Most of the great English divines have clearly recognized and asserted the necessity of supernatural evidence to establish the reality of a supernatural revelation. Bishop Butler affirms miracles and the completion of prophecy to be the "direct and fundamental proofs" of Christianity.(2) Elsewhere he says: "The notion of a miracle, considered as a proof of a divine mission, has been stated with great exactness by divines, and is, I think, sufficiently understood by every one. There are also invisible miracles, the Incarnation of Christ, for instance, which, being secret, cannot be alleged as a proof of such a mission; but require themselves to be proved by visible miracles. Revelation itself, too, is miraculous; and miracles are the proof of it."(3) Paley states the case with equal clearness: "In what way can a revelation be made but by miracles? In none which we are able to conceive."(4) His argument in fact is founded upon the principle that: "nothing but miracles {5} could decide the authority" of Christianity.(1) In another work he asserts that no man can prove a future retribution, but the teacher "who testifies by miracles that his doctrine comes from God."(2) Bishop Atterbury, again, referring to the principal doctrines of ecclesiastical Christianity, says: "It is this kind of Truth that God is properly said to reveal; Truths, of which, unless revealed, we should have always continued ignorant; and 'tis in order only to prove these Truths to have been really revealed, that we affirm Miracles to be Necessary."(3) Dr. Heurtley, the Margaret Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxford, after pointing out that the doctrines taught as the Christian Revelation are such as could not by any possibility have been attained by the unassisted human reason, and that, consequently, it is reasonable that they should be attested by miracles, continues: "Indeed, it seems inconceivable how without miracles--including prophecy in the notion of a miracle--it could sufficiently have commended itself to men's belief? Who would believe, or would be justified in believing, the great facts which constitute its substance on the _ipse dixit_ of an unaccredited teacher? and how, except by miracles, could the first teacher be accredited? Paley, then, was fully warranted in the assertion.... that 'we cannot conceive a revelation'--such a revelation of course as Christianity professes to be, a revelation of truths which transcend man's ability to discover,--' to be {6}