200 KEV. H. C. M, WATSON 



ii. Objection. That a miracle is incredible. 

 Preliminary form of this objection :^ 



That testimony is reliable only on the assumption that the laws of 

 nature are uniform. 



Fallacy of this objection shown. Illustrated by — Mendon says that 

 all Cretans are liars, &c. 



1. Hume's first objection : — 



That testimony cannot reach to the supernatural. 

 If the objection only means that testimony cannot reach to the cause, 



it is true. 

 But testimony can depose to phenomena. That the cause of the 



phenomena is supernatural is an inference which we irresistibly 



draw. 



2. Hume's second objection : — 



That the falsehood of testimony is more probable than a mira- 

 culous occurrence. 

 The fallacy pointed out (Whately), and the force of the objection 



exhibited. 

 Stated by Paley to be a contest of improbabilities. 

 Miracles in relation to testimony may be better stated as a case of 

 diverse, but not contradictory, testimony. 

 The Jaivs of nature known by testimony. 

 Miracles known by testimony. 

 Argumentatively, therefore, miracles are shown to fall within the 

 .'^cope of testimony. 

 B. The difficulty in accepting testimony to miracles arises from our inability 

 to conceive that the laws of nature have ever been unlike what they 

 now are. 



It is a fact, however, that they were not always what they now are : 

 At the beginning of the world (Butler). 



At the emergence of man upon the earth, whether by creation 

 or evolution. 

 Paley's summing up, " If twelve men," &c. 



TESTIMONY is a fact whose usual and natural explanation 

 is found in the existence of another fact to which it 

 deposes, and of which it is the appropriate and sufficient 

 proof. It is admitted that testimony cannot prove the 

 existence of facts which are mutually, or self, contradictory. 

 It cannot, for example, prove that two and two make 

 five. That two marbles added to two marbles make five 

 marbles is rightly regarded as impossible; and while our 

 intellectual faculties remain as they are, no testimony, 

 however competent, if such were forthcoming, would induce 

 any person who understood the meaning of the terms, to 

 believe the proposition affirming it. Even if we saw with 

 our own eyes that the addition of two objects to two 



