perienced this complaint yourself; if not you have read the description of it in Homer. "In this the senses are not quite lost, but they are drowned, as is also the understanding." These symptoms in Mrs. Stuart's case, were in the course of several months, succeeded by others much worse, excruciating pains in the head, dimness of sight, paralysis in the lower joints, inability to raise the voice, and for the last month, absolute extinction of it. In vain were the most powerful stimulants and other remedies applied: they could produce no cure, and nothing but a partial relief in the early stages of the illness: whereas the united prayers of God's servants in Ireland and on the continent, prevailed with the Almighty, through the merits of Jesus Christ, present on our altars to remove all those dreadful symptoms at once, and to restore the patient, in an instant, to entire health. Now, Sir, to tell the people that the finger of God is here, is not to impose upon them; but to attempt by chicanery to confound them, or by effrontery to brow-beat them, is a real attempt at imposition.

You say that Mrs. Stuart, and Miss Lalor, [who was miraculously restored to her speech after more than six years dumbness] by applying for medical aid, prove their belief in its efficacy; to which I answer, that its want of success demonstrate its inefficacy in their particular cases. The woman, who was miraculously cured of the bloody flux had previously suffered many things from many physicians, and had spent all that she had upon them, Mark v. 26. You urge that the organs of sensation were not destroyed in your restored countrywomen: and how, Sir, do you know, or what reason have you to believe that they were destroyed in the deaf, the dumb, the blind and the lame, whom Christ and his apostles cured in the land of Judea; Miss O'Connor, indeed, of Chelmsford, whose right arm was swollen to thrice its natural size, and hung motionless, discoloured, and emitting a fetid odour, by her side, which, notwithstanding, was suddenly cured, after hearing Mass, and communicating, on May 3, 1822, may be considered as organically diseased, since her physicians and surgeons concurred in the necessity of amputating the limb, and urged it with particular emphasis the day before her cure. But such extremity

of disease is avowedly not requisite to make the cure supernatural, and the restoration of Peter's wife's mother, who was sick of a fever, was no less a miracle than the resurrection of Lazarus. You sneer at the alledged privacy of our miracles, and promise to become a Catholic, if our prelates will, or Prince Hohenlohe will, after previous notice, let you witness a miracle which they are going to perform. Without reminding you, Sir, that two words go to every bargain, I answer you that neither our prelates, nor the Prince pretend to have the power of working miracles, they only promise to pray to him who has all power in heaven and on earth, in behalf of those who are desirous of their prayers, in subordination to God's high will and his omniscience, as to what is for the real good of the petitioners; nor have they now to learn that there were many lepers in the days of Elijah, but that none of them was cleansed except Naaman, the Syrian. It is sufficient here to observe, that our blessed Saviour did not transport himself to the Areopagus of Athens, nor to the court of Tiberius, nor even to that of Herod, who was prodigiously curious to see a sign from him as the scene of his miracles, but that on the contrary, he frequently took those aside on whom he worked his prodigies. Mark viii. 33. That he charged them to tell no man of what they had experienced, and that when he raised to life the daughter of Jairus, he permitted no one to be present but his three confidential disciples. Mat. xi. 26. Still there was abundantly sufficient evidence of Christ's miracles, and so there is of those which have lately taken place in Ireland, England, France, and Germany. Finally, you reproach Dr. M. that his witnesses for the cure of Mrs. Stuart, were women, of whom, however, there were five upon oath, besides two men, and the certificates of four or five others of the medical profession. You, Sir, may affect to disbelieve the oaths of the ladies in question, but those who are acquainted with them, know that they would not tell the smallest lie to save their lives, nor even to convert a whole people. Remember, Sir, they were females whom Christ chose to be the first witnesses of his resurrection, and whom he sent to announce that great event to his apostles themselves. Matt. xxviii. 10.

But you open another source of cavilling, which you enlarge upon in different parts of your pretended exposure. You maintain that the Almighty cannot work his wonders without making us poor mortals acquainted with his object, and his motive for working them. This, you assert must be to inform us of some important truth. Hence you deny incontestible works of God, because Dr. Murray appears to doubt which between two objects, was that the Deity had in view when he wrought them; namely, the Doctor says, perhaps the Almighty intended to guide poor wanderers, like you, into the right way of salvation; perhaps to excite those who are in this way, to walk in it with fidelity and fervour; whilst he evidently intimates that our merciful Father intended to do both. Instead of pretending to confine Omnipotence to any one object, I feel it my duty to cry out with the Apostle : Who hath known the mind of the Lord? Or who hath been his counsellor? Rom. xi. 34. Judging, however, as far as I can see, it appears to me that God in working his miracles, sometimes fulfilled the purposes of his divine justice, as when he sent fire from heaven to consume Sodom and Gomorrah; and when he brought bears from the wilderness to devour those who insulted his prophet; more frequently those of his infinite mercy, as when he multiplied bread to feed a famished multitude, Mat. xv. 32. and when he restored life to dead youth, in pity to his weeping mother, Luke vii. 13. or to instance, what you consider as mean objects and unworthy of him, when he created a gourd, to shelter the head of one of his prophets, Jonas iv. 6. and caused iron to swim, for the purpose of enabling another prophet to restore the axe he had borrowed, Kings iv. alias ii. vi. 6.; sometimes we cannot even guess at the object of miracles, as when the devils were permitted to enter into the herd of swine. After all, Sir, you see very clearly what Dr. Murray considered as the principal object of the miracles he writes about, and it is this which fills you with madness, as the sacred text informs us, the restoration of the withered hand did, the Scribes aud Pharisees, Luke vi. 11. Instead then, of kicking against the goad, it will be wise in you, Sir, to follow the advice of the same Gamaliel to the Sanhedrim: let these men, the Apostles, alone :

