Section 7. The Fiery Eruption on Julian's attempt to rebuild the Jewish Temple

 195. BISHOP W ARBURTON, as is  well known, has written in defence of the miraculous character of the earthquake and fiery eruption which defeated the attempt of the Emperor Julian to rebuild the Jewish Temple. Though in many most important respects he shows his dissent from the view of the Ecclesiastical Miracles taken in these pages, yet the propositions which he lays down in the commencement of his work are precisely those which it has been here attempted to maintain; first, "that not all the miracles recorded in Church history are forgeries or delusions;" next, "that their evidence doth not stand on the same foot of credit with the miracles recorded in Gospel history." In drawing out the facts and the evidence of the miracle in question, I shall avail myself of the work of this learned and able writer, with which I agree in the main, though of course there is room for difference of opinion, both as regards the details of the one and the other, and as regards the view to be taken of them.

 196. In the year 363, Julian, in the course of his systematic hostilities against Christianity, determined to rebuild the Temple at Jerusalem. The undertaking was conducted on a magnificent scale, large sums being assigned out of the public revenue for its execution. Alypius, an intimate friend of Julian, was set over the work; the Jews aided him with a vast collection of materials and of workmen. Both sexes, all ranks, took part in the labour, entering upon the ruins, clearing away the rubbish, and laying bare the foundations [n. 1 ]. What followed is attested by a number of authorities, who agree with each other in all substantial respects, though, as was to be expected, no single writer relates every one of the particulars. First, we have the contemporary testimony of the Pagan historian Ammianus Marcellinus, and we may add of Julian himself; then of St. Gregory Nazianzen [n. 2 ], St. Ambrose, and St. Chrysostom, who were more or less contemporaries; and of Rufinus, Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret, of the century following. They declare as follows. The work was interrupted by a violent whirlwind, says Theodoret, which scattered about vast quantities of lime, sand, and other loose materials collected for the building. A storm of thunder and lightning followed; fire fell, says Socrates; and the workmen's tools, the spades, the axes, and the saws, were melted down. Then came an earthquake, which threw up the stones of the old foundations of the Temple, says Socrates; filled up the excavation, says Theodoret, which had been made for the new foundations; and, as Rufinus adds, threw down the buildings in the neighbourhood, and especially the public porticoes, in which were numbers of the Jews who had been aiding the undertaking, and who were buried in the ruins. The workmen returned to their work; but from the recesses laid open by the earthquake, balls of fire burst out, says Ammianus; and that again and again, so often as they renewed the attempt. The fiery mass, says Rufinus, ranged up and down the street for hours; and St. Gregory, that when some fled to a neighbouring Church for safety, the fire met them at the door, and forced them back with the loss either of life or of their extremities. At length the commotion ceased; a calm succeeded; and, as St. Gregory adds, in the sky appeared a luminous Cross surrounded by a circle. Nay, upon the garments and upon the bodies of the persons present Crosses were impressed, says St. Gregory; which were luminous by night, says Rufinus; and at other times of a dark colour, says Theodoret; and would not wash out, adds Socrates. In consequence, the attempt was abandoned.

 197. There is no reason for doubting any part of this narrative; however, enough will remain if we accept only the account given us by Ammianus, who, to use the words of Warburton, was "a contemporary writer, of noble extraction, a friend and admirer of Julian, and his companion in arms, a man of affairs, learned, candid, and impartial, a lover of truth, and the best historian of his times," and "a Pagan professed and declared." "Though Julian," says this writer, "with anxious anticipation of contingencies of every kind, was keenly engaged in the prosecution of the numberless arrangements incident to his [Persian] expedition, yet that no place might be without its share in his energy, and that the memory of his reign might continue in the greatness of his works, he thought of rebuilding at an extravagant expense the proud Temple once at Jerusalem, which after many conflicts and much bloodshed, in the siege under Vespasian first, and then Titus, was with difficulty taken; and he committed the accomplishment of this task to Alypius of Antioch, who had before that been Lieutenant of Britain. Alypius therefore set himself vigorously to the work, and was seconded by the governor of the province; when fearful balls of fire, breaking out near the foundations, continued their attacks, till the workmen, after repeated scorchings, could approach no more; and thus, the fierce element obstinately repelling them, he gave over his attempt."

