We have a crucial test for the religion of the fourth century in the miracles, which were reported and believed in on every side. "At the very instant when the ecclesiastical heavens were darkened with swarms of monks, the earth was ablaze with miracles." These wonders were enacted through a long course of years, by men honored throughout the entire church as themselves miracles of piety. It was the glory of the church; and these miracles are recorded by the grave-historians as verities. In fact, that which settled and fixed the church of this period, and gave her venerated champions unbounded, unwonted power over the minds of men, was this very wonder working which appeared through the length and breadth of the church.
But miracles were the exclusive production of the monks. Such men as Basil and Augustine made no such lofty pretensions. Nevertheless, the interrelationship of these great men and the ascetics is manifest in the unbounded praise which the former heaped upon the latter, and their direct acknowledgment of belief in the wonders reported. Listen to Chrysostom: "If any man believes not these things which are said to have been done by the apostles, let him now, beholding the present, desist from his impudency." And Ambrose: "You see the miracles of ancient times renewed." The profession of miraculous powers did not remain with the church after the first century. The language of Ambrose shows this. Again, Augustine: "We made an order to have bills given out of such miracles as were done, when we saw the wonders of ancient times renewed in ours." Many of these miracles are recorded in works of undoubted genuineness and authenticity. The memoirs in Palladius' "Lausiac History" are to the point, from which we may quote sufficiently to form an estimate of the miracles as compared with those in the times of Christ and the apostles.
This Palladius was an honored bishop of Helenopolis, in Bithynia, a particular personal friend of Chrysostom, and the things he asserts may be paralleled out of Sozomen, Jerome, Theodoret, and Cassian, who some of them mention the very same wonders repeated by Palladius. Out of the vast bog of these extant remains I can but collect a few specimens. The foul obscenities and blasphemous impieties which attach to very many must be clipped away, that modern eyes may read the record.
The wiles of the demon to entice the poor monk to come forth from his cell were many. Now a youth cries for help and shelter, lest he be devoured by hyenas. No help can the monk afford. Thus foiled, "the demon vanishes in a whirlwind, with din and brayings."
A man seeks "the blessed Macarius," leading a mare, which he explains to be his wife transformed by a magician. By the plentiful sprinkling of holy water, the charm which affected their sight was dissolved, and the happy couple return with joyfulness to their home.
This Macarius, sitting in meditation, is aroused by a hyena knocking at the door; she enters and lays a cub at his feet; it is blind; he takes the cub, utters a prayer for the restoration of sight, which is immediately answered, and gives the cub back to the mother, who withdraws; but the next day she returns with a nice sheepskin. "Whence couldst thou have gotten this, if thou hadst not devoured somebody's sheep?" cried Macarius. The hyena makes signs of contrition, and Macarius accepts the skin upon condition that the animal will never again devour poor people's sheep. The skin was bequeathed to Athanasius, if we may believe the historian's story. Such vapid nonsense fills the folio, and with just such things was the Nicene Church entranced.
I must omit the wonders of "Moses" Pambo, the father of Apollo, also of "Antony the Great,"—"the perfectly holy man," the "angel upon earth," the "pattern of the angelic philosophy,"—whose life and miracles are better attested by far than the story of Alexander the Great, for every writer spoke of him. We have the record of Paul, who rushed from his violated home, with the oath of the age,—"by Christ,"—upon his lips, now in his sixtieth year. He seeks the cell of Antony, with the avowed intent of becoming an anchorite. Antony initiates him into five days' fasting and ascetic discipline of the wilderness; and such was his marvelous power over demons and disease that miracles were no miracles in his hand. A youth vexed with a demon of "high rank" was carried to the cell of Antony, who gave over the case to Paul, flinching from the encounter. The "guileless old man" prayed, then provokingly challenged the demon, commanding him in the name of Father Antony to come forth. "No such thing, foolish, gluttonous old man," cried the demon. Then they set to with blows and foul imprecations. The saint feigned desperate madness, but without the desired effect; he mounted a rock, and adjured Christ in awful terms, avowing he would die in his tracks if the demon be not expelled. At this the demon cried: "I go; I go; I yield to the tyrannic force. I will return no more. The simplicity and holiness of Paul have compelled me to give in. Yet I know not whither to betake myself." Then the demon, transformed to a prodigious serpent, seventy cubits in length, slid away into the Red Sea. "Such are the miracles of Paul, and yet greater than these did he perform," says the historian.
By the relics of a martyr, or the invocation of their name, or the sign of the cross, or holy water, plentifully administered, the dead were made to stand erect and discourse upon orthodoxy. "A holy man sailing up the Nile with a party of friends and opponents [came] to a spot where the ancient sepulchral caverns abut upon the river. There he called forth one who, according to his own account, had598lived in the remotest time of Egyptian history. This awful arbiter of theological differences, after having given his decisive suffrage favoring the Catholic principles, obediently returns to his mummy, or chrysalis state, at the word of a saint, to rest until the final resurrection."
A holy man tormented with a demon "under a seductive guise," gave the phantom a smart cuff. "Believe me," said he, "believe me, I could not endure my own hand for two years afterward, such was the stench it had contracted from the blow."
"Here are men fed daily or weekly by angels, men ridding the country of wild beasts, and the river of crocodiles, by the name of Christ, but none of them knowing the virtue of that name to liberate from the power of sin and the fear of punishment. Sad is the monotony of these memoirs,—prophecy, miracle, angelic intercourse, three ounces of bread for the day,—but no Christianity; and these things put together by a Christian bishop, the friend and disciple of the greatest divine of the age. We look among these men in vain for the temper which distinguished apostolic writings. And what does all their fervor end in?—The amazing power or spiritual dexterity of the abbot and of some of the brethren, in catching, charming, and killing enormous snakes. This particular physical adroitness has, through a long course of ages, attached to the people of Egypt. And the Christianity of the monks took up and glorified the ancient sorcerers' craft, which thenceforth recommended itself as triumphing over the devil—that old serpent. If, on one of these pages, miraculous interpositions are recorded which one might almost consent to listen to, on the next the quack of the sorcerer steps forward and chastises our momentary credulity. A holy man not finding a boat when there was urgent occasion for crossing the Nile, calls a crocodile, and, with a brother presbyter, is carried over on his back. Another, being ashamed to strip in presence of his companions, when a river is to be forded, an angel, for the encouragement of his pudicity, descends in haste and bears him over dry. This is seriously related as well by Sozomen as Palladius. Miracle, miracle, miracle, from page to page. If the eye is attracted by the words, 'Such was the grace of God bestowed upon his servants,' what do we find in the context?—A beating the devil black and blue with a red-hot iron bar. Miracles and raw herbs, miracles and dirty sheepskin cloaks, miracles and a filthy condition of the soul confessed, miracles wrought freely by men whose virtue consisted in standing erect night and day year after year (or who pretended to do so). Put a few Christian phrases into the lips of any fakir of India, and you would make an illustrious Christian of him, according to the Nicene idea of Christian perfection."
Now if these miracles are a "sign" of the true church, false miracles must mark a false, apostate church. We know full well that such knavery is not to be compromised with Christianity. Their power was not exercised in keeping with apostolic truth; we must say, therefore, that they were wrought by "false prophets," professing truth, but holding error, through whom Satan wrought with all power and signs and lying wonders. And in this time the church was turned "away from the truth unto fables," according to the prophetic utterance of Paul.