The notions expressed by the last two writers, respecting the superhuman agency of good and evil spirits, evidently destroy, no less than the more philosophical principle of Sherlock and Locke, all power of reasoning from miracles, as such, to the divine authority and inspiration of the performers. You cannot be ignorant of the fact, that these notions prevailed among all the Fathers of both the Greek and Latin churches; that they were almost universal among Christians till very recent times; and that your own church lodges with the Bishop of the Diocese a discretionary power to license clergymen to cast out devils.[18] Nor need we remind you that, by yet another process of thought, the Society of Friends assigns to miracles the rank which you think so profane. “We know,” says Barclay on this subject, “that the devil can form a sound of words, and convey it to the outward ear; that he can easily deceive the outward senses, by making things appear which are not. Yea, do we not see that the Jugglers and Mountebanks can do as much as all that, by their legerdemain? God forbid then that the saint’s faith should be founded on so fallacious a foundation as man’s outward and fallible senses.”[19] And he urges, “that there must be other ways of ascertaining divine truth; for as to miracles, John the Baptist and divers of the Prophets wrought none that we hear of, and yet were both immediately and extraordinarily sent.”[20] By different modes of thinking, all these (Christians?) have arrived at the sentiment in question, so that we occupy “the field of infidelity,” without being “separated from” at least a goodly portion of “our humanity.” That this sentiment should be of so deep a dye of Deism is the more remarkable, because it is advanced and vindicated as a _scriptural sentiment_,—a plea which, however foolish, can be shown to be so, only by discussing _the interpretation_ of the New Testament. You have proposed no explanation of the state of the Apostles’ minds before the day of Pentecost. On that day they either did, or they did not, become more enlightened than before. If they did not, the gift of the Holy Spirit conferred no illumination; if they did, they were deficient in light before; and the miraculous powers they had possessed and exercised did not imply infallibility. We thought, indeed, that the comparative narrowness of their views before this period had been universally admitted. With respect to the appeal which in the presence of the Baptist’s disciples our Lord makes to his miraculous acts, you are quite aware that we do _not_ regard it as “worthless,” though you say we “_must_” do so. These acts (the _climax_ of which, however, was no miracle at all,—“the poor have the Gospel preached to them,”) fully answered _the purpose for which they were appealed to_, viz., to determine whether Jesus was “He that should come,” or whether John was “to look for another;” for as Bishop Sherlock remarks though miracles