 198. Julian, too, seems awkwardly to allude to it in a fragment of a letter or oration, which Warburton has pointed out, and which is so curious an evidence of his defeat and its extraordinary circumstances that it may be fitly introduced in this place. He is encouraging the zeal of the Pagans for the honour of their divinities, and he says: "Let no one disbelieve the gods, from seeing and hearing that their statues and their temples have been insulted in some quarters. Let no one beguile us by his speeches, or unsettle us on the score of providence; for those who reproach us on this head, I mean the Prophets of the Jews, what will they say about their own Temple, which has been thrice overthrown, and is not even now rising [n. 3 ]? This I have said with no wish to reproach them, inasmuch as I myself, at so late a day, had in purpose to rebuild it for the honour of Him who was worshipped there. Here I have alluded to it, with the purpose of shewing that of human things nothing is imperishable, and that the Prophets who wrote as I have mentioned, raved, and were but the gossips of canting old women. Nothing, indeed, contradicts the notion of that God being great, but He is unfortunate in His Prophets and interpreters; I say that they did not take care to purify their souls by a course of education, nor to open their fast-closed eyes, nor to dissipate the darkness which lay on them. And, like men who see a great light through a mist, not clearly nor distinctly, and take it not for pure light, but for fire, and are blind to all things around about it, they cry out loudly, 'Shudder and fear; fire, flame, death, sword, lance,' expressing by many words that one destructive property of fire ." [n. 4 ] When it is considered that Julian was, as it were, defeated by the prophets of that very people he was aiding; that he desired to rebuild the Jewish Temple, and the Christians declared that he could not, for the Jewish Prophets themselves had made it impossible; we surely may believe, that in the foregoing passage this was the thought which was passing in his mind, while the prophetic emblem of fire haunted him, which had been so recently exhibited in the catastrophe by which he had been baffled.

 199. The fact then cannot be doubted [n. 5 ]; it may be asked, however, whether the perpetual ruin of the Temple was actually predicted in the Prophets; and if not, what was the drift of this miracle, and how it was connected with the Church. It is connected with the Church and the Prophets by one circumstance, if by no other, and that a remarkable one; that before the actual attempt to rebuild, a Bishop of the Church had denounced it, prophesied its failure, and that from the light thrown upon the subject by the Prophets of the Old Testament. "Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem," says Socrates, "bearing in mind the words of the Prophet Daniel, which Christ had confirmed in the Holy Gospels, declared to many beforehand, that now the time was come, when stone should not remain upon stone for that Temple, but the Saviour's prophecy should be fulfilled." [n. 6 ] St. Cyril seems to have argued that since our Lord prophesied the utter destruction of the Temple, and since that destruction was not yet fully accomplished, but only in course of accomplishment, for the old foundations at that time still remained, therefore Julian was reversing the Divine order of things, and building up when God was engaged in casting down, and in consequence was sure to fail. And as Julian probably understood Daniel's and our Lord's words in the same way, and did set himself deliberately and professedly to contravene them, viewed as fulfilled in the fortunes of the Temple, he was evidently placing himself in open hostility to Christ and His Prophet, and challenging Him to the encounter. No circumstances then could be more fitting for the interposition of a miracle in frustration of his undertaking.

 200. The same conclusion may be argued from our Lord's words to the Samaritan woman. He does not indeed mention the Temple by name, but he must be considered to allude to it, when He says that men should not " worship at Jerusalem." They were indeed to worship there, as everywhere, but to worship without the Temple; and that because they were to worship "in spirit and in truth." A spiritual worship was incompatible with the Judaic services; so that when Christianity appeared the Temple was destroyed. Julian then, in building again the Temple, was doing what he could to falsify Christianity.

 201. But, again, the Jewish Temple was confessedly the centre of the Jewish worship and polity; to rebuild the Temple, then, was to establish the Jews, as Jews, in their own land, an event which, if prophecy is sure, never is to be. "The building of [the Temple]," says Mr. Davison, "was directed for this reason, that God had given ' rest to His people,' and henceforth would not suffer them to wander or be disturbed; so long as they enjoyed the privilege of being His people at all. 'Moreover, I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and will plant them, that they may dwell in a place of their own, and move no more .' This promise of rest was connected with the Temple, for it was spoken when God confirmed and commanded the design of building it." He continues presently, "Their national estate was henceforth attached to this Temple. It fell with them; when they returned and became a people again, it rose also ... Excepting around this Temple, they have never been able to settle themselves, as a people, nor find a public home for their nation or their religion ... So that the long desolation of their Temple, and their lasting removal from the seat of it, are no inconsiderable proofs that their polity and peculiar law are come to an end in the purposes of Providence, and according to the intention of the Temple-appointment, as well as in the fact." [n. 7 ] Julian then, in proposing to rebuild the Jewish Temple, aimed at the re-establishment of Judaism, of that ceremonial religion which in its day indeed had been the instrument of Divine Providence towards higher blessings in store, and those for all men, but which, when those blessings were come, forthwith was disannulled in the Divine counsels "for the weakness and unprofitableness thereof."

