CHAPTER II.

PRESUMPTIONS AGAINST A REVELATION, CONSIDERED AS MIRACULOUS.

Having shown the need of revelation, we now examine the presumptions against it.

The analogy of nature is generally supposed to afford presumptions against miracles.

They are deemed to require stronger evidence than other events.

I. _Analogy furnishes no presumptions against the general scheme of Christianity._

=1.= It is no presumption against Christianity, that it is not the discovery of reason, or of experience.

=2.= Nor is it a presumption against Christianity, that it contains things _unlike_ the apparent course of nature.

1.) We cannot suppose every thing, in the vast universe, to be just like what is the course of nature in this little world.

2.) Even within the present compass of our knowledge, we see many things greatly unlike.

=3.= If we choose to call what is unlike our known course of things, _miraculous_, still that does not make it _improbable_.

II. _There is no presumption against such a revelation, as we should now call miraculous, being made, at the beginning of the world._

=1.= There was then _no_ course of nature, as to this world.

=2.= Whether man _then_ received a revelation involves a question not of miracles, but of _fact_.

=3.= Creation was a very different exertion of power from that which _rules_ the world, now it _is_ made.

=4.= Whether the power of forming _stopped_ when man was made; or went on, and formed a religion for him, is merely a question as to the _degree_ or _extent_, to which a power was exerted.

=5.= There is then no presumption from analogy against supposing man had a revelation when created.

=6.= All tradition and history teaches that he had, which amounts to a real and material proof.

III. _There is no presumption against miracles, or a miraculous revelation, after the course of nature was settled._

=1.= Such a presumption, requires the adduction of some _parallel_ case.

=2.= This would require us to know the history of some other world.

=3.= Even then, if drawn from only one other world, the presumption would be very precarious.

_To be more particular_,

=1.= There is a strong presumption against any truth till it is proved--which yet is overcome by almost any proof.

--Hence the question of a presumption against miracles, involves only the _degree_ of presumption, (not whether the presumption is _peculiar_ to miracles,) and whether that degree is such as to render them incredible.

=2.= If we _leave out religion_, we are in total darkness as to the cause or circumstances on which the course of nature depends.

--Five or six thousand years may have given occasion and reasons for miraculous interpositions of Providence.

=3.= _Taking in religion_, there are distinct reasons for miracles; to afford additional instruction; to attest the truth of instruction.

=4.= Miracles must not be compared with common events, but with uncommon; earthquakes, pestilence, &c.

CONCLUSION.

1. There are no analogies to render miracles incredible.

2. On the contrary, we see good reasons for them.

3. There are no presumptions against them, _peculiar_ to them, as distinguished from other unusual phenomena.