Now, the question may be asked here, Would the people have allowed such
an impudent trick to insult them as the erection of a monument for an
event that never took place? If not, how is the matter to be explained?
These are only specimens of a hundred more Catholic miracles of an
astonishing character at our command. Several queries may be entertained
in the solution of these stories. 1st, Were some phenomena really
witnessed on which these stories were constructed, but which got
magnified from a molehill to a mountain before they found their way
into history? or, 2d, Were they manufactured as a pious fraud, which was
rather a fashionable business with the early disciples of the Christian
faith, according to Mr. Mosheim? Whatever answer may be given to these
questions will explain the miracles of the Christian bible, excepting
those which can be accounted for on natural principles.
SATANIC MIRACLES.
Among all the workers of miracles reported in the bible the devil seems
to have been pre-eminent, and hence must come in for the better end of
the argument toward proving him to have been a God. No miracle could
excel the act of his "transforming himself into an angel of light," as
stated in 2 Cor. xi. 14. It is not transcended by any other case, not
even by Christ's transfiguration. And according to Paul he was endowed
"with all power, and signs, and lying wonders." (Thess. ii. 9.) If,
then, he possessed "all power," Christ, and no other God, could have
possessed a miraculous power superior to his, for "all" comprehends the
whole, beyond which nothing can reach. Where, then, is the evidence
to come from to prove that Christ was a God, because he was
a miracle-worker, or his religion divine, because attested by
miracles--seeing the devil performed some of the most difficult miracles
ever wrought? Should we not then change his title from that of a demon
to a God, and place his religion amongst the divinely endowed systems?
St. John represents the "Evil One" as having power to make "fire come
down from heaven in the sight of men," and "to deceive those that dwell
on the earth by means of those miracles which he hath power to do."
(Rev. xiii.)
Here the question arises, What can a miracle prove, what end can
it serve, or what good can possibly arise from the display of the
miracle-working power, when it is liable "to deceive those that
dwell upon the earth?" Certainly, therefore, it proves nothing, and
accomplishes nothing. And may not the apostles themselves have been
deceived in ascribing some of the miracles they record to Jesus
instead of the devil? Certainly we are drifted upon the quicksands of
uncertainty by such a display of the miracle-working power, and are
obnoxious to most fatal deception, which proves the total inutility and
futility of such prodigies.
CHRIST'S MIRACLES NOT HIS OWN, BUT WROUGHT THROUGH HIM AND NOT BY HIM.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive