Marvelous Facts and Miraculous Evidence in Early Modern Europe ...

114 Lorraine Daston Facts and Evidence
tionally, private revelations, particularly sudden conversions, had counted
as miracles, and many biblical miracles were directed at select persons or
groups.60 However, many seventeenth-century theologians, particularly
Protestant theologians intent on discrediting sacramental miracles,
insisted on "a public and visible demonstration."6' Second, experts (here
the members of the House of Solomon) are needed to distinguish the
supernatural from the preternatural, natural, and artifical, and to guard
against fraud. Since the members of the House of Solomon actually experiment
with "all manner of feats ofjuggling, false apparitions, impostures,
and illusions" that might be disguised "to make them seem more miraculous,"62
we may assume that Bacon himself was primarily concerned with
human fraud. His contemporaries, however, also warned against demonic
fraud, though still achieved by manipulation of natural causes. Third,
God ideally delivers the proper interpretation of the miracle on the spot,
in the form of revealed doctrine (the Bensalemites receive a box containing
the Old and New Testaments, plus an explanatory letter from St.
Bartholomew), which forestalls conjecture and dispute. These three
elements-publicity, inspection for fraud, and interpretation in light of
doctrine-defined the seventeenth-century concept of the miracle as evidence.
I shall discuss each in turn, showing how all three tended to shift
the focus of seventeenth-century debate from the evidence of miracles to
the evidence for miracles.
It is striking that those seventeenth-century writers most exercised by
the topic of miracles were those who insisted that miracles had long ago
ceased. Protestants challenged by Catholics to produce miracles in attestation
of their reformed faith retorted that there was no need for God to
confirm the revelations of Christianity anew, for the Protestants meant to
reinforce, not break with the teachings of the Bible.63 Although there was
some internecine wrangling as to exactly when miracles had ceased,64 that
they had done so many centuries ago was above dispute for Protestant
authors. Edward Stillingfleet inquired rhetorically, "What imaginable
necessity or pretext can there be contrived for a power of miracles, especially
among such as already own the Divine revelation of the Scriptures?" It
would be otiose for God to heap miracle on miracle in order to re-prove
60. See Romano Guardini, "Das Wunder als Zeichen," in Studien und Berichte der
Katholischen Akademie in Bayern, Heft 17, Wunder und Magie (Wiirzburg, 1962), pp. 75-93.
61. See John Tillotson, "Jesus the Son of God Proved by His Resurrection," Tillotson's
Sermons, ed. G. W. Weldon (London, 1886), p. 372.
62. Bacon, New Atlantis, 2:375.
63. Although this view had Augustinian antecedents, it was vigorously revived by
Calvin during the reformation: see Jean Calvin, "Epistre," Institution de la religion
chrestienne (n. p., 1541).
64. See, for example, William Whiston, Account of the exact time when miraculous gifts
ceas'd in the church (London, 1749).