Full and easy satisfaction which is the true and safe religion in a conference…Full and easie satisfaction which is the true and safe religion in a conference…

XX. Lastly, It is a Miracle that all these Miracles should be done so as not to appear to the senses of any man living, either to Convert Unbelievers or Confirm the faithful: So that millions of these Miracles are seen and not seen; the Priest, and Action, and Accidents are seen, but no Miracle seen by any. So that Aquinas concludeth 3. q. 76. a. 7, [Though Christ be existent in this Sacrament per modum substantiae, yet neither bodily eyes, nor our Intellects can see him, but by faith: no nor the Intellect of an Angel can see him secundum sua naturalia; nor do Devils see him but by faith; nor the blessed, but in the Divine Essence.]

All these make these Miracles far more miraculous than the raising of Lazarus from the dead.

Whether all these are Miracles, or most or many of them Contradictions, and therefore Impossibilities, I make no great matter of at this time. I think it utterly needless to add any more to what is said in answer to such sayings as Aquinas's (3. q. 75. & 76.) and other Schoolmen, that [The senses are not deceived, because there are the Accidents, and the Intellect is by faith preserved from deception: that the remaining accidents are in quantitate dimensiva quasi in subjecto: that these Accidents can change an extrinsic body, can be corrupted, can generate Worms, can nourish, can be broken, &c.] For all this at least confesseth, that its all done by Miracle: (Though I ⟨p. 109⟩will say, 1. That they could scarce have chosen a more unhappy pro-subject of Accidents than Quantity, nor have given more unhappy reasons for it than Aquinas doth q. 77. a. 2. c. 1. Because the sense perceiveth that it is Aliquid quantum, that is coloured. 2. Because Quantity is the first disposition of matter, &c. For this includeth matter: and Aliquid quantum is a word that giveth away his Cause: And no Accident is more the same with its subject than Quantity, or moles extensiva. 2. And he will be long before he will make or prove mans nature to be such, as that his Intellect can judge of substances by Believing, as incomplex objects, before it have perceived them by sense and imagination. When we see, taste, smell, feel, hear them, the Intellect will suddenly and necessarily have some species or perception of the Thing, before it come Logically to dispute from extrinsic media of Testimony, What this thing is in a second notion. And our question is, Whether the Intellect in this first Perception be deceived, or not? If you discharge the Intellect from perceiving substances presently, before it know them by second notions or Argument, you will make man quite another thing, than every hour and action tells us he is: But what will not a man say, when he sets himself only to study what to say for the making good of his undertaken Cause?