St. Irenaeus assures us that all Christians possessed the power of
working miracles; that they prophesied, cast out devils, healed the
sick, and even raised the dead. St. Epiphanius asserts that some rivers
and fountains were annually transmuted into wine, in attestation of the
miracle of Cana, adding that he himself had drunk of these fountains.
St. Augustine declares that one was told in a dream where the bones of
St. Stephen were buried and the bones were thus discovered and brought
to Hippo, and that they raised five dead persons to life, and that in
two years seventy miracles were performed with these relics. Justin
Martyr states that God once sent some angels to guard the human race,
that these angels fell in love with the daughters of men, and became the
fathers of innumerable devils. For hundreds of years miracles were
about the only things that happened. They were wrought by thousands of
Christians, and testified to by millions. The saints and martyrs, the
best and greatest, were the witnesses and workers of wonders. Even
heretics, with the assistance of the devil, could suspend the "laws
of nature." Must we believe these wonderful accounts because they were
written by "good men," by Christians," who made their statements in the
presence and expectation of death"? The truth is that these "good men"
were mistaken. They expected the miraculous. They breathed the air of
the marvelous. They fed their minds on prodigies, and their imaginations
feasted on effects without causes. They were incapable of investigating.
Doubts were regarded as "rude disturbers of the congregation." Credulity
and sanctity walked hand in hand. Reason was danger. Belief was safety.
As the philosophy of the ancients was rendered almost worthless by the
credulity of the common people, so the proverbs of Christ, his religion
of forgiveness, his creed of kindness, were lost in the mist of miracle
and the darkness of superstition.