BY Miracles are signified the admirable works of God:and therefore they are also called wonders.And because they are for the most part done for a signification of His commandment in such occasions as,without them,men are apt to doubt (following their private natural reasoning)what He hath commanded,and what not,they are commonly,in Holy Scripture,called signs,in the same sense as they are called by the Latins,ostenta and portenta,from showing and foresignifying that which the Almighty is about to bring to pass.
To understand therefore what is a miracle,we must first understand what works they are which men wonder at and call admirable.
And there be but two things which make men wonder at any event:the one is if it be strange,that is to say,such as the like of it hath never or very rarely been produced;the other is if when it is 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.