the office of faith; fanaticism was permitted to assume the language of inspiration; and the effects of accident or contrivance were ascribed to supernatural causes.  The recent experience of genuine miracles should have instructed the Christian world in the ways of Providence, and habituated their eye (if we may use a very inadequate expression) to the style of the Divine Artist” (Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall,” vol. ii., chap, xv., p. 145).  The miraculous powers were said to have been given by Christ himself to his disciples.  “These signs shall follow them that believe; in my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with mew tongues; they shall take up serpents; and, if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover” (Mark xvi. 17, 18).  This power is exercised by the Apostles (see Acts throughout), by believers in the Churches (1 Cor. xii. 9, 10; Gal. iii. 5; James v. 14, 15); at any rate, it was in force in the time with which these books treat, according to the Christians.  Justus, surnamed Barsabas, drinks poison, and is unhurt (Eusebius, bk. iii., chap. xxxix.).  Polycarp’s martyrdom, supposed to be in the next generation, is accompanied by miracle (Epistle of Church of Smyrna; Apostolical Fathers, p. 92; see ante, pp. 220, 221).  At Hierapolis the daughters of Philip the Apostle tell Papias how one was there raised from the dead (Eusebius, bk. iii., ch. xxxix.).  Justin Martyr pleads the miracles worked in his own time in Rome itself (second “Apol.,” ch. vi.).  Irenaeus urges that the heretics cannot work miracles as can the Catholics:  “they can neither confer sight on the blind, nor hearing on the deaf, nor chase away all sorts of demons ... nor can they cure the weak, or the lame, or the paralytic” ("Against Heretics,” bk. ii., ch. xxxi., sec. 2).  Tertullian encourages Christians to give up worldly pleasures by reminding them of their grander powers:  “what nobler than to tread under foot the gods of the nations, to exorcise evil spirits, to perform cures?” ("De Spectaculis,” sec. 29).  “Origen claims for Christians the power still to expel demons, and to heal diseases, in the name of Jesus; and he states that he had seen many persons so cured of madness, and countless other evils” (quoted from “Origen against Celsus” in “Sup.  Rel.,” vol. i., p. 154.  A mass of evidence on this subject will be found in chap. v. of this work, on “The Permanent Stream of Miraculous Pretension").  St. Augustine’s testimony has been already referred to.  St. Ambrose discovered the bones of SS.  Gervasius and Protasius; and “these relics were laid in the Faustinian Basilic, and the next morning were translated into the Ambrosian Basilic; during which translation a blind man, named Severus, a butcher by trade, was cured by touching the bier on which the relics lay with a handkerchief, and then applying it to his eyes.  He had been blind several years, was known to the whole city, and the miracle was performed before a