Hobbes - Leviathan.pdf

produced, we cannot imagine it to have been done by natural means, but
only by the immediate hand of God. But when we see some possible
natural cause of it, how rarely soever the like has been done; or if
the like have been often done, how impossible soever it be to
imagine a natural means thereof, we no more wonder, nor esteem it
for a miracle.
Therefore, if a horse or cow should speak, it were a miracle,
because both the thing is strange and the natural cause difficult to
imagine; so also were it to see a strange deviation of nature in the
production of some new shape of a living creature. But when a man,
or other animal, engenders his like, though we know no more how this
is done than the other; yet because it is usual, it is no miracle.
In like manner, if a man be metamorphosed into a stone, or into a
pillar, it is a miracle, because strange; but if a piece of wood be so
changed, because we see it often it is no miracle: and yet we know
no more by what operation of God the one is brought to pass than the
other.
The first rainbow that was seen in the world was a miracle,
because the first, and consequently strange, and served for a sign
from God, placed in heaven to assure His people there should be no
more a universal destruction of the world by water. But at this day,
because they are frequent, they are not miracles, neither to them that
know their natural causes, nor to them who know them not. Again, there
be many rare works produced by the art of man; yet when we know they
are done, because thereby we know also the means how they are done, we
count them not for miracles, because not wrought by the immediate hand
of God, but by mediation of human industry.
Furthermore, seeing admiration and wonder is consequent to the
knowledge and experience wherewith men are endued, some more, some
less, it followeth that the same thing may be a miracle to one, and
not to another. And thence it is that ignorant and superstitious men
make great wonders of those works which other men, knowing to
proceed from nature (which is not the immediate, but the ordinary work
of God), admire not at all; as when eclipses of the sun and moon
have been taken for supernatural works by the common people, when
nevertheless there were others could, from their natural causes,
have foretold the very hour they should arrive; or, as when a man,
by confederacy and secret intelligence, getting knowledge of the
private actions of an ignorant, unwary man, thereby tells him what
he has done in former time, it seems to him a miraculous thing; but
amongst wise and cautelous men, such miracles as those cannot easily
be done.
Again, it belongeth to the nature of a miracle that it be wrought
for the procuring of credit to God's messengers, ministers, and
prophets, that thereby men may know they are called, sent, and
employed by God, and thereby be the better inclined to obey them.
And therefore, though the creation of the world, and after that the
destruction of all living creatures in the universal deluge, were
admirable works; yet because they were not done to procure credit to
any prophet or other minister of God, they use not to be called
miracles. For how admirable soever any work be, the admiration
consisteth not in that could be done, because men naturally believe
the Almighty can do all things, but because He does it at the prayer
or word of a man. But the works of God in Egypt, by the hand of Moses,
were properly miracles, because they were done with intention to
make the people of Israel believe that Moses came unto them, not out
of any design of his own interest, but as sent from God Therefore