to the question whether any accumulation of testimony can establish a
miraculous fact, we are content 'to try the theorem upon a simple case,'
and affirm that man is so constituted that if he himself sees the blind
restored to sight and the dead raised, under such circumstances as
exclude all doubt of fraud on the part of others and all mistake on
his own, he will uniformly associate authority with such displays of
superhuman power; and, secondly, that the notion in question is in
direct contravention of the language and spirit of Christ himself, who
expressly suspends his claims to men's belief and the authority of
his doctrine on the fact of his miracles. 'The works that I do in my
Father's name, they bear witness of me.' 'If ye believe not me, believe
my works.' 'If I had not come among them, and done the works that none
other man did, they had not had sin; but now they have no cloak for
their sin.'

We have enumerated some of the paradoxes which infidelity is required
to believe; and the old-fashioned, open, intelligible infidelity of the
last century accepted them, and rejected Christianity accordingly. That
was a self-consistent, simple, Ingenuous thing, compared with those
monstrous forms of credulous reason, incredulous faith, metaphysical
mysticism, even Christian Pantheism--so many varieties of which have
sprung out of the incubation of German rationalism and German philosophy
upon the New Testament. The advocates of these systems, after
adopting the most formidable of the above paradoxes of infidelity, and
(notwithstanding the frequent boast of originality) depending mainly
on the same objections, and defending them by the very same critical
arguments*, delude themselves with the idea that they have but purified
and embalmed Christianity; not aware that they have first made a mummy
of it. They are so greedy of paradox, that they, in fact, aspire to be
Christians and infidels at the same time. Proclaiming the miracles of