 202. And next the question may be asked whether there was after all any miracle in the case, as in the instance of most of the other extraordinary occurrences which have passed under review. The luminous Crosses upon the garments and bodies of the persons present were apparently of a phosphoric nature; the Cross in the air resembled meteoric phenomena; the earthquake and balls of fire had a volcanic origin; and other marvellous circumstances are referable to electricity. This all may be very true, and yet it may be true also that the immediate cause, which set all these various agents in motion, and combined them for one work, was supernatural; just as the agency of mind on matter, in speaking, walking, writing, eating, and the like, is not subject to physical laws, though manifesting itself through them [n. 8 ]. Again, even supposing that these phenomena were not in themselves miraculous, yet surely their concurrence with the moral system of things, their happening at that time and place and in that subserviency to the declamations of ancient prophecy, is in itself of the nature of a miracle. It is observable too, that though the Cross in the air be attributable to meteoric causes, yet such an occurrence is after all very unusual; now we read of three such occurrences in the course of the fifty years between Constantine's accession to power and Julian, during which period Christianity was effecting its visible triumph and establishment in the world; viz., the Cross at the conversion of Constantine, that which hung over Jerusalem in the reign of Constantius, and the Cross which forms part of the awful events now in question; and while any accumulation of extraordinary phenomena creates a difficulty in finding a cause in nature adequate to their production, the recurrence of the same phenomena argues design, or the interference of agency beyond nature. It must be added, too, that the occurrence of a whirlwind, an earthquake, and a fire, especially reminds us of Elijah's vision in Horeb, and again of the manifestation of the Divine Presence in the first and fourth of the Acts, yet it does not appear as if the writers to whom we have referred had these events in their mind; rather it is only by the union of their separate testimonies, each incomplete in itself, that the parallel is formed [n. 9 ].

 203. Moreover the events in question did the work of a miracle; they defeated powerful enemies, who would not have been unwilling to detect imposture, and who would not have been deterred from their purpose by interruptions which are extraordinary only in a relation. If the purpose of the Scripture miracles be to enforce on the minds of men an impression of the present agency and of the will of God, His approval of one man or doctrine, and His disapproval of another, not even the clearest of those recorded in the Gospel could have secured this object more effectually than did the wonderful occurrence in question. And did we see at this day a great attempt made to reinstate the Jews as Jews in their own land, to build their Temple, and to recommence their sacrifices, did the enemies of the Catholic Church forward it, did heretical bodies and their officials on the spot take part in it, and did some catastrophe, as sudden and unexpected as the fiery eruption, befall the attempt, I conceive, whatever became of abstract definitions, we should feel it to be a Divine interference, bringing with it its own evidence, and needing no interpretation. It must be recollected, too, that certain of the miracles of Scripture, such as the destruction of Sodom, may be plausibly attributed to physical causes, yet without disparagement of their Divine character. And lastly, as to the extravagance of some writers who have considered the miracle an artifice of the Christian body, the same scepticism which has wantonly ascribed it to combustibles of the nature of gunpowder, has at other times suggested a like explanation of the thunders and lightnings when the Law was given, and of the deaths of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram.

Notes

 1. It was quite an enthusiastic movement. We are told that the spades and pickaxes were of silver, and the rubbish was removed in mantles of silk and purple. Vid. Gibbon, Ch. xxiii.

 2. Orat. v. 4-7. The Oration was composed the very year of the miracle. [Vid. Fabric. Salutaris Lux. p. 124, Gothofr. in Philostorg. p. 296.]

 3. Fabricius and De la Bleterie consider the "three times" to include Julian's own attempt to rebuild; yet it is harsh, as Warburton observes, to call a hindrance in rebuilding an actual destruction of the building, though the hindrance was a destruction as far as it went. But Lardner and Warburton seem to mistake when they argue against Fabricius that [ egeiromenou de oude nun ] means "not raised again to this day," whereas it must rather be construed "not rising " or "in course of building ." Warburton reckons the alterations and additions under Herod as by implication a destruction of the second Temple; and as another hypothesis he suggests the profanation under Antiochus. Lardner thinks Julian spoke vaguely or rhetorically, or that he referred to the calamities which came upon Jerusalem in the time of Adrian. "Julien loin de conclure de ce qui étoit arrivé à Jerusalem la vérité de la religion Chrétienne, en inferoit que la revelation judaïque étoit fausse." De la Bleterie. Julian, v. p. 399.

 4. Page 295. Ed. Spanh. Lardner contends that this letter from its tone must have been written before any attempt to rebuild the Temple; which indeed he considers Julian never to have put into execution. This is a paradox more in the style of Warburton, whom he is opposing, than of so sensible and sober a writer.

 5. It is objected by Lardner that St. Jerome, Prudentius, and Orosius are silent about the miracle. Others have alleged the silence of St. Cyril of Jerusalem. But if, as a matter of course, good testimony is to be overborne because other good testimony is wanting, there will be few facts of history certain. Why should Ammianus be untrue because Jerome is silent? Sometimes the notoriety of a fact leads to its being passed over. Moyle is "unwilling to reject all [miracles since the days of the Apostles] without reserve, for the sake of a very remarkable one which happened at the rebuilding of the Temple," etc. Posth. Works, Vol. i. p. 101. He professes to be influenced by the testimony and the antecedent probability. Douglas speaks of Warburton's defence of it as "a work written with a solidity of argument which might always have been expected from the author, and with a spirit of candour which his enemies thought him incapable of." These admissions are very strong, considering the authors. Mosheim takes the same side. J. Basnage, Lardner, Hey, etc., take the contrary.

