SECT. VI. PROBABILITY OF THE SYSTEM. ZOV

all those which have been or are alleged any-
where for any insignificant or improbable pur-
pose. If Judaism and Christianity, whether true
or false, be noty«///e ; if Judaism, the oldest reli-
gion on record ; if Christianity, a rehgion which
has long overspread all the more civilized and
intellectual world; cannot be pronounced fables
of the same incredible class with the fables
related of Osiris, or Jupiter: it is certain that the
mere fact that the Scripture miracles are brought
to attest that only religion which is so discri-
minated from all other religions, gives a proba-
bility to the miracles brought to attest it, in
which other miracles must be ever deficient.
For in whatever degree it be even supposable,
that God may have interfered to attest a reli-
gion, it is equally supposable that those miracles
may be true, which are brought to attest, and
may be the only means of attesting it. And

I this consideration, though it does not disprove
any miracles which may be alleged to have
taken place on other, however trifling, occa-
sions, yet confers on the miracles of Judaism
and Christianity, a probability of which all
others are destitute. So entirely absurd is the



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I



210 PROBABILITY OF THE SYSTEM. CHAP. II.
strange assertion of Hume *, that though other
miracles may be capable of proof, it is still rea-
sonable to reject all those miracles which are
alleged in evidence of any system of religion.
But these are pre-eminently the most entitled
to credit, the evidence of a religion being, per-
haps, the only knot which can be accounted
worthy of this solution.
