238 
at all, but perfectly explainable by natural causes. Moreover, 
the mediaeval miracles are for the most part silly, unmeaning, 
and childish, and they are often recorded by writers who lived 
long after they are said to have occurred, who breathed an 
atmosphere of credulity and were utterly destitute of the critical 
faculty. Such considerations are quite sufficient to justify our 
unbelief. If it is objected that intelligent Rorn^ii Catholics 
believe them, we answer that they are the disciples of a system 
which forbids the right of private judgment on questions deter- 
mined by the authority of the Church ; and we may well think 
it easy for men who believe in the doctrines of the Immaculate 
Conception and the Infallibility of the Pope, to believe also in 
the winking of an image of the Virgin, the liquefaction of the 
blood of St. Januarius, and the transportation through the air 
of a house of the Virgin from Palestine to Loretto. Thus we 
find a man of the intelligence of Dr. Newman saying: “ Cruci- 
fixes have bowed the head to the suppliant, and Madonnas have 
bent their eyes on assembled crowds. St. Januarius's blood 
liquefies periodically at Naples, and St. Winifred's well is the 
source of wonders even in an unbelieving country St. 
Francis Xavier turned salt water into fresh for five hundred 
travellers; St. Raymond was transported over the sea on his 
cloak; St. Andrew shone brightly in the dark ..... I need 
not continue the catalogue. It is agreed on both sides ; the 
two parties join issue over a fact — that fact is the claim of 
miracles on the part of the Catholic Church. It is the Protes- 
tant's charge, and it is our glory." 
I may here in passing allude to the monstrous theory ot 
Strauss that the simple narratives in the four Gospels are mere 
myths, which grew out of a body of belief which, somehow or 
other, had taken possession of men's minds in the second 
century of our era, and are no more real than the legends of 
Theseus and Hercules. Our common sense revolts against such 
an absurdity, and if Strauss himself really believed it, it only 
shows that no credulity can be greater or more childish than 
the credulity of an infidel. 
Why do *we believe Thucydides and disbelieve Livy ? I 
shall speak of both of these writers more fully hereafter, but 
here I mav say that we believe Thucydides because he was a 
contemporary of the events which he relates; he was himself 
an actor in some of them : he had access to authentic informa- 
tion, both oral and monumental, and we have no reason to 
distrust his veracity. Of course 1 do not include the long 
speeches he puts into the mouths of the characters he introduces, 
for they are obviously manufactured, or, at all events, dressed 
up for the occasion, according to a practice very common in 
