made a new sermon, teaching all prelates and spiritual persons to descend from their eminency of contemplation, and the authority and business of their discourses, to apply themselves to do more material and corporal mercies to afflicted persons, and to preach by example as well as by their homilies. For he that teaches others well, and prac tises contrary, is like a fair candlestick bearing a goodly and bright taper, which sends forth light to all the house, but round about itself there is a shadow and circumstant darkness. The prelate should be the light consuming and spending itself to enlighten others, scattering his rays round about from the angles of contemplation and from the corners of practice, but himself always tending upwards, till at last he expires into the element of love and celestial fruition.

2. But the miracles which Jesus did were next to infinite; and every circumstance of action that passed from him, as it was intended for mercy, so also for doctrine; and the impotent or diseased persons were not more cured than we instructed. But because there was nothing in the actions but what was a pursuance of the doctrines delivered in his sermons, in the sermon we must look after our duty, and look upon his practice as a verification of his doctrine, and instrumental also to other purposes. Therefore, in general, if we consider his miracles, we shall see that he did design them to be a compendium of faith and charity. For he chose to instance his miracles in actions of mercy, that all his powers might especially determine upon bounty and charity;' and yet his acts of charity

Acts, x. 38.

were so miraculous that they became an argument of the divinity of his person and doctrine. Once he turned water into wine, which was a mutation by a supernatural power, in a natural suscipient, where a person was not the subject, but an element: and yet this was done to rescue the poor bridegroom from affront and trouble, and to do honour to the holy rite of marriage All the rest, (unless we except his walking upon the waters,) during his natural life, were actions of relief and mercy, according to the design of God, manifesting his power most chiefly in showing mercy.

3. The great design of miracles was to prove his mission from God, to convince the world of sin, to demonstrate his power of forgiving sins, to endear his precepts, and that his disciples might believe in him, and that believing they might have life through his name.' For he to whom God, by doing miracles, gave testimony from heaven, must needs be sent from God; and he who had received power to restore nature, and to create new organs, and to extract from incapacities, and from privations to reduce habits, was Lord of nature, and therefore of all the world; and thus could not but create great confidences in his disciples, that himself would verify those great promises upon which he established his law. But that the argument of miracles might be infallible, and not apt to be reproved, we may observe its eminency by divers circumstances of probability heightened up to the degree of moral demonstration.

4. First, The holy Jesus did miracles which no man (before him, or at that time) ever did." Moses

1 John, xx. 31; x. 38; v. 36. 2 John, xv. 24.

smote the rock and water gushed out; but he could not turn that water into wine. Moses cured no diseases by the empire of his will, or the word of his mouth; but Jesus healed all infirmities.' Elisha raised a dead child to life; but Jesus raised one who had been dead four days, and buried, and corrupted. Elias and Samuel, and all the prophets, and the succession of the high-priests, in both the temples, put all together, never did so many or so great miracles as Jesus did. He cured leperous persons by his touch. He restored sight to

the blind, who were such, not by any intervening accident hindering the act of the organ, but by nature; who were born blind, and whose eyes had not any natural possibility to receive sight; who could never see without creating of new eyes for them, or some integral part cooperating to vision; and therefore the miracle was wholly an effect of a divine power, for nature did not at all co-operate; or, that I may use the elegant expression of Dante, it was such

à cui natura

"Non scaldo ferro mai, ne batte ancude,"

for which nature never did heat the iron, nor beat the anvil. He made crooked limbs become straight, and the lame to walk; and habitual diseases and inveterate, of eighteen years,' continuance, (and one of thirty-eight,) did disappear at his speaking, like darkness at the presence of the sun. He cast out devils, who by the majesty of his person were forced to confess and worship him; and yet by his humility and restraints were commanded silence, or to go whither he pleased: and without his leave all the powers of hell were as infirm and impotent

as a withered member, and were not able to stir. He raised three dead persons to life: he fed thousands of people with two small fishes and five little barley-cakes and as a consummation of all power and all miracles, he foretold, and verified it, that himself would rise from the dead after three days' sepulture. But when himself had told them he did miracles which no man else ever did, they were not able to reprove his saying with one single instance; but the poor blind man found him out one instance to verify his assertion: 'It was yet never heard, that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind.'

5. Secondly, The scene of his preaching and miracles was Judea, which was the pale of the church, and God's inclosed portion, 'of whom were the oracles and the fathers, and of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ was to come,' and to whom he was promised. Now, since these miracles were for verification of his being the Christ, the promised Messias, they were then to be esteemed a convincing argument, when all things else concurring, as the predictions of the prophets, the synchronisms, and the capacity of his person, he brought miracles to attest himself to be the person so declared and signified. God would not suffer his people to be abused by miracles, nor from heaven would speak so loud in testimony of any thing contrary to his own will and purposes. They to whom he gave the oracles, and the law, and the predictions of the Messias, and declared beforehand, that at the 'coming of the Messias the blind should see, the lame should walk, and the deaf should hear, the lepers should be cleansed, and to

the poor the gospel should be preached," could not expect a greater conviction for acceptation of a person, than when that happened which God himself by his prophets had consigned as his future testimony; and if there could have been deception in this, it must needs have been culpable in the deceived person, to whose error a divine prophecy had been both nurse and parent. So that taking the miracles Jesus did in that conjunction of circumstances, done to that people to whom all their oracles were transmitted by miraculous verifications, miracles so many, so great, so accidentally, and yet so regularly, to all comers and necessitous persons that prayed for it, after such predictions and clearest prophecies, and these prophecies owned by himself, and sent by way of symbol and mysterious answer to John the Baptist, to whom he described his office by recounting his miracles in the words of the prediction; there cannot be any fallibility or weakness pretended to this instrument of probation, applied in such circumstances to such a people, who, being dear to God, would be preserved from invincible deceptions; and being commanded by him to expect the Messias in such an equipage of power and demonstration of miracles, were therefore not deceived, nor could they, because they were bound to accept it.

6. Thirdly, So that now we must not look upon these miracles as an argument primarily intended to convince the Gentiles, but the Jews. It was a high probability to them also, and so it was designed also in a secondary intention: but it could

Isaiah, xxxv. 4, 5, 6; Matth. xi. 5.