Secondly. You plead that we have forfeited our claim on the fulfilment of your engagement, by a statement of opinion in our second lecture, to this effect: that miracles do not enable us to infer the intellectual infallibility of the performer. This, it seems, is an unexpected heresy, and cancels all promises. You appear to be affected by the Popish tendencies of the age; and to have adopted the notion, that no faith is to be kept with heretics. On this point we remark as follows:— 1st. We are astonished at your assertion, that this idea about miracles deprives us of any “common medium of reason” with you. Did you not “propose to discuss with us” the “evidence of the plenary inspiration of the holy Scriptures,” under the persuasion that we should take the negative side? In such discussion, would you not have argued from the miracles to the inspiration? And how did you suppose that we should reply? You were well aware that we should _admit_ the miracles; and equally well aware that we should _deny_ the plenary inspiration of those that wrought them. It cannot be supposed that, at this point, you would have had no more to say; but you would have proceeded, as many able writers have already done, to seek some “common medium of reason,”—some considerations, that is, having force with both parties; by which you might hope to fasten the disputed connection between your premises and your conclusion. 2nd. We are still more astonished to hear that this sentiment puts us “a step beyond common Deism,” “in undisputed possession of the field of infidelity,” and even in “separation from our common humanity;” seeing that the opinion has been held by BISHOP SHERLOCK:—Who says, “Miracles cannot prove _the truth_ of any doctrine; and men do not speak accurately when they say the doctrines are proved by the miracles; for, in truth, there is _no connection_ between miracles and doctrines.”[14] JOHN LOCKE:—“Even in those books which have the greatest proof of Revelation from God, and the attestation of miracles to confirm their being so, _the miracles are to be judged by the doctrine, not the doctrine by the miracles_.”[15] DR. SAMUEL CLARKE:—“We can hardly affirm, with any certainty, that any particular effect, how great or miraculous soever it may seem to us, is beyond the power of all created beings (whom he explains further to be, ‘subordinate intelligences, _good_ or _evil_ angels,’) in the universe to produce.” He believes the Devil to “be able, by reason of his invisibility, to work _true and real miracles_;” and “whether such (_i.e._ miraculous) interposition be the immediate work of God, or of some good or evil angel, can hardly be discovered merely by the work itself.” He accordingly lays down _the conditions under which_ the miracles will prove the doctrine.[16] BISHOP FLEETWOOD:—“Spirits may perform most strange and astonishing things,—may convey men through the air, or throw a mountain two miles at a cast.”[17]