miracle at Cana in Galilee several fountains and rivers in his days were annually turned into wine. A fountain at Cibyra, a city of Caria, and another at Gerasa in Arabia, prove the truth of this. I myself have drunk out of the fountain at Cibyra, and my brethren out of the other at Gerasa; and many testify the same thing of the river Nile in Egypt." Advers. Haeres, 1. 2, c. 130. Middleton's Inquiry, p. 151, 152] "All the rest (Dr. Middleton goes on to say) were men of the same character, who spent their lives and studies in propagating the faith, and in combating the vices and the heresies of their times. Yet none of them have scrupled, we see, to pledge their faith for the truth, of facts which no man of sense can believe, and which their warmest admirers are forced to give up as fabulous. If such persons then could willfully attempt to deceive; and if the sanctity of their characters cannot assure us of their fidelity, what better security can we have from those who lived before them? Or what cure for our scepticism with regard, to any of the miracles above mentioned? Was the first asserter of them, Justin Martyr more pious, cautious, learned, judicious, or less credulous than Epiphanius? Or were those virtues more conspicuous in Irenaeus, Tertullian, Cyprian, Arnobius, and Lactantius, than in Athanasius, Gregory, Chrysostom, Jerom, Austin? Nobody, I dare say, will venture to affirm it. If these later fathers, then, biased by a false zeal or interest, could be tempted to propagate a known lie, or with all their learning and knowledge could be so weakly credulous as to believe the absurd stories which they themselves attest, there must be always reason to suspect, that the same prejudices would operate even more strongly in the earlier fathers, prompted by the same zeal and the same interests, yet endued with less learning, less judgment, and more credulity. Such Christian reader, were the fathers, the leaders, and the great men of the church, and the apologists for your religion. And it is upon the credibility of these convicted knaves that ultimately, and substantially depends your belief. For it is upon their testimony and tradition that you receive and believe in the authenticity of the N.T., its doctrines and miracles. I hope that if you choose to build your faith upon the testimony of such witnesses, that you will not think it unreasonable in me to presume to doubt the truth of opinions and miracles supported by the testimony of men like the fathers. I am willing, because I think it reasonable, to let every man follow his own judgment, and do I ask too much to be permitted without offence to enjoy the same liberty with regard to these things; which I conceive no fair man will now say, (if what has been brought forward be true) are positively provable as true, and worthy of unhesitating assent.