Illustrious, in the church of Jesus in general, and in the church of England in particular, is the name of CONYERS MIDDLETON. Signal was, and is, the service rendered by him to the religion of Jesus. By that bold, though reverend, hand, it now stands cleared of many a heap of pernicious rubbish, with which it had been incumbered and defiled, by the unhallowed labours of a succession of writers, who,--without personal intercourse with the founder, any more than we have now,--have, from the mere circumstance of the comparative vicinity of their days to those in which he lived, derived the exclusive possession of the imposing title of _Fathers of the Church_, or, in one word, _The Fathers_. So able, so effectual, has been this clearance, that, as it has been observed by the Edinburgh Reviewers,--speaking of course of protestants, and more particularly of English protestants,--till one unexpected exception, which it mentions, had presented itself, they had thought that in no man's opinion were those writers any "longer to be regarded as guides, either in faith or morals." One step further was still wanting. One thorn still remained, to be plucked out of the side of this so much injured religion,--and that was, the addition made to it by _Saul of Tarsus_: by that _Saul_, who, under the name of _Paul_, has,--as will be seen, without warrant from, and even in the teeth of, the history of Jesus, as delivered by his companions and biographers the four evangelists,--been dignified with the title of _his_ apostle: his _apostle_, that is to say, his _emissary_: his _emissary_, that is to say, _sent out_ by him: sent out, by that Jesus, whose immediate disciples he so long persecuted and destroyed, and whose person,--unless dreaming of a person after his death, or professing to have dreamt of him, is seeing him,--he never saw. In the course of the ensuing examination, the subject of _miracles_ has come, unavoidably, under consideration. On this delicate ground, it has been matter of no small comfort to the author, to behold precursors, among divines of different persuasions, whose reputation for piety has not been diminished by the spirit of critical inquiry which accompanies it. Such were Mede, Sykes, and others, whose ingenious labours were, in the case called that of the _daemoniacs_, employed in the endeavor to remove the supernatural character, from what, in their eyes, was no more than a natural appearance. On the success of these their labours, any judgment would here be irrelevant. Not altogether so the observation, that in no instance does it appear to him that any such latitude of interpretation has been employed, as that which, on that occasion, was found necessary for the conversion of _devils_ into _diseases_.