Page:A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings of Dr. Henry More.djvu/48

6 9. Lastly, when I descend to the History of things miraculous and above the ordinary course of Nature, for the proving that there are Spirits, that the Atheist thereby may the easier be induced to believe there is a God; I am so cautious and circumspect, that I make use of no Narrations that either the avarice of the Priest, or the credulity and fancifulness of the Melancholist may render suspected.

10. Nor could I abstain from that Subject, it being so pat and pertinent unto my purpose; though I am well aware how ridiculous a thing it seems to those I have to deal with. But their confident ignorance shall never dash me out of countenance with my well-grounded knowledge: for I have been no careless Inquirer into these things, and from my Childehood to this very day have had more reasons to believe the Existence of God and a Divine Providence, then is reasonable for me to make particular profession of.

11. In this History of things Miraculous or Supernatural, I might have recited those notable Prodigies that happened after the Birth, in the Life, and at the Death of Christ: as the Star that led the Wise men to the young Infant; Voices from Heaven testifying Christ to be the Son of God; and, lastly, that miraculous Eclipse of the Sun, made, not by interposition of the Moon (for she was then opposite to him) but by the interposition or totall involution, if you will, of those scummy spots that ever more or less are spred upon his face, but now overflowed him with such thickness, and so universally, that day-light was suddenly intercepted from the astonished eyes of the Inhabitants of the Earth. To which direful Symptomes though the Sun hath been in some measure at several times obnoxious, yet that those latent Causes should so suddenly step out and surprise him, and so enormously at the Passion of the Messias, he whose Mind is not more prodigiously darkned then the Sun was then Eclips'd, cannot but at first sight acknowledge it a special designment of Providence.

But I did not insist upon any Sacred History, partly, because it is so well and so ordinarily known, that it seemed