143 FOOTNOTES FROM 



In connexion with the present subject, it may be inter- 

 esting to glance over the several examples of blood pro- 

 digies which history furnishes. The almost unanimous 

 judgment of modern times has stamped these examples 

 as pure fables ; but I think it is easy to account 

 for the presence in them of so much that seems in- 

 credible, and to show how that into which the apparently 

 fabulous enters in so large a proportion, can yet be 

 received in the main as true history. Our present in- 

 vestigations will go far to evince that the great bulk of 

 what ancient writers hand down to us as prodigies and 

 miracles, is capable of explanation on grounds intelligible 

 to any ordinary understanding : and thus that history, 

 so far as these things are concerned, may be true in its 

 narrative of facts, though it be often in error in the 

 view it takes of the nature of the facts narrated. That 

 rivers have run blood, that skies have rained blood, that 

 the very bread in men's houses has been sprinkled with 

 blood, and thus ministered death instead of nourish- 

 ment to those who have eaten it, and that consecrated 

 wafers and priestly vestments have repeatedly exhi- 

 bited these horrible appearances, that all these won- 

 derful things have really happened, we have every 

 reason to believe, from the circumstantial accounts of 

 them given in records purporting to be authentic, 

 received as such by the age that produced them, and 

 preserved and handed down as such to our own times. 

 We believe the facts ; but we do not believe the ex- 

 planation given of them, or the inferences deduced from 

 them ; our superior scientific knowledge enabling us to 

 account, on natural grounds, for what, in an age of 



