Ours is
contemporary history. This difference alone removes out of our way the
miraculous history of Pythagoras, who lived five hundred years before
the Christian era, written by Porphyry and Jamblicus, who lived three
hundred years after that era; the prodigies of Livy's history; the
fables of the heroic ages; the whole of the Greek and Roman, as well as
of the Gothic mythology; a great part of the legendary history of Popish
saints, the very best attested of which is extracted from the
certificates that are exhibited during the process of their
canonization, a ceremony which seldom takes place till a century after
their deaths. It applies also with considerable force to the miracles of
Apollonius Tyaneus, which are contained in a solitary history of his
life, published by Philostratus above a hundred years after his death;
and in which, whether Philostratus had any prior account to guide him,
depends upon his single unsupported assertion. Also to some of the
miracles of the third century, especially to one extraordinary instance,
the account of Gregory, bishop of Neocesarea, called Thaumaturgus,
delivered in the writings of Gregory of Nyssen, who lived one hundred
and thirty years after the subject of his panegyric.
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