desire for such evidence, not only in these, but in all miracles. We would ask, however, what verification of the death have we in the case of the widow's son which we have not here? If we apply such a test to the miracles of the Gospels, we must reject them as certainly as those of St. Augustine.

In neither case have we more than a mere statement that the subjects of these miracles were dead or diseased. So far are we from having any competent medical evidence of the reality of the death, or of the disease, or of the permanence of the supposed cures in the Gospels, that we have little more than the barest reports of these miracles by writers who, even if their ident.i.ty were established, were not, and do not pretend to have been, eye-witnesses of the occurrences which they relate. Take, for instance, this very raising of the widow's son in the third Gospel, which is unknown to the other Evangelists, and the narrative of which is given only in a Gospel which is not attributed to a personal follower of Jesus.

Now we turn to the second statement of Dr. Mozley, "that with the preface which Augustine prefixes to his list, he cannot be said even to profess to guarantee the truth or accuracy of the different instances contained in it." This extraordinary a.s.sertion is supported by a quotation

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given above, which Dr. Mozley has separated from what precedes and follows it, so that its real meaning is scarcely apparent. We shall as briefly as possible state what is actually the "preface" of St.

Augustine to his list of miracles, and his avowed object for giving it. In the preceding chapter, Augustine has been arguing that the world believed in Christ by virtue of divine influence and not by human persuasion. He contends that it is ridiculous to speak of the false divinity of Romulus when Christians speak of Christ. If, in the time of Romulus, some 600 years before Cicero, people were so enlightened that they refused to believe anything of which they had not experience, how much more, in the still more enlightened days of Cicero himself, and notably in the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius, would they have rejected belief in the resurrection and ascension of Christ, if divine truth and the testimony of miracles had not proved not only that such things could take place, but that they had actually done so. When the evidence of prophecy joined with that of miracles, and showed that the new doctrines were only contrary to experience and not contrary to reason, the world embraced the faith.(1) "Why, then, say they, do these miracles which you declare to have taken place formerly, not occur now-a-days?" Augustine, in replying, adopts a common rhetorical device: "I might, indeed, answer," he says, "that miracles were necessary before the world believed, in order that the world might believe. Any one who now requires miracles in order that he may believe, is himself a great miracle in not believing what all the world believes. But, really, they say this in order that even those miracles should not be believed either."

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And he reduces what he considers to be the position of the world in regard to miracles and to the supernatural dogmas of Christianity to the following dilemma: "Either things incredible which nevertheless occurred, and were seen, led to belief in something else incredible, which was not seen; or that thing was in itself so credible that no miracles were required to establish it, and so much more is the unbelief of those who deny confuted. This might I say to these most frivolous objectors." He then proceeds to affirm that it cannot be denied that many miracles attest the great miracle of the ascension in the flesh of the risen Christ, and he points out that the actual occurrence of all these things is not only recorded in the most truthful books, but the reasons also given why they took place. These things have become known that they might create belief; these things by the belief they have created have become much more clearly known. They are read to the people, indeed, that they may believe; yet, nevertheless, they would not be read to the people if they had not been believed. After thus stating the answer which he might give, Augustine now returns to answer the question directly:--"But, furthermore," he continues, "miracles are performed now in his name, either by means of his sacraments, or by the prayers or relics of his saints, but they are not brought under the same strong light as caused the former to be noised abroad with so much glory; inasmuch as the canon of sacred scriptures, which must be definite, causes those miracles to be everywhere publicly read, and become firmly fixed in the memory of all peoples;"(l) and then follows Dr. Mozley's

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quotation: "but these are scarcely known to the whole of a city itself in which they are performed, or to its neighbourhood. Indeed, for the most part, even there very few know of them, and the rest are ignorant, more especially if the city be large; and when they are related elsewhere and to others, the authority does not so commend them as to make them be believed without difficulty or doubt, albeit they are reported by faithful Christians to the faithful." He ill.u.s.trates this by pointing out in immediate continuation, that the miracle in Milan by the bodies of the two martyrs, which took place when he himself was there, might reach the knowledge of many, because the city is large, and the Emperor and an immense crowd of people witnessed it, but who knows of the miracle performed at Carthage upon his friend Innocent, when he was there also, and saw it with his own eyes? Who knows of the miraculous cure of cancer, he continues, in a lady of rank in the same city? at the silence regarding which he is so indignant. Who knows of the next case he mentions in his list? the cure of a medical man of the same town, to which he adds: "We, nevertheless, do know it, and a few brethren to whose knowledge it may have come."(1) Who out of Curubus, besides the very few who may have heard of it, knows of the miraculous cure of the paralytic man, whose case Augustine personally investigated? and so on.

