The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi | Page 3

because they do not make use of the light they have
received, and do not reason deductively; they have only sought to
gratify their curiosity, or to gain credit for their discoveries; and do not
some of them lose themselves in their speculations, and become
impious, even so as to recognize no other God than nature itself?
In the third place, faith in the great mysteries of religion must incline us

to believe in the wonders we read in the Lives of the Saints. Are we,
then, not called upon to say to those whose prejudices we oppose: "As
you belong to the society of the faithful, you not only believe that three
Persons make only one God; that the Son of God was made man; that
the dead shall rise again; but also, that Jesus Christ becomes every day
present on our altars, under the species of bread and wine, at the words
of consecration; and you believe all the other astonishing wonders that
are proposed to you in our holy religion: why, then, do you find such
repugnance in believing those of the Lives of the Saints, which are far
inferior to the former"?
It is useless to say in answer, that these last are only based on human
testimony, which we are not obliged to receive; that the mysteries are
propounded to us by Divine authority, to which we are bound to submit;
for this is not the question before us. We only compare one wonder
with another, and we maintain that the belief in the one should facilitate
the belief in the other. In fact, if we believe with a firm and unshaken
faith what God, in His goodness, has been pleased to effect for the
salvation of all men, and what He continues daily to effect in the
Eucharist; may we not easily convince ourselves that He may have
given extraordinary marks of His affection for his most faithful
servants?
In the fourth place, similar wonders to those which are found in the
Lives of the Saints are also found in the Holy Scriptures. Raptures,
ecstasies, frequent visions and apparitions, continual revelations, an
infinity of miracles, miraculous fasts of forty days, are things recorded
in the Old and New Testaments. We believe all these wonderful
circumstances, and we are obliged to believe them, although they far
surpass our understanding; on what, then, shall we rely for maintaining
that the wonders recorded in the Lives of the Saints are improbable, and
that we may reasonably call them in question? Reason, on the contrary,
marks them as so much the more probable and worthy of credit, as we
know and believe similar ones which we may not doubt of. Christians
should be accustomed to what is marvellous, and require nothing but
proofs for the most unusual prodigies.
In the fifth place, the promise which Jesus made that the power of
working miracles should be given to true believers, gives authority to
the belief in miracles in the Lives of the Saints. "Amen, amen, I say to

you, he that believeth in me, the works that I do he shall do also, and
greater than these shall he do; because I go to the Father. And
whatsoever you ask the Father in my name, that will I do." "And these
signs shall follow them that believe: In my name they shall cast out
devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents;
and if they shall drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they
shall lay their hands upon the sick, and they shall recover."
Our Saviour, according to the doctrine of the Holy Fathers, has
promised the gift of miracles, not to each one of the faithful in
particular, but to the Church in general; and His promise is for all times,
when the good of religion requires its accomplishment. Heretics
pretend that it only related to the days of the apostles, and that miracles
were only required for the establishment of the faith. What right have
they to limit the words of the Son of God? Do they imagine that they
understand the Scriptures better than the holy doctors? How will they
prove that since the time of the apostles there have been no
combinations of circumstances in which the good of religion shall have
required that miracles should be performed? They were required for the
infidels, to whom the Gospel has been preached in different centuries,
as well as for the Greek and Roman idolaters, to whom it was first
announced. The Church has required them to silence the heretics who
have successively endeavored to impugn her dogmas, and to strengthen
the faith of her own children. They have been always useful for
manifesting the eminence of virtue, for the glory of