With respect to the foregoing arguments, it has been asserted (though
without even any attempt at proof) that they go to prove that the
Bible-narratives contain nothing more miraculous than the received
accounts of Napoleon Buonaparte. And this is indeed true, if we use
the word "_miraculous_" in the very unusual sense in which Hume (as is
pointed out in the foregoing pages) has employed it; to signify simply
"_improbable_;" an abuse of language on which his argument mainly
depends.
It is indeed shown, that there are at least as many and as great
_improbabilities_ in the history of Buonaparte as in any of the
Scripture-narratives; and that as plausible objections,--if not more
so,--may be brought against the one history as the other.
But taking words in their ordinary, established sense, the assertion
is manifestly the opposite of the truth. For, any one who does,--in
spite of all the improbabilities,--_believe_ the truth of _both_
histories, is, evidently, a believer in miracles; since he believes
two narratives, one of which is _not_ miraculous, while the other is.
The history of Buonaparte contains--though much that is very
improbable--nothing that is to be called, according to the established
use of language, miraculous. And the Scriptures contain, as an
_essential_ part of their narrative, _Miracles_, properly so called.
To talk of believing the Bible, all _except the Miracles_, would be
like professing to believe the accounts of Buonaparte, _except_ only
his commanding armies, and having been at Elba and at Saint Helena.
* * * * *
One cannot doubt that in the course of the _forty years_ that this
little Work has been before the Public, some real, valid refutation of
the argument would have been adduced, if any such could have been
devised.
1860.
* * * * *