seventy disciples were employed themselves in working miracles, healing the sick and demoniacs, in Christ's own life-time, and rejoiced in it. And they could not be deceived for divers years together in the things which they saw, and heard, and felt, and also in that which they did themselves; besides that, all their own miracles which they wrought after Christ's ascension, prove that they were not deceived. 10. There is no way left, then, but one to deceive them; and that is, if God himself should alter and delude all their senses, which it is certain that he did not do; for then he had been the chief cause of all the delusion, and all the consequences of it in the world. He that hath given men sight, and hearing, and feeling, will not delude them all by irresistible alterations and deceits, and then forbid them to believe those lies, and propagate them to others. Man hath no other way of knowing things sensible but by sense. He that hath his senses sound, and the object proportionate, and at a just distance, and the medium fit, and his understanding sound, may well trust his senses, especially when it is the case of many. And if sense in those cases should be deceived, we should be bound to be deceived; as having no other way of knowing or of detecting the deceit.1

Sect. 10. Those that saw not Christ's miracles, nor saw him risen, received all these matters of fact from the testimony of them that said they saw them; having no other way by which they could receive them.m

Sect 11. Supposing, now, Christ's resurrection and miracles to be true, it is certain that their use and obligation must extend to more than those that saw them; even to persons absent, and of other generations.

This I have fully and undeniably proved, in a disputation in my book against infidelity, by such arguments as these.

1. The use and obligation of such miracles do extend to all that have sufficient evidence of their truth. But the nations and generations which never saw them, may have sufficient evidence of their truth, that they were done; ergo, the use and obligation do extend to such.

The major is past all contradiction. He that hath sufficient evidence of the truth of the fact is obliged to believe it. The minor is to be proved in the following sections.

1 Unum boni viri verbum, unus nutus, sexcentis argumentis ac verborum continuationibus parem fidem meretur.-Plutarch, in Phocion.

m Pluris est oculatus testis unus, quam auriti decem. Qui audiunt, audita dicunt qui vident, plane sciunt.-Plaut. Truc.

2. The contrary doctrine maketh it impossible for God to oblige the world by miracles, according to their proper use: but it is not impossible, therefore, that doctrine is false.

Here note, that the use and force of miracles lie in their being extraordinary, rather than in the power which they manifest; for it is as great an effect of omnipotency, to have the sun move, as to stand still. Now, if miracles oblige none to believe but those that see them, then every man in every city, country, town, family, and in all generations to the end of the world, must see Christ risen, or not believe it, and must see Lazarus risen, or not believe it; and must see all the miracles himself which oblige him to believe: but this is an absurdity, and contradiction, making miracles God's ordinary works, and so as no miracles.

3. They that teach men that they are bound to believe no miracles but what they see, do deprive all after ages of all the benefit of all the miraculous works of God; both mercies and judgments, which their forefathers saw. But God wrought them not only for them that saw them, but also for the absent and after times."

4. By the same reason, they will disoblige men from believing any other matters of fact, which they never saw themselves; and that is to make them like new comers into the world, yea, like children and fools, and to be incapable of human society.

5. This reasoning would rob God of the honour of all his most wondrous works, as from any but those that see them. So that no absent person, or following age, should be obliged to mention them, believe them, or honour him for them, which is absurd and impious.

6. The world would be still, as it were, to begin anew, and no age must be the wiser for all the experiences of those that have gone before; if we must not believe what we never saw: and if men must not learn thus much of their ancestors, why should they be obliged to learn any thing else, but children be left to learn only by their own eye-sight?

n Every man expecteth himself to be believed; and therefore oweth just belief to others. The testimony of one or two eye-witnesses, is to be preferred before many learned conjectures and argumentations. Many wise men heretofore thought that they proved by argument, that there were no antipodes ; and others, that men could not live under the equator and poles. But one voyage of Columbus hath fully confuted all the first; and many since have confuted both the one and the other; and are now believed against all those learned arguments by almost all.

7. If we are not bound to believe God's wondrous works which have been before our days, then our ancestors are not bound to tell them us, nor we to be thankful for them: the Israelites should not have told their posterity how they were brought out of the land of Egypt, nor England keep a day of thanksgiving for its deliverance from the powder-plot but the consequent is absurd; ergo, so is the antecedent. What have we our tongues for, but to speak of what we know to others. The love that parents have to their children will oblige them to acquaint them with all things useful which they know. The love which men have naturally to truth, will oblige them to divulge it. Who that had but seen an angel, or received instructions by a voice from heaven, or seen the dead raised, would not tell others what he had seen and heard? And to what end should he tell them, if they were not obliged to believe it?

8. Governments, and justice, and all human converse, are maintained by the belief of others, and the reports and records of things which we see not: few of the subjects see their king. Witnesses carry it in every cause of justice; thus princes prove their successions and title to their crowns, and all men their estates, by the records or testimony of others.

