Page:An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding - Hume (1748).djvu/210

 employ, find themselves often at a loss to distinguish betwixt Truth and Falshood in the most recent Actions. But the Matter never comes to any Issue, if trusted to the common Method of Altercation and Debate and flying Rumours; especially when Men's Passions have taken party on either Side.

the Infancy of new Religions, the Wise and Learned commonly esteem the Matter too inconsiderable to deserve their Attention or Regard: And when afterwards they would willingly detect the Cheat, in order to undeceive the deluded Multitude, the Season is now gone, and the Records and Witnesses, who might clear up the Matter, have perish'd beyond Recovery.

Means of Detection remain, but those which must be drawn from the very Testimony itself of the Reporters: And these, tho' always sufficient with the Judicious and Knowing, are commonly too fine to fall under the Comprehension of the Vulgar.

the whole, then, it appears, that no Testimony for any Kind of Miracle can ever possibly amount to a Probability, much less to a Proof; and that even supposing it amounted to a Proof, 'twould be oppos'd by another Proof, deriv'd from the very Nature of the Fact, which it would endeavour to esta-