Hugo Grotius · 57 of 132

SECT. VII. The credibility of these writers further confirmed, from their being famous for miracles.

BUT, on the contrary, God himself gave remarkable testimonies to the sincerity of them, by working miracles, which they themselves and their disciples publicly avouched, with the highest assurance; adding the names of the persons and places, and other circumstances; the truth or falsity of which assertion might easily have been discovered by the magistrate’s inquiry; amongst which miracles, this is worthy observation, which they constantly affirmed, viz. their speaking languages they had never learned, before many thousand people, and healing in a moment bodies that were diseased, in the sight of the multitude; nor were they at all afraid, though they knew at that time that the Jewish magistrates were violently set against them, and the Roman magistrates very partial, who would not overlook any thing that afforded matter of traducing them as criminals, and authors of a new religion: nor did any of the Jews or heathens, in those nearest times, dare to deny that miracles were done by these men: nay, Phlegon, who was a slave of the emperor Adrian, mentions the miracles of Peter in his annals: and the Christians themselves, in those books wherein they give an account of the grounds of their faith, before the emperors, senate, and rulers, speak of these facts as things known to every body, and about which there could he no doubt: moreover, they openly declared, that the wonderful power of them remained in their graves for some ages; when they could not but know, if it were false, that they could easily be disproved by the magistrates, to their shame and punishment. And these miracles (now mentioned) at their sepulchres were so common, and had so many witnesses, that they forced Porphyry to confess the truth of them. These things which we have now alleged ought to satisfy us; but there are abundance more of arguments, which recommend to us the credibility of these books:—