Circumstances which indicate this explication, in the case of the
Parisian miracles, are the following:
1. They were tentative. Out of many thousand sick, infirm, and diseased
persons who resorted to the tomb, the professed history of the miracles
contains only nine cures.
2. The convulsions at the tomb are admitted.
3. The diseases were, for the most part, of that sort which depends upon
inaction and obstruction, as dropsies, palsies, and some tumours.
4. The cures were gradual; some patients attending many days, some several
weeks, and some several months.
5. The cures were many of them incomplete.
6. Others were temporary. (The reader will find these particulars
verified in the detail, by the accurate inquiries of the present bishop
of Sarum, in his Criterion of Miracles, p. 132, et seq.)
So that all the wonder we are called upon to account for is, that out of
an almost innumerable multitude which resorted to the tomb for the cure
of their complaints, and many of whom were there agitated by strong
convulsions, a very small proportion experienced a beneficial change in
their constitution, especially in the action of the nerves and glands.
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