 6. Hist. iii. 20. Lardner (Testimonies, Ch. 46. 3) says, that "it is very absurd for any Christians to talk in this manner. Christ's words had been fulfilled almost 300 years before;" and refers to Rufinus as giving the true account of St. Cyril's words, viz., that "it could not be that the Jews should be able to lay them stone upon stone;" but St. Cyril himself expressly says what Socrates reports of him, Catech. xv. 15: "Antichrist shall come at a time when there shall not be left one stone upon another in the Temple." This was written before Julian's attempt; and St. Chrysostom, after it, pronounces the prophecy of "not one stone upon another" not fulfilled even then. Hom. 75. in Matth.

 7. Discourses on Prophecy, v. 2. § 2.

 8. "The mineral and metallic substances which, by their accidental fermentation, are wont to take fire and burst out in flame, were the native contents of the place from which they issued; but in all likelihood they would have there slept, and still continued in the quiet innoxious state in which they had so long remained, had not the breath of the Lord awoke and kindled them. But when the Divine Power had thus miraculously interposed to stir up the rage of these fiery elements, and yet to restrain their fury to the objects of His vengeance, He then again suffered them to do their ordinary office ; because nature, thus directed, would, by the exertion of its own laws, answer all the ends of the moral designation." Warburt. Julian. p. 246. Again, "We see why fire was the scourge employed; as we may be sure water would have been, were the region of Judea naturally subject to inundations. For miracles, not being an ostentatious, but a necessary instrument of God's moral government, we cannot conceive it probable that He would create the elements for this purpose, but use those which already lay stored up against the day of visitation." Ibid. p. 250.

 9. It should be observed that the order in which the miraculous phenomena have been arranged above is not found in the original authorities; Warburton has been followed except in one instance.

 Section 8. Recovery of the Blind Man by the Relics of St. Gervasius and St. Protasius at Milan

 204. T HE broad facts connected with this memorable interposition of Divine Power are these: St. Ambrose, with a large portion of the population of Milan, was resisting the Empress Justina in her attempt to seize on one of the churches of the city for Arian worship. In the course of the contest he had occasion to seek for the relics of Martyrs, to be used in the dedication of a new church, and he found two skeletons, with a quantity of fresh blood, the miraculous token of martyrdom. Miracles followed, both cures and exorcisms; and at length, as he was moving the relics to a neighbouring church, a blind man touched the cloth which covered them, and regained his sight. The Empress in consequence relinquished the contest; and the subject of the miracle dedicated himself to religious service in the Church of the Martyrs, where he seems to have remained till his death. These facts are attested by St. Ambrose himself, several times by St. Augustine, and by Paulinus, secretary to St. Ambrose, in his Life of the Saint addressed to St. Augustine.

 205. This miracle, it is to be presumed, will satisfy the tests which Douglas provides for verifying events of that nature. That author lays down, as we have already seen, that miracles are to be suspected, when the accounts of them were first published long after the time  or far from the place of their alleged occurrence; or, if not, yet at least were not then and there subjected to examination. Now in the instance before us we have the direct testimony of three contemporaries, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and Paulinus; two of whom at the least were present at the very time and place, while one of those two wrote his account immediately upon or during the events, as they proceeded. These three witnesses agree together in all substantial matters; and the third, who writes twenty-six years after the miracle, when St. Ambrose was dead, unlike many reporters of miracles, adds nothing to the narrative, as St. Ambrose and St. Augustine left it. Douglas observes in explanation of the third of his conditions, that we may suspect miracles of having "been admitted without examination, first, if they coincided with the favourite opinions and superstitious prejudices of those to whom they were reported, and who on that account might be eager to receive them without evidence; secondly, if they were set on foot, or at least were encouraged and supported, by those who alone had the power of detecting the fraud, and who could prevent any examination which might tend to undeceive the world." [n. 1 ] Now here all the power was on the side of those against whom the miracle was wrought; and, though the popular feeling was with St. Ambrose, yet the whole city had had an Arian clergy for nearly twenty years, and could not but be in a measure under Arian influence. But however this might be, at least Ambrose had to cope with Arian princes armed with despotic power, an Arian court, an Arian communion lately dominant and still organised, with a bishop at its head. His enemies had already made attempts to assassinate him; and again, to seize his person, and to carry him off from the city. They had hitherto been the assailants, and he had remained passive. Now, however, he had at last ventured on what in its effects was an aggressive act. As I have said, he has to dedicate a Church, and he searches for relics of Martyrs. He is said to find them; miracles follow; the sick and possessed are cured; at length in the public street, in broad day, while the relics are passing, a blind man, well known in the place by name, by trade, by person, and by his calamity, professes to recover his sight by means of them.

 206. Here surely is a plain challenge made to the enemies of the Church, almost as direct as Elijah's to the idolatrous court and false prophets of Israel. St. Ambrose supplies them with materials, nor do they want the good-will to detect a fraud, if fraud there be. Yet they are utterly unable to cope with him. They denied the miracle indeed, and they could not do otherwise, if they were to remain Arians; as Protestant writers deny it now, that they may not be forced to be Catholics. They denied the miracle, and St. Ambrose, in a sermon preached at the time, plainly tells us that they did; but they did not hazard any counter statement or distinct explanation of the facts of the case. They did not so much as the Jews, who, on the Resurrection, at least said that our Lord's Body was stolen away by night. They did nothing but deny, except indeed we let their actions speak for them. One thing then they did; they gave over the contest. The Miracle was successful.

