Page:A Compendium of the Chief Doctrines of the True Christian Religion.djvu/126

122 which is a truly paternal government, and includes the ministration of angels and good spirits, is maintained with infinite justice, with infinite wisdom, and with infinite love.

AS free-will in spiritual things is an essential requisite in the reformation, regeneration, and salvation of man; and as the New Church meant by the New Jerusalem is founded on the Word now opened by the Lord, and will be established on principles of perfect liberty and sound rationality; therefore miracles are not to be looked for in the present day, because they have a direct tendency to close the mind against the perception of truth, to compel assent without rational conviction, and to remove from man that freedom of judgment and self-determination, which are necessary to his becoming an image and likeness of his Creator.

Before and at the coming of the Lord, miracles were indeed wrought among the Jewish and lsraelitish people. But it is evident from their whole history, as recorded in the Old and New Testaments, that the effect produced on their minds by such means was not a rational conviction of divine truth, but a mere superficial impression, which awed them for a moment into a kind of external acquiescence and acknowledgment, that the power competent to perform those wonders was supernatural. By this sentiment of fear, which rather stupified than awakened their rational faculties, they were urged to the observance of the various ceremonies peculiar to their religion, especially to the worship of Jehovah, from which however they were continually declining into open acts of idolatry. Although they had seen so many