4. A FACT is properly called “improbable,” only when it has some quality or circumstance attached to it which operates to the disadvantage of evidence adduced in its behalf. We can scarcely avoid forming an opinion for or against any statement which meets us; we feel well-disposed towards some accounts or reports, averse from others, sometimes on no reason whatever beyond our accidental frame of mind at the moment, sometimes because the facts averred flatter or thwart our wishes, coincide or interfere with the view of things familiar to us, please or startle our imagination, or on other grounds equally vague and untrustworthy. Such anticipations about facts are as little blameable as the fancies which spontaneously rise in the mind about a person’s stature and appearance before seeing him; and, like such fancies, they are dissipated at once when the real state of the case is in any way ascertained. They are simply notional; and form no presumption in reason, for or against the facts, or the evidence of the facts, to which they relate.
5. An antecedent improbability, then, in certain facts, to be really such, must avail to prejudice the evidence which is offered in their behalf, and must be of a nature to diminish or destroy its force. Thus it is improbable, in the highest degree, that our friend should have done an act of fraud or injustice; and improbable again, but in a slight degree, that our next-door neighbour should have been highly promoted, or that he should have died suddenly. We do not acquiesce in any evidence whatever that comes to hand even for the latter occurrence, and in none but the very best for the former. Again, there is a general improbability attaching to the notion that the members of certain sects or of certain political parties should commit themselves to this or that cast of opinions, or line of conduct; and, on the other hand, though there is no general improbability that individuals of the poorest class should make large fortunes, yet a strong probability may lie against certain given persons of that class in particular.
6. Now it may be asserted that there is no presumption whatever against miracles generally in the ages after the Apostles, though there may be and is a certain antecedent improbability in this or that particular miracle.
There is no presumption against Ecclesiastical Miracles generally, because inspiration has stood the brunt of any such antecedent objection, whatever it be worth, by its own supernatural histories, and in establishing their certainty in fact, has disproved their impossibility in the abstract. If miracles are antecedently improbable, it is either from want of a cause to which they may be referred, or of experience of similar events in other times and places. What neither has been before, nor can be attributed to an existing cause, is not to be expected, or is improbable. But Ecclesiastical Miracles are occurrences not without a parallel; for they follow upon Apostolic Miracles, and they are referable to the Author of the Apostolic as an All-sufficient Cause. Whatever be the regularity and stability of nature, interference with it can be, because it has been; there is One who both has power over His own work, and who before now has not been unwilling to exercise it. In this point of view, then, Ecclesiastical Miracles are more advantageously circumstanced than those of Scripture.
7. What has happened once, may happen again; the force of the presumption against Miracles lies in the opinion entertained of the inviolability of nature, to which the Creator seems to “have given a law which shall not be broken.” When once that law is shown to be but general, not necessary, and (if the word may be used) when its prestige is once destroyed, there is nothing to shock the imagination in a miraculous interference twice or thrice, as well as once. What never has yet happened is improbable in a sense quite distinct from that in which a thing is improbable which has before now happened; the improbability of the latter class of facts may be greater or less, it may be very great; but whatever the strength of the improbability, it is different in kind from the improbability attaching to such as admit of being called impossible by those who reject them.
8. It may be urged in reply, that the precedent of Scripture is no special recommendation of Ecclesiastical Miracles; for the abstract argument against miracles, as such, has little or no force, as soon as the mere doctrine of a Creator and Supreme Governor is admitted, and even prior to any reference to inspired history; that there is no question among religious men of the existence of a Cause adequate to the production of miracles anywhere or at any period; the question rather is whether He will work them; whether the Ecclesiastical Miracles themselves, being what and when they were, are probable, not whether there is a general presumption against them all simply as miracles; on the other hand, that while the Scripture Miracles avail little as a precedent for subsequent miracles, as miracles, for no precedent is wanted, they do actually tend to discredit them, as being subsequent, for from the nature of the case irregularities can be but rarely allowed in any system. It is at first sight not to be expected that the Author of nature should interrupt His own harmonious order at all, though He is powerful to do so; and therefore the fact of His having done so once makes it only less probable that He will do so again. Moreover, if any recurrence of miraculous action is to be anticipated, it is the recurrence of a similar action, not a manifestation of power, ever so different from it; whereas the miracles of the ages subsequent to the Apostles are on the whole so very unlike those of which we read in Scripture, in their object, circumstances, nature, and evidence, as even to be disproved by the very contrast. This is what may be objected.