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tendency , unquestionably , and , I fear it must be added , the intention , of this dissertation , appears to be to weaken the force of historical evidence as applied to those miraculous facts upon which alone the proof of a divine revelation can be founded . It is true that in the outset the author professes to confine his attention to such cases as are likely to be made the subject of judicial proceedings ; but when we find him afterwards stigmatizing the all
Mosaic law , or the historian of the raising of Samuel , as responsible for the horrible tragedies enacted by modern believers in witchcraft ; when we find him representing it as impossible to receive any fact professing to be supernatural upon testimony given after the event has taken place , we cannot but perceive that his principles are capable of a more extensive application . Nor can we read with attention the variety of ingenious and subtle illustrations with which he has accompanied them , without being impressed with the conviction that they were intended to be so applied .
Mr . Bentham sets out with the remark , that , in regard to judicial facts , the term impossible can only mean , in the highest degree improbable . * It is presumed that under "judicial facts" are here comprehended only those which are represented as having been accomplished by unassisted human power , otherwise the limitation here introduced involves an assumption of the qttestion in debate . When any supernatural power is concerned , or is alleged to
have been concerned , the mere intrinsic improbability of the fact attested has evidently nothing to do with the credibility of the testimony . Provided that such an exercise of supernatural power , in confirmation of a divine commission , is admitted not to be in its own nature impossible or even improbable , we have no further inquiry to make except into the character of the testimony , —the veracity of the witnesses , and their opportunity of observing accurately what they profess to have seen and heard .
The only correct and philosophical definition of impossible is , that which involves a contradiction . Whatever does not involve a contradiction may be conceived to take place ; and where Omnipotence is concerned , whatever can be conceived to take place may be realized : but where finite or human power alone is in question , the term has evidently a more extensive meaning . If the limits within which this power is confined can be exactly ascertained , whatever goes beyond them is , relatively speaking , impossible . To
assign these limits with absolute precision is , indeed , impracticable , and this is a circumstance on which Mr . Bentham afterwards Jays great stress , for the purpose , apparently , of shewing that , as we cannot say where the credible ends and the incredible begins , any extraordinary fact or phenomenon inconsistent ( at least in the degree in which it is reported to have been observed ) with the usual course of things , cannot be relied upon as an evidence of the exercise of supernatural agency - This difficulty , however , does not appear to be of material consequence ; because , though we cannot trace the
precise line which separates the relatively possible from the relatively impossible , the uncertainty attending the solution of thi 3 problem may in general be reduced within very narrow limits ; and with reference to every mode of exercising human power we can fix upon some point to which it may be affirmed without fear of contradiction that it has not attained . Thus , in proving an alibi , if the possibility be admitted of a man ' s travelling two hundred miles in a day , it would be difficult to prove it impossible that he should be found at the distance of two hundred and twenty miles ; but we
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394 Evidence for Improbable and Supernatural Facts .
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* Vol . II . p . 168 .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1827, page 394, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1797/page/2/
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