We shall presently examine these passages, but we must first briefly deal with the question whether, taken in any sense, they furnish an instance "in which a writer claims to have himself performed _a miracle_." It must be obvious to any impartial reader, that the remark made in the course of our earlier argument precisely distinguished the general "assertion of the possession of miraculous power by the Church," from the explicit claim to have personally performed "a miracle" in the singular. If, therefore, it were even admitted "that St. Paul treats the fact of his working miracles as a matter of course, _to which a passing reference is sufficient_," such "incidental allusions" would not in the least degree contradict the statement made, but, being the only instances producible, would in fact completely justify it. General and vague references of this kind have by no means the force of a definite claim to have performed some particular miracle. They partake too much of that indiscriminate impression of the possession and common exercise of miraculous powers which characterized the "age of miracles" to have any force. The desired instance, which is not forthcoming, and to which alone reference was made, was a case in which, instead of vague expressions, a writer, stating with precision the particulars, related that he himself had, {328} for instance, actually raised some person from the dead. As we then added, even if Apostles had chronicled their miracles, the argument for their reality would not have been much advanced; but it is a curious phenomenon not undeserving of a moment's attention that apologists can only refer to such general passages, and cannot quote an instance in which a specific miracle is related in detail by the person who is supposed to have performed it. Passing references on a large scale to the exercise of miraculous power, whilst betraying a suspicious familiarity with phenomena of an exceptional nature, offer too much latitude for inaccuracy and imagination to have the weight of an affirmation in which the mind has been sobered by concentration to details. "Signs and wonders," indefinitely alluded to, may seem much more imposing and astonishing than they really are, and it may probably be admitted by everyone that, if we knew the particulars of the occurrences which are thus vaguely indicated and which may have been considered miraculous in a superstitious age, they might to us possibly appear no miracles at all. General expressions are liable to an exaggeration from which specific allegations arc more frequently free. If it be conceded that the Apostle Paul fully believed in the possession by himself and the Church of divine Charismata, the indefinite expression of that belief, in any form, must not be made equivalent to an explicit claim to have performed a certain miracle, the particulars of which are categorically stated.