 207. This miracle answers to Leslie's criteria also. It was sensible; it was public; and the subject of it became a monument of it, and that with a profession that he was so. He remained on the spot, and dedicated himself to God's service in the Church of the Martyrs who had been the means of his cure; thus by his mode of life proclaiming the mercy which had been displayed in his behalf, and by his presence challenging examination.

 208. An attempt has lately been made to resolve this miracle into a mere trick of priestcraft; but doubtless the Arians would have been beforehand with the present objector, could a case have been made out with any plausibility. This anticipation is confirmed by an inspection of the inferences or conjectures of which he makes the historical facts the subject. The blood, he says, was furnished by the blind Severus, who had been a butcher, and might still have relations in the trade. And since St. Ambrose translated the relics at once, instead of waiting for the next Sunday, this is supposed to argue that he was afraid, had the ceremony been postponed, of the fraud being detected by the natural consequence of the delay.

 209. But all facts admit of two interpretations; there is not the transaction or occurrence, consisting of many parts, but some of them may be fixed upon as means of forcing upon it a meaning contrary to the true one, as is shewn by the ingenuity exercised in defence of clients in the courts of law. What has been attempted by the writer to whom I allude, as regards St. Ambrose, has been done better, though more wickedly, by the infidel author of the New Trial of the Witnesses as regards the History of the Resurrection. In such cases inquirers will decide according to their prepossessions [n. 2 ]; if they are prepared to believe that the Fathers and Doctors of the Church would introduce the blood of the shambles into a grave, and pretend that it was the blood of God's saints, and hire men first to feign themselves demoniacs and then to profess themselves dispossessed on approaching the counterfeit relics, they will be convinced in the particular case by very slight evidence, and will catch at any circumstances which may be taken as indications of what they think antecedently probable; but if they think such proceedings to be too blasphemous, too frightful, too provocative even of an immediate judgment, for any but the most callous hearts and the most reckless consciences to conceive and carry out, they would not believe even plausible evidence in their behalf. If it appears to them not unlikely that miracles continue in the Church, they will find that it is easier to admit than to reject what comes to them on such weighty testimony; but if they think miracles as improbable after a revelation is given, as they appeared to Hume before it, then they will judge with him that "a religionist may know his narration to be false, and yet persevere in it, with the best intentions in the world, for the sake of promoting so holy a cause; or even where this delusion has no place, vanity, excited by so strong a temptation, operates on him more powerfully than on the rest of mankind in any other circumstances, and self-interest with equal force." [n. 3 ]

 210. There are circumstances, however, in this miracle, which may be felt as difficulties by those who neither deny the continuance of a Divine Presence in the Church, nor accuse her Pastors and Teachers of impious imposture. Yet it is difficult to treat of them, without entering upon doctrinal questions which are not in place in the present Essay. One or two of them, which extend to the case of other alleged miracles of the early Church, besides the one immediately before us, shall here be briefly considered, and that in the light which the analogy or the pattern of Scripture throws upon them, which is the main view I have taken of objections all along.

 211. Now, first it may be urged that the discovery of the blood of the Martyrs is not after the precedent of anything we meet with in Scripture, which says very little of relics, and nothing of relics of such a character as this, involving as it does a miracle. What is the true doctrine about relics, how they are to be regarded, what is their use and their abuse, is no question before us. If it could be shown that the doctrine involved in the discovery of the Martyrs, is on Scriptural grounds such as plainly to prove either that it did not take place, or that it cannot be referred to Divine Agency, this of course would supersede all other considerations. Meanwhile I will but observe, as far as the silence of Scripture is concerned, that Scripture could not afford a pattern of the alleged miracle, from the nature of the case. The resurrection of the body is only a Christian dogma; and martyrdom, that is, dying for a creed, is a peculiarity of the Gospel, and was instanced among the Jews, only in proportion as the Gospel was anticipated. The blood was the relic of those whose bodies had been the temple of the Spirit, and who were believed to be in the presence of Christ. Miracles were not to be expected by such instruments, till Christ came; nor afterwards, till a sufficient time had elapsed for Saints to be matured and offered up, and for pious offices and assiduous attentions to be paid by others towards the tabernacles which they left behind them. Precedents then to our purpose, whether in Old or in New Testament, are as little to be expected, as precedents to guide us in determining the relations of the Church to the State, or the question of infant baptism, or the duty of having buildings for worship. Time alone could determine what the Divine purpose was concerning the earthly shrines in which a Divine Presence had dwelt: whether, as in the case of Moses and Elijah, they were to be withdrawn from the Church, or, as in the case of Elisha, to fulfil some purpose, even though the soul had departed; and if the latter, whether their bones were to be employed, or whether their bodies would be preserved incorrupt, as St. Jerome reports of Hilarion, or whether the Levitical sacrifices, which as types were once for all fulfilled when our Lord's blood was shed, were nevertheless to furnish part of the analogy existing between the Christian and the Mosaic Dispensations. Nor is there anything that ought to shock us in the idea that blood, which had become coagulate, should miraculously be made to flow. A very remarkable prototype of such an event seems to be granted to us in Scripture, in our Lord's own history. The last act of His humiliation was, after His death, to be pierced in His side, when blood and water issued from it. A stream of blood from a corpse can hardly be considered to be other than supernatural. And it so happens that St. Ambrose is the writer to remark upon this solemn occurrence in his comment on St. Luke, assigning at the same time its typical meaning. "Blood," he says, "undoubtedly congeals after death in our bodies; but in that Body, though incorrupt, yet dead, the life of all welled forth. There issued water and blood; water to wash, blood to redeem. Let us drink then what is our price, that by drinking we may be redeemed." [n. 4 ]

