Answer of an unbeneficed clergyman of the diocese of Dublin, to the admonition of a person well known to him and others, most falsely & wickedly styling himself a beneficed clergyman of the established church : wherein his sophistical and absurd support of the recent miracles is exposed / [Caesar Otway].

  • Otway, Caesar, 1780-1842.
Date:
1823
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Answer of an unbeneficed clergyman of the diocese of Dublin, to the admonition of a person well known to him and others, most falsely & wickedly styling himself a beneficed clergyman of the established church : wherein his sophistical and absurd support of the recent miracles is exposed / [Caesar Otway]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    12/20 (page 10)
    Bodily and visible miracles have ceased, they are no more wanting to true Christians or a true church. Why should true Christians want bodily and material miracles? To those who have substan¬ tiated or realised the things hoped for, to those who have the clearer evidence of things unseen, what is the body or what is any thing that this material world owns, that it should be worth a miracle for its maintenance. No, Sir, all the true Christian asks is the spiritually miraculous gift of a changed heart, in rising from the death of sin to the life of righteousness. He seeks not earthly but spiritual things-—the power of God, the producing a new creature in Christ Jesus; the conversion of those who sit in darkness, and the shadow of death into the marvellous light of Gospel regeneration. These are the great things that the probationer for eternity looks for on earth, and he leaves it to a carnal and worldly church “ which has its God (as Father Paul says) here on earth, to live by sense and not by faith, and look to the things of matter and not mind ; valuing no miracles but such as are bodily and material.” On the same prin¬ ciple Romanists now carnalize the Eucharist of the Lord Jesus, and bring him from heaven to dwell in an idol which a miller has ground, and a baker has made. Just so they must now have sensible miracles to turn the spirituality of the service of the Lord Jesus into a sensual, visible and idolatrous worship. But you proceed to submit, you say, in Godly humility and sincerity, the following pregnant questions to those who do not doubt the miracles on which Christianity is founded. First.-—(< If it he to be believed that God wrought miracles, at first, for the establishing of Christian faith, when did they cease, or why should they ever cease till the Christian faith became uni¬ versal—which it is not ?’ To this I answer, they ceased when the Apostolic times had ceased-“they’ ceased when the Canon of Scripture was completed, and received by the Christian church—they ceased when Chris¬ tianity became triumphant over paganism, by Constantine em¬ bracing it and establishing it as the faith of the civilized world— they ceased until the second coming of the Lord Jesus. In the mean time Holy Scripture is sufficdent to testify of Jesus, and able to make all nations, and tongues, and people, wise unto salvation—and its sound now going forth unto all lands, and its truth unto the end of the earth; faithfully preached by single- hearted men, the Holy Spirit working with them; men holding the great record of life open, and pointing to the Lamb of God that Vaketh away the sins of the world. Such me**; without one miracle, or one prodigy, have made more genuine Christians in the little island of Otaheite—an island but thirty years since inhabited by cannibals, than have been, at any one time, found in all the parts of Ireland together, subjected to Popery, with all its holy wells, and tombs, and saints, and priests, for fourteen