human
--a simple and straightforward way of putting a conception which Cudworth had put circuitously and less courageously a few years before. No Scriptural miracle is challenged qua event.
gpt
Among the many miracles related to be done in favour of the Israelites, says the writer,
human
; [422] and he calmly accepts the Biblical account of the first rainbow, explaining it as passing for a miracle merely because it was the first. He takes his motto from Pliny:
gpt
Quid non miraculo est, cum primum in notitiam venit? [423] This is, however, a preliminary strategy; as is the opening reminder that
human
hold that the Scriptures as regards natural things do not design to instruct men in physics but
gpt
Many Scriptural narratives, therefore,
human
gpt
Wherefore we here absolutely conclude that all the events that are truly related in the Scripture to have come to pass, proceeded necessarily ... according to the immutable Laws of Nature; and that if anything be found which can be apodictically demonstrated to be repugnant to those laws ... we may safely and piously believe the same not to have been dictated by divine inspiration, but impiously added to the sacred volume by sacrilegious men; for whatever is against Nature is against Reason; and whatever is against Reason is absurd, and therefore also to be rejected and refuted.
human
To interpret Scripture-miracles, and to understand from the narrations of them how they really happened, 'tis necessary to know the opinions of those who first reported them ... otherwise we shall confound ... things which have really happen'd with things purely imaginary, and which were only prophetic representations. For in Scripture many things are related as real, and which were also believ'd to be real even by the relators themselves, that notwithstanding were only representations form'd in the brain, and merely imaginary--as that God, the Supreme Being, descended from heaven ... upon Mount Sinai...; that Elias ascended to heaven in a fiery chariot ... which were only representations accommodated to their opinions who deliver'd them down to us. [425] Such argumentation had to prepare the way for Hume's Essay Of Miracles, half a century later; and concerning both reasoners it is to be remembered that their thought was to be