Observe that there is merely a question of the comparative notoriety of the Gospel

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miracles and those of his own time, not a doubt as to the reality of the latter. Again, towards the end of his long list, immediately after the narrative of the restoration to life of the child of Eleusinus, which we have quoted, Augustine says:--"What can I do? The promise of the completion of this work is pressing, so that I cannot here recount all (the miracles) that I know; and without doubt many of our brethren when they read this work will be grieved that I have omitted so very much, which they know as well as I do. This I even now beg that they will pardon, and consider how long would be the task of doing that which, for the completion of the work, it is thought necessary not to do. For if I desired to record merely the miracles of healing, without speaking of others, which have been performed by this martyr, that is to say, the most glorious Stephen, in the district of Calama, and in ours of Hippo, many volumes must be composed, yet will it not be possible to make a complete collection of them, but only of such as have been published for public reading. For that was our object, since we saw repeated in our time signs of divine power similar to those of old, deeming that they ought not to be lost to the knowledge of the mult.i.tude. Now this relic has not yet been two years at Hippo-Regius, and accounts of many of the miracles performed by it have not been written, as is most certainly known to us, yet the number of those which have been published, up to the time this is written, amounts ta about seventy. At Calama, however, where these relics have been longer, and more of the miracles were recorded, they incomparably exceed this number."(1)

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Augustine goes on to say that, to his knowledge, many very remarkable miracles were performed by the relics of the same martyr also at Uzali, a district near to Utica, and of one of these, which had recently taken place when he himself was there, he gives an account. Then, before closing his list with the narrative of a miracle which took place at Hippo, in his own church, in his own presence, and in the sight of the whole congregation, he resumes his reply to the opening question:--"Many miracles, therefore," he says, "are also performed now, the same G.o.d who worked those of which we read, performing these by whom he wills and as he wills; but these miracles neither become similarly known, nor, that they may not slip out of mind, are they stamped, as it were like gravel, into memory, by frequent reading. For even in places where care is taken, as is now the case amongst us, that accounts of those who receive benefit should be publicly read, those who are present hear them only once, and many are not present at all, so that those who were present do not, after a few days, remember

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what they heard, and scarcely a single person is met with who repeats what he has heard to one whom he may have known to have been absent"(1)

So far from casting doubt upon the miracles which he narrates, the "Preface" of Augustine is clearly intended to establish them. These "signs of divine power similar to those of old," are not less real and important, but merely less known, because the eyes of the world are not directed to them, and they have not the advantage of being everywhere published abroad by means of canonical scriptures constantly read to the people and acknowledged as authoritative. Dr. Mozleys statement is quite unwarranted, and it seems to us gratuitously injurious to St. Augustine.

This Father of the Church and Bishop must have had as little good faith as good sense, if he did what such a statement implies. In order to demonstate the truth of his a.s.sertion that miracles were still performed in his day, Dr. Mozley represents Augustine as deliberately producing a long list of instances of which "he cannot even be said to guarantee the truth," and the more important cases in which "evidently represent no more than mere report, and report of a very vague kind." We have furnished the reader with the materials for forming an opinion on these points. The judgment of Dr. Mozley may with equal justice be applied to

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the authors of the synoptic Gospels. They certainly do not guarantee the truth of the miracles they relate in any more precise way than Augustine. Like him, they merely narrate them as facts, and he as evidently believes what he states as they do. Indeed, as regards comparative fulness of testimony, the advantage is altogether on the side of the miracles reported by St. Augustine. These miracles occurred within two years of the time at which he wrote, and were at once recorded with the names of the subjects and of the places at which they occurred; most of them were performed in his own diocese, and several of them in his own presence; some, of which he apparently did not feel sure, he personally investigated; he states his knowledge of others, and he narrates the whole of them with the most direct and simple affirmation of the facts, without a single word indicating hesitation, or directly or indirectly attributing the narrative to mere report.

Moreover, he not only advances these miracles deliberately and in writing, in support of his positive a.s.sertion that miracles were still performed, but these accounts of them had in the first instance been written that they might be publicly read in his own church for the edification of Christians, almost on the very spot where they are stated to have occurred. We need scarcely say that we do not advance these reasons in order to argue the reality of the miracles themselves, but simply to maintain that, so far from his giving the account of them as mere report, or not even professing to vouch for their truth, St.

Augustine both believed them himself, and asked others to believe them as facts, and that they are as unhesitatingly affirmed as any related in the Gospels.

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We shall not attempt any further detailed reference to the myriads of miracles with which the annals of the Church teem up to very recent times. The fact is too well known to require evidence. The saints in the Calendar are legion. It has been computed that the number of those whose lives are given in the Bollandist Collection(1) amounts to upwards of 25,000, although, the saints being arranged according to the Calendar, the unfinished work only reaches the twenty-fourth of October. When it is considered that all those upon whom the honour of canonization is conferred have worked miracles, many of them, indeed, almost daily performing such wonders, some idea may be formed of the number of miracles which have occurred in unbroken succession from Apostolic days, and have been believed and recognized by the Church. Vast numbers of these miracles are in all respects similar to those narrated in the Gospels, and they comprise hundreds of cases of restoration of the dead to life. If it be necessary to point out instances in comparatively recent times, we may mention the miracles of this kind liberally ascribed to St Francis of a.s.sisi, in the 13th century, and to his namesake St. Francis Xavier, in the 16th, as pretty well known to all, although we might refer to much more recent miracles authenticated by the Church. At the present day such phenomena have almost disappeared, and, indeed, with the exception of an occasional winking picture, periodical liquefaction of blood, or apparition of the Virgin, confined to the still ignorant and benighted corners of the earth, miracles are extinct.

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