The Ecclesiastical miracles are clearly not independent
miracles; true or false, they depend upon the miraculous powers of the
early Church. If any of them are true, then these powers continued in
the Church to a late date; if they are false accounts (whether wilfully
or through mistake, makes no difference), their falsehood is one
testimony out of many to the miraculous origin of the dispensation.
Those recorded by Augustine are in no sense evidential. Nothing came of
them except the relief, real or supposed, granted to the sufferers. No
message from God was supposed to be accredited by them. No attempt was
made to spread the knowledge of them; indeed, so far from this, in one
case at least, Augustine is "indignant at the apathy of the friends of
one who had been miraculously cured of a cancer, that they allowed so
great a miracle to be so little known." (Vol. ii. p. 171.) In every
conceivable respect they stand in the greatest contrast to the
Resurrection of Christ.
Each case of an Ecclesiastical miracle must be examined (if one cares to
do so) apart, on its own merits.
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