336 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY ix 



mere darkenings of counsel of this sort ; but to 

 those Anglicans who accept his premises, Dr, 

 Newman is a truly formidable antagonist. What, 

 indeed, are they to reply when he puts the very 

 pertinent question : 



whether persons who not merely question, but prejudge the 

 Ecclesiastical miracles on the ground of their want of resem- 

 blance, whatever that be, to those contained in Scripture as 

 if the Almighty could not do in the Christian Church what He 

 had not already done at the time of its foundation, or under the 

 Mosaic Covenant whether such reasoners are not siding with 

 the sceptic, 



and 



whether it is not a happy inconsistency by which they con- 

 tinue to believe the Scriptures while they reject the Church 1 

 (P. liii). 



Again, I invite Anglican orthodoxy to consider this 

 passage : 



the narrative of the combats of St. Antony with evil spirits, is a 

 development rather than a contradiction of revelation, viz. of 

 such texts as speak of Satan being cast out by prayer and 

 fasting. To be shocked, then, at the miracles of Ecclesiastical 

 history, or to ridicule them for their strangeness, is no part of a 

 scriptural philosophy (pp. liii-liv). 



Further on, Dr. Newman declares that it has 

 been admitted 



that a distinct line can be drawn in point of character and cir- 

 cumstance between the miracles of Scripture and of Church 



1 Compare Tract 85, p. 110 ; " I am persuaded that were men 

 but consistent who oppose the Church doctrines as being 

 unscriptural, they would vindicate the Jews for rejecting the 

 Gospel. " 