 212. Another objection which has been made to the miracles ascribed by St. Ambrose to the relics which he discovered, is the encouragement which they are supposed to give to a kind of creature-worship, unknown to Scripture. This is strongly urged by the objector whom I just now had occasion to notice. He observes that miracles can be of no avail against the great principles of religious truth, such as the Being and Attributes of Almighty God; that no miracles can sanction and justify idolatry; if then the Nicene Miracles (so he calls them), "when regarded in the calmest and most comprehensive manner," "have constantly operated to debauch the religious sentiments of mankind, if they have confirmed idolatrous practices, if they have enhanced that infatuation which has hurried men into the degrading worship of subordinate divinities, we then boldly say that, whether natural or preternatural, such miracles are not from God, but from 'the enemy.' [n. 5 ] "Do you choose," he continues, "to affirm the supernatural reality of the Nicene Miracles? you then mark the Nicene Church as the slave and agent of the Father of Lies;" and then he proceeds to quote the charge of Moses to his people: "If there arise among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spoke unto thee, saying, 'Let us go after other gods which thou hast not known, and let us serve them,' thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the Lord your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul."

 213. But the objection, which of course demands a careful consideration, admits of being met, perhaps of being overcome, by reference to an analogy contained in the Old Testament, to which the appeal is made. It is well known that the Divine revelations concerning Angels received a great development in the course of the Jewish Dispensation. When the people had lately come out of Egypt, with all the forms of idolatry familiar to their imaginations, and impressed upon their hearts, it did not seem safe, if we may dare to trace the Divine dealings in this matter, to do much more than to set before them the great doctrine of the Unity and Sovereignty of God. To have disclosed to them truths concerning angelic natures, except in the strictest subserviency to this fundamental Verity, might have been the occasion of their withdrawing their heart from Him who claimed it whole and undivided [n. 6 ]. Hence, though St. Stephen tells us that they "received the Law by the disposition of Angels," and St. Paul that "it was ordained by Angels," in the Old Testament we do but read of "the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud," and its "waxing louder and louder," and "Moses speaking, and God answering him by a voice," and of "the Lord talking with them face to face in the mount." In like manner, when Angels appeared, it was for the most part in the shape of men; or if their heavenly nature was disclosed, still they are called "wind" or "flame," or represented as a glory of the Lord, and so intimately and mysteriously connected with His Presence that it was impossible that God should be forgotten, and a creature worshipped. Thus it is said of the Angel who went before the Israelites, "Obey his voice, for My Name is in him ;" and it was the belief of the early Church that the Second Person of the Holy Trinity did really condescend to manifest Himself in such angelic natures. Again, the title of "the Lord of hosts" does not occur till the times of Samuel, who uses it when he sends Saul against the Amalekites, whereas it is the ordinary designation of Almighty God in the Prophets who lived after the captivity [n. 7 ]. And so again, in the Book of Daniel, Angels are made the ordinary instruments of Divine illumination to the Prophet, and are represented as the guardians of the kingdoms of the world, and that without any mention of the Divine Presence at all, which, on the contrary, had been awfully signified in the vision of Isaiah, when the Seraph touched his lips.

 214. Still more striking is the difference of language in different parts of the inspired volume as to the doctrine of an Evil Spirit, whom even to name might have been to create a rival to the All-Holy Creator in carnal minds which had just left the house of spiritual as well as temporal bondage. The contrast between the earlier and later books of the Old Testament in this point has often been observed. Satan is described in the Book of Job and in Micaiah's vision as appearing before God, and acting under his direction. Again, while in the Second Book of Samuel we are merely told that "the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and He moved David against them to say, Go number Israel and Judah;" in the First Book of Chronicles we read that "Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel."

 215. Yet, in spite of this merciful provision on the part of Almighty God, it would appear that the revelation of Angels, when made, did lead many of the Jews into an idolatrous dependence upon them. It is the very remark of Theodoret upon St. Paul's mention of Angel-worship in his Epistle to the Colossians, that "the advocates of the Law induced men to worship Angels, because the Law was given by them, and for humility-sake, and because the God of all is invisible and inaccessible and incomprehensible, so that it was fitting to procure the Divine favour through the Angels." [n. 8 ] The Essenes, too, are said to have paid to the Angels an excessive honour, and several of the early heresies, which did the same, sprang from the Jews. What place afterwards the invocation of Angels for magical purposes held in the practical Cabbala, as Brucker calls it, is well known.

