The ecclesiastical miracles were not wrought in attestation that the person working them had a divine commission, but that a divine power permanently abode in the Church. The qualification which was thought necessary for the exhibition of this power was the possession of a great degree of reputed sanctity. The exercise of miraculous power was supposed to prove, not that its possessor had a divine commission, but that he was a saint. The saint was supposed to have in himself some inherent power of working miracles, bearing a considerable analogy to that which the woman with the issue of blood believed to be possessed by our Lord. A miraculous power in the shape of a virtue issued from the saint. Hence the supernatural power which was ascribed to dead men’s bones and to relics. Such a supernatural power is devoid of everything which presupposes a divine purpose, and of all evidential value. Its frequency would destroy the nature of a miracle as an attestation of a divine commission, and involve an interference with the order of nature, which would destroy the sense of its regularity, the knowledge of which is so essential to our well being, as well as to the conception of a miracle. Moreover, the supernatural agency is not supposed to be due to the direct intervention of God, but to some imaginary virtue residing in man. The ecclesiastical miracles of which we have anything like a detailed account, when they are not simply regarded as due to the direct sanctity of the person performing them, are never alleged to be performed in proof of a divine commission; but when they are asserted to have been evidential, they are affirmed to have been wrought in proof of some doctrine, or in favour of some particular party in the Church; or, what invests them with a still greater degree of suspicion, in favour of the power of a particular order. The last class of alleged miracles may at once be dismissed as due to simple imposture. The first are strongly contrasted with those of the New Testament, where we cannot find the account of a single miracle wrought in attestation of a doctrine, the one or two apparent exceptions being really performed to attest a divine commission. But when a miracle is wrought to prove an irrational doctrine, the credibility of the miracle perishes with the truth of the doctrine. We are, therefore, justified in rejecting the miracles whenever we have sufficient evidence that the doctrines which they were alleged to attest are untrue. Again: whenever a particular party alleges a divine attestation in its favour, its character may be known by its works. The parties in the Church who have claimed such miraculous attestation, have proved by their actions that the idea of a divine interference in their favour is incredible, as being inconsistent with the divine character.