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for if this work be of men, it will come to nought, but if it be of God you cannot overthrow it, lest perhaps you be founat to fight against God. Acts. v. 38.

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I cannot dismiss your pamphlet, Sir, which is an Exposure, not of the miracles, but of the folly and irreligion of those who fight against them, without noticing one or two sentences in that endless amplification, as Rhetoricians call that figure, consisting of fifty nine octavo lines, at the beginning of your book. After telling us that you had been heretofore a zealous friend to the catholic claims, you say, "that these recent events "(God's miracles) have given me a new view of their body :for add, 66 can those men be fit for the exercise of rational "freedom, who are so far sunk in stupidity and ignorancecan men of such relative high character for intellect as Dr. Murray, and Dr. Doyle, have felt no shame; have felt uncon"scious of any burning blush upon their cheek, when they step "forward amidst the blaze of philosophy, &c. to teach their mi"serable and credulous flock that the power of miracle-working "has again appeared in the world!"—Without attempting to expose your other errors in these frothy sentences, permit me to inform you that if you were a theologian, you would know that miracles have never ceased in the world since its creation. The Old and the New Testament are one series of miracles, and the holy fathers and original historians, and others the most credible authors, continue the series in the true church down to our own times. The greatest enemy of miracles, Dr. Conyers Middleton, acknowledges the fact in his Free Inquiry, and he finds no way of evading its force, in favour of that church, but by maintaining that the whole collection of fathers, the same who are cited in his own Homilies and Liturgy, are a confederacy of liars and impostors. You may see this matter fully treated in a work that has been edited in Ireland as well as in England, called The End of Religious Controversy, where you will also see the many falsehoods and falsifications, which your most celebrated writers have had recourse to in supporting Dr. Middleton's theory. I now proceed with your 'amplification: "Can they, the catholic bishops, lead their mi"serable and credulous flock to believe that the Almighty, su

perseding the laws of the moral and material world, has sub"stituted for them the vicarious prayers of a German priest, "at whose capricious intercession, without reference to the "chain of things, disease is to abandon its victims, &c.!". To appreciate the weight of this tinsel oratory, I have only to transfer it to the mouth of a Hume or Carlisle, who might equally say: Can the Bishops of the Establishment or Mr. Exposer himself, its zealous advocate, tell the rich but credulous protestants, that the Almighty, superseding the laws of the moral and material world has substituted to them the shadow of a Jew fisherman, as Peter; or the clothes of a Cilician tent maker, as Paul, to make disease abandon its victims! according to what we read in the Acts of the Apostles, v. 15, and xix. 12. I now ask you, Sir, whose cheek ought to burn with blushes? -But to proceed with your amplification: "And has all this happened "to prove to mankind, at the end of 1800 years, that the Roman Church is the exclusive church of the God of nature,"that this miraculous power is a proof of a question which reason and revelation had failed to settle through so many "centuries." Do you mean then, Sir, that protestancy, instead of originating in the respective passions of a Luther, a Henry VIII. a Somerset, and an Elizabeth, in the 16th century, is coeval with the Catholic Church, which never had a beginning but in Christ and his apostles? Or do you mean that the Arians, the Nestorians, the Eutychians, and a hundred more swarms of ancient heretics, anathematized by your canons, and sentenced by your laws to the flames, have equal claims with yourself to belong to the true church? Or, finally, do you mean that the flaming beacons of the mountain on the top of mountains, Isaias ii. 2. are now extinguished, so that the subordinate torch of modern miracles is necessary to show it? In other words, that the four glorious marks of Christ's true church in every age which you are forced to acknowledge as well as we, in the Apostles and Nicene Creeds, Unity, Holiness, Universality, or Catholicity, and Apostolicity, have failed of late years, and that Prince Hohenlohe is wanted to point it out? To conclude, then, Mr. Exposer, let me advise you to publish no more pamphlets to expose nothing but your ignorance of