Note 64 — REMARKS ON A LATE BOOK, &c.

The other impostors mentioned as not much esteemed for their miracles are Pythagoras, Jamblichus, and Adrian; though it is certain the writers of their lives lay great stress upon them. Jamblichus and Porphyry, after enlarging on several of Pythagoras’s miracles, which drew the applause and admiration of his followers, appeal to current fame for the credit of these, and of other still diviner miracles, which, say they, are related of him with an uniform and constant belief, μυρια δ’ ἑτερα θαυμαστοτερα και θειοτερα περι τ’ ανδρος ὁμαλως και συμφονως ειρηται. (Porph. S. 28 and to the same purpose, and nearly in the same words, Jambl. S. 135). Jamblichus even goes so far, in speaking of the Pythagorean fondness for miracles, as to assure us, that they were conceived to prove the divinity of their authors, and by that means to give a sanction to their opinions and doctrines. την πιστιν των παρ’ αυτοις ὑποληψεων ἡγουνται ειναι ταυτην, &c. S. 140. They conceive it, says he, to add a CREDIT and authority to their doctrines, that the author of them was a GOD; and therefore to the question, Who was Pythagoras? their answer was, The hyperborean Apollo; and in proof of this they alledge the miracle of his golden thigh. And yet, says the Inquirer, Pythagoras was not much more esteemed for his thigh of gold than one of flesh. What pity is it, the wit of this antithesis should be no better supported!

As for Eunapius, though he plainly disbelieved the silly tale of the two boys of Gadara, yet, in relating it circumstantially as he does, he clearly enough expresses his own opinion of miracles, and acknowledges thereby the credit they would bring his master, were they better attested, or but fairly received.

The miracles of the emperors are well known. And as their manifest intent was, of the one of them, to add a credit, or, as Suetonius more strongly expresses it, an authority, and certain awfulness, befitting majesty, to the person of Trajan, and of the other, to inspire the hopes of recovery into Adrian, so the relation of them by their historians, as useful and subservient to those ends, is a thorough confutation of what the author pretends about the little regard paid to them. And here it may be proper to observe, once for all, that the frequent narrations of prodigies and miracles, of which all Pagan story and antiquity is full, is infinitely a stronger argument for the high credit of miracles amongst the heathens in general, than any pretended coolness, tranquillity, and indifference, which the writer’s warmth, in the prosecution of his favourite novelty, leads him to imagine in the narrations themselves, is, or can be, for the contrary opinion. Since this could only shew the incredulity of the relaters; whilst the relating them at all demonstrates the general good reception they met with from the people.