CHAP. XV.
with the genuine inspirations of heaven. The adoption
of* fraud and sophistry in the defence of revelation, too
often reminds us of the injudicious conduct of those
poets who load their invulnerable heroes with a useless
weight of cumbersome and brittle armour,
and of miracles.
But how shall we excuse the supine inattention of
the pagan and philosophic world, to those evidences
which were presented by the hand of Omnipotence,
not to their reason, but to their senses? During the
age of Christ, of his apostles, and of their first disciples, the doctrine which they preached was confirmed
by innumerable prodigies. The lame walked, the blind
saw, the sick were healed, the dead were raised, demons were expelled, and the laws of nature were frequently suspended for the benefit of the church. But
the sages of Greece and Rome turned aside from the
awful spectacle, and pursuing the ordinary occupations
of life and study, appeared unconscious of any alterations in the moral or physical government of the world.
General silence concerning the darkness of the passion.
Under the reign of Tiberius, the whole earth[1], or at
least a celebrated province of the Roman empire[2], was
involved in a preternatural darkness of three hours.
Even this miraculous event, which ought to have excited the wonder, the curiosity, and the devotion of
mankind, passed without notice in an age of science
and history[3]. It happened during the lifetime of Seneca and the elder Pliny, who must have experienced
the immediate effects, or received the earliest intelli-
- ↑ The fathers, as they are drawn out in battle array by Dom Calmet (Dissertations sur la Bible, tom. iii. p. 295—308.) seem to cover the whole earth with darkness, in which they are followed by most of the moderns.
- ↑ Origen ad Matth. c. 27. and a few modern critics, Beza, Le Clerc, Lardner, etc. are desirous of confining it to the land of Judea.
- ↑ The celebrated passage of Phlegon is now wisely abandoned. When Tertullian assures the pagans, that the mention of the prodigy is found in Arcanis (not Archivis) vestris, (see his Apology, c. 21.) he probably appeals to the sibylline verses, which relate it exactly in the words of the gospel.
sibyls, would easily have detected the Jewish and christian forgeries, which have been so triumphantly quoted by the fathers from Justin Martyr to Lactantius. When the sibylline verses had performed their appointed task, they, like the system of the millennium, were quietly laid aside. The christian sibyl had unluckily fixed the ruin of Rome for the year 195, A.U.C. 948.
