Now there appears a small ambiguity in the term "experience," and in the
phrases, "contrary to experience," or "contradicting experience," which
it may be necessary to remove in the first place. Strictly speaking, the
narrative of a fact is then only contrary to experience, when the fact
is related to have existed at a time and place, at which time and place
we being present did not perceive it to exist; as if it should be
asserted, that in a particular room, and at a particular hour of a
certain day, a man was raised from the dead, in which room, and at the
time specified, we, being present and looking on, perceived no such
event to have taken place. Here the assertion is contrary to experience
properly so called; and this is a contrariety which no evidence can
surmount. It matters nothing, whether the fact be of a miraculous
nature, or not. But although this be the experience, and the
contrariety, which Archbishop Tillotson alleged in the quotation with
which Mr. Hume opens his Essay, it is certainly not that experience, nor
that contrariety, which Mr. Hume himself intended to object.
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