 216. Such is the history of the revelation of the doctrine of Angels among the Jews; and it is scarcely necessary to draw out at length its correspondence with the history of the introduction and abuse of several of the tenets and usages which characterize the Christian Church. In its origin, the Jewish as well as the Pagan institutions with which the Apostles were surrounded, suggested to them a cautious economy in the mode in which they set Divine truth before their disciples, lest a resemblance of external rites and offices, or of phraseology, between Christianity and the prevailing religions, should be the means of introducing into their minds views less holy and divine than those which they were inspired to reveal. It is on this supposition that some English divines even account for the omission in the New Testament of the words "priest," "sacrifice," and the like, in their plain Christian sense; as if the Jewish associations which attached to them would not cease till the Jewish worship had come to an end. The remark may obviously be extended to the miracle under review, so far as no parallel is found for it in the New Testament. As the doctrine of priesthood might be almost necessarily Judaic in the minds of the Jewish converts, so that of piety towards Saints and Martyrs was in the minds of Pagans necessarily idolatrous; and it may be for this, as well as other reasons, that so little explicit mention is made in the New Testament of the honours due to Saints, as also of the Christian Priesthood, after the pattern of that silence, which has been above noticed, about the offices of good Angels and about the Author of Evil in the earlier books of the Old; and it may be as rash to say that a miracle was not from God because it was wrought by a Martyr's relics, or because such relics have, in other instances been idolatrously regarded, as to say that the Prophet Daniel was not divinely inspired, because we hear nothing of Michael or Gabriel in the Books of Moses, or because the names of those Angels were afterwards superstitiously used in the charms of the Cabbalists. The holy Daniel's profound obeisance and prostrations before the Angel are a greater innovation, if it must so be called, on the simplicity of the Mosaic ritual, than the treasuring the blood of the Martyrs upon the ecclesiastical observances of the Apostles; and as no one would say that Daniel's conduct incurred the condemnation pronounced by Moses on those who introduced the worship of other gods, so much less was the reverence paid by St. Ambrose and other Saints to the relics of the Martyrs inconsistent with precepts which in their direct force belong to an earlier Dispensation.

 217. There is a third difficulty, which may be raised upon the passage of history before us, not arising, however, out of the miracle, but out of the circumstances under which it took place. It may be represented as giving a sanction to a subject's playing the part of a demagogue, and heading a mob (as we may speak) against his lawful sovereign. The crowds which attended Ambrose, whether in the church which the Empress had seized, or on occasion of the translation of the relics, would have been dispersed at this day among ourselves by the officers of the peace; and with our present notions of law and of municipal and national order, not to say of the subserviency of the Church to the State, and our interpretations of the Scripture precepts concerning civil obedience, there is something strange and painful to us in the sight of a Christian Bishop placed in opposition to the powers that be. But it must be recollected, according to a former remark, that everything that happens has two aspects; and the outside or political aspect is often the reverse of its inward or true meaning. We are used to put together the particulars which meet our eye, to parallel them with other transactions which bear a similar appearance, to suggest for them such motives of action as our own principles or disposition suggests, and thus to form what seems to us a philosophical view of the whole case. And if our own habitual feelings and opinions, and the parallels to which we betake ourselves, are not of a very exalted nature, as may easily happen, while the subject contemplated, be it a person, or an act, or a work, is of such a nature, then we produce a theory as shallow, and as far from the truth, as a naturalist, who, judging of men by their anatomical peculiarities, should rank them among the brute creation. Every day brings evidence in great things or little, how incapable the run of men are of doing justice to minds of even ordinary refinement and sincerity, and how, rather than ascribe to them the honesty and purity of purpose which is the most natural and straightforward account of their actions, they will even go out of their way, and distort facts, thereby to be at liberty to impute petty motives; and much more will they catch at any circumstances which admit of being plausibly perverted into an evidence of such motives. Indeed, of such continual occurrence are instances of this sort, that in tales of fiction nothing is more commonly taken as a plot of the story than the troubles in which an innocent person is involved by an ingenious but perverse selection and collocation of his actions or of circumstances connected with him, to the detriment of his character.

