Page:The Evidences of Christianity.djvu/391

384 tion, in the midst of enemies, with the whole power of the country opposing him, with every one around him prejudiced or interested against his claims and character, pretended to perform these cures, and required the spectators, upon the strength of what they saw, to give up their firmest hopes and opinions, and follow him through a life of trial and danger; that many were so moved as to obey his call, at the expense both of every notion in which they had been brought up, and of their ease, safety, and reputation; and that by these beginnings a change was produced in the world the effects of which remain to this day; a case both in its circumstances and consequences, very unlike anything we find in Tacitus's relation.

123. II. The story taken from the memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, which is the second example alleged by Mr. Hume, is this: "In the church of Saragossa, in Spain, the canons showed me a man whose business it was to light the lamps; telling me that he had been several years at the gate with one leg only. I saw him with two."

It is stated by Mr. Hume, that the cardinal who relates this story did not believe it: and it nowhere appears that he either examined the limb or asked the patient, or, indeed, any one, a single question about the matter. An artificial leg, wrought with art, would be sufficient, in a place where no such contrivance had ever before been heard of, to give origin and currency to the report. The ecclesiastics of the place would, it is probable, favor the story, inasmuch as it advanced the honor of their image and church. And if they patronized it, no other person at Saragossa, in the middle of the last century, would care to dispute it. The story, likewise, coincided not less with the wishes and preconceptions of the people than with the interests of their ecclesiastical rulers; so that there was prejudice backed by authority, and both operating upon extreme ignorance, to account for the success of the imposture. If, as I have suggested, the contrivance of an artificial limb was then new, it would not occur to the cardinal