9. It is impudent arrogancy for every infidel to tie God to be at his beck, to work miracles as often as he requireth it; to say 'I will not believe without a miracle; and if thou work ever so many in the sight of others, I will not believe unless I may see them myself.'

Sect. 12. There need not be new revelations and miracles to confirm the former, and oblige men to believe them; for then there must be more revelations and miracles to confirm the former, and oblige men to believe those; and so on to the end of the world: and then God could not govern the world by a settled law, by revelations once made; which is absurd.

Sect. 13. Therefore, the only natural way to know all such matters of fact, is sensible apprehension to those that are present, and credible report, tradition, or history, to those that are absent, as is aforesaid; which is the necessary medium to convey it from their sense to our understandings; and in this we must acquiesce, as the natural means which God will use.

Sect. 14. We are not bound to believe all history or report; therefore, we must be able to discern between the credible and the incredible; neither receiving all, nor rejecting all, but making choice as there is cause.

Sect. 15. History is more or less credible, as it hath more or less evidence of truth: 1. Some that is credible hath only evidence of probability, and such is that of mere human faith: 2. Some hath evidence of certainty, from natural causes concurring, where the conclusion is both of knowledge, and of human faith : 3. And some hath evidence of certainty from supernatural attestations, which is both of human faith, and of divine.

Sect. 16. That history or report, which hath no more evidence, than the mere wisdom and honesty of the author or reporter, supposing him an imperfect man, is but probable; and the conclusion, though credible, is not infallible, and can have no certainty but that which some call moral; and that in several degrees, as the wisdom and honesty of the reporter is either more or less.

Sect. 17. II. Where there is an evident impossibility that all the witnesses or reporters should lie, or be deceived, there the conclusion is credible, by human faith, and also sure, by a natural certainty.

Sect. 18. Where these things concur, it is impossible that that report or history should be false: 1. When it is certain that the reporters were not themselves deceived. 2. When it is certain that indeed the report is theirs. 3. When they took their salvation to lie upon the truth of the thing reported, and of their own report. 4. When they expected worldly ruin by their testimony, and could look for no commodity by it, which would make them any reparation. 5. When they give full proof of their honesty and conscience. 6. When their testimony is concordant, and they speak the same things, though they had no opportunity to conspire to deceive men; yea, when their numbers, distance, and quality, make this impossible. 7. When they bear their testimony in the time and place where it might well be contradicted, and the falsity detected, if it were not true; and among the most malicious enemies ; and yet those enemies either confess the matter of fact, or give no regardable reason against it. 8. When the reporters are men

• Quod si falsa historia illa rerum est, unde tam brevi tempore totus mundus ista religione completus est? Aut in unam coire qui potuerunt mentem gentes regionibus disjuncta ? Ventis, caelo, convexionibusque dimote : Imd, quia hæc omnia et ab ipso cernebant geri, et ab ejus præconibus qui per orbem totum missi―veritatis ipsius vi victæ, et dederunt se Deo, nec in magnis posuere dispendiis, membra vobis projicere, et viscera sua lanianda præbere. - Arnob. 1. 1. p. 9.

of various tempers, countries, and civil interests. 9. When the reporters fall out, or greatly differ among themselves, even to separations and condemnations of one another, and yet none ever detecteth or confesseth any falsehood in the said reports. 10. When the reporters being numerous, and such as profess that lying is a damnable sin, and such as laid down their liberties, or lives, in asserting their testimonies, did yet never any of them, in life or death, repent and confess any falsehood or deceit. 11. When their report convinceth thousands, in that place and time, who would have more abhorred them if it had been untrue.

Nay, where some of these concur, the conclusion may be of certainty some of these instances resolve the point into natural necessity: 1. It is of natural necessity that men love themselves, and their own felicity, and be unwilling of their undoing and misery: the will, though free, is quædam natura, and hath its natural, necessary inclination to that good, which is apprehended as its own felicity; or else to have omnimodam rationem boni, and its natural, necessary inclination against that evil, or aversation from it, which is apprehended as its own undoing or misery; or to have omnimodam rationem mali, its liberty is only servato ordine finis; and some acts that are free, are, nevertheless, of infallible, certain futurition, and of some kind of necessity, like the love and obedience of the saints in heaven. 2. Nothing can be without a cause sufficient to produce it; but some things here instanced, can have no cause sufficient to produce them, if the thing testified were false; as the consent of enemies ; their not gainsaying; the concurrence of so many, and so distant, and of such bitter opposites, against their own common, worldly interest, and to the confessed ruin of their souls; and the belief of many thousands that could have disproved it if false; and more which I shall open by-and-by. There is a natural certainty that Alexander was the king of Macedonia, and Cæsar emperor of Rome; and that there is such a place as Rome, and Paris, and Venice, and Constantinople; and that we have had civil wars between the king and parliament, in England, and between the houses of York and Lancaster; and that many thousands were murdered by the French massacre, and many more by the Irish; and that the statutes of this land were made by the kings and parliaments whose names they bear, &c., because that, 1. There is no cause in nature which could produce the concurrence of so many testimonies of