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." {181}