Re: Spammed by Fax?? !! Read inside
Nick
Miracles have such influence that it was necessary that God should warn men
not to believe in them in opposition to Him, all clear as it is that there
is a God. Without this they would have been able to disturb men.
And thus so far from these passages, Deut. 13, making against the authority
of the miracles, nothing more indicates their influence. And the same in
respect of Antichrist. "To seduce, if it were possible, even the elect."
851. The history of the man born blind.
What says Saint Paul? Does he continually speak of the evidence of the
prophecies? No, but of his own miracle. What says Jesus Christ? Does He
speak of the evidence of the prophecies? No; His death had not fulfilled
them. But he says, Si non fecissem.213 Believe the works.
Two supernatural foundations of our wholly supernatural religion; one
visible, the other invisible; miracles with grace, miracles without grace.
The synagogue, which had been treated with love as a type of the Church, and
with hatred, because it was only the type, has been restored, being on the
point of falling when it was well with God, and thus a type.
Miracles prove the power which God has over hearts, by that which He
exercises over bodies.
The Church has never approved a miracle amon
Nick
apposite and proper to their circumstances. By these means, their
darkness is scattered; and often, before the bestowment of any new
remarkable comfort, especially after longcontinued deadness and ill
frames, there are renewed humblings, in a great sense of their own
exceeding vileness and unworthiness, as before their first comforts were
bestowed.
Many in the country have entertained a mean thought of this great work,
from what they have heard of impressions made on persons' imaginations.
But there have been exceeding great misrepresentations, and innumerable
false reports, concerning that matter. It is not, that I know of, the
profession or opinion of any one person in the town, that any weight is
to be laid on any thing seen with the bodily eyes. I know the contrary
to be a received and established principle amongst us. I cannot say that
there have been no instances of persons who have been ready to give too
much heed to vain and useless imaginations; but they have been easily
corrected, and I conclude it will not be wondered at, that a
congregation should need a guide in such cases, to assist them in
distinguishing wheat from chaff. But such impressions on the
imaginations as have been more usual seem to me to be plainly no other
than what is to be expected in human nature in such circumstance