 218. As to the case immediately before us, it is enough to observe that an imputation of disloyalty, if preferred against St. Ambrose, is only what the notorious Paine, I believe, throws out against the Jewish Prophets; and it is obvious what plausible materials are afforded by the history of Elijah and Elisha, in the hands of irreligious persons, for such a charge. Nor is it to be doubted that a secular historian, who heard the Prophet Jeremiah's public declaration on Nebuchadnezzar's invasion, "He that abideth in this city shall die, but he that goeth out, and falleth to the Chaldeans, shall live," would have decided that he was in the pay of the King of Babylon, and justified the Jews in their treatment of him. It must be recollected, too, that one charge against our Lord was that He "stirred up the people." We indeed have learned from the Gospel that He withdrew Himself from the multitude "when He perceived that they would come and take Him by force to make Him a king;" but a secular historian either would not know the fact, or might not believe the sincerity of His withdrawal, if He did. A more exact instance in point is afforded us in the history of St. John Baptist. No man surely has less of a political character upon him than this holy ascetic, as described in the Gospel; but it seems, according to Josephus, that Herod was of another mind, and the view he took of him as a popular leader is so curious that I will quote the words of a recent writer on the subject. "Herod," says Mr. Milman, "having formed an incestuous connection with the wife of his brother Herod Philip, his Arabian queen indignantly fled to her father, who took up arms to revenge her wrongs against her guilty husband. How far Herod could depend in this contest on the loyalty of his subjects was extremely doubtful. It is possible he might entertain hopes that the repudiation of a foreign alliance, ever hateful to the Jews, and the union with a branch of the Asmonean line (for Herodias was the daughter of Herod the Great by Mariamne), might counterbalance in the popular estimation the injustice and criminality of his marriage with his brother's wife. The influence of John, according to Josephus, was almost unlimited . The subjects, and even the soldiery, of the tetrarch crowded with devout submission around the Prophet. On his decision might depend the wavering loyalty of the whole province. But John denounced with open indignation the royal incest, and declared the marriage with a brother's wife to be a flagrant violation of the law. Herod, before long, ordered him to be seized and imprisoned in the strong fortress of Machærus, on the remote border of his trans-Jordanic territory." [n. 9 ]

 219. Such was the light thrown upon the Holy Baptist by the secular events in which he was encompassed, in the opinion of one who nevertheless, as we know, "feared him, knowing he was a just man." And as St. John seemed to be a demagogue and a mere organ of the popular voice, yet spoke from heaven, so in like manner it need not take from the sanctity of St. Ambrose, or the truth of his cause, that the people sided with him, even tumultuously, and the Imperial Court accused him of insubordination.

Notes

 1. Pages 28, 52.

 2. This has been dwelt on at length, supr. n. 71 to n. 80. Gibbon gives us a curious illustration of it in his remark on the miracle of the Confessors, which is presently to be related. He says: "This supernatural gift of the African Confessors, who spoke without tongues, will command the assent of those, and of those only, who already believe that their language was pure and orthodox. But the stubborn mind of the infidel is guarded by secret incurable suspicion ; and the Arian or Socinian, who has seriously rejected the doctrine of the Trinity, will not be shaken by the most plausible evidence of an Athanasian miracle." Ch. xxxvii.

 3. Essay on Miracles.

 4. In Luc. lib. x. § 135. Eutheymius Zigab. says of the same in loc. Joan. Theophylact. in loc. says that in order to place the miracle beyond doubt the water issued also. That the flowing of the blood was miraculous would appear from the description St. John gives of it, " forthwith came there out ;" which implies a stream, and not a few drops. Calov. in Joan. xix. 35. Nor is there any reason to suppose that the water came forth by drops; yet the words just quoted are common to the blood and to the water. Again, the water was miraculous (for "medical men tell us that the fluid of the pericardium is yellow in colour, bitter in taste, and therefore different from what we mean by water," S. Basnag. Ann. 33. § 126; and the wound was most probably on the right side, as St. Augustine and the most ancient pictures and coins represent it, and the Arabic or Ethiopic version, vid. Greta. de Cruc. t. 1. i. 35. Lamp. in loc. Joan.), and therefore there is no reason for a strained interpretation only to escape believing that the blood was miraculous. Further, St. John's solemn asseverations, "He who saw it bare record," etc., which seems to intimate something miraculous, applies to the blood as well as the water. And moreover, in 1 John v. 6, the blood is insisted on even more than the water; "not by water only," etc. Another parallel to this miracle is to be found in the reported instances of blood flowing from a corpse at the approach of the murderer; vid. an instance introduced into a Scotch court as late as 1688, in the notes to the Waverley Novels, vol. xliii. p. 127. It is scarcely necessary to say that, whatever truth there may be in any such stories, or in certain others of which the blood of Martyrs is the subject, they are so encompassed by fictions and superstitions, that it seems hopeless at this day to trace the Divine Agency, as and when It really wrought, though we may believe in Its presence generally.

 5. Anc. Christ. Part vii. p. 361.

 6. [Eusebius says this, contrasting Genesis with Daniel, Eccl. Theol. ii. p. 20, and vid. Suicer de Symb. Nic. pp. 89-91.]

 7. Vid. e.g. Hagg. ii. 4-9; Zech. viii.

 8. In Col. ii. 18. Vid. also the passage from the Prædic. Petr. in Clem. Strom. vi. 5. and Origen, in Joann. tom. xiii. 17; also contr. Cels. v. 6, etc., Hieron. ad. Algas. Ep. 121. § 10: vid. references to Rabbinical and other writings, Calmet. Dissert. 2. in Luc.

 9. Hist. Christ. Vol. i. p. 176.