Quest. CLXII. May we not look for miracles hereafter?

Answ. 1. The answer to quest. clx. may serve to this. 1. God may work miracles if he please, and hath not told us that he never will.

2. But he hath not promised us that he will, and therefore we cannot believe such a promise, nor expect them as a certain thing. Nor may any pray for the gift of miracles.

3. But if there be any probability of them, it will be to those that are converting infidel nations, when they may be partly of such use as they were at first.

4. Yet it is certain, that God still sometimes worketh miracles; but arbitrarily and rarely, which may not put any individual person in expectation of them.

Object. Is not the promise the same to us as to the apostles and primitive christians, if we could but believe as they did?

Answ. 1. The promise to be believed goeth before the faith that believeth it, and not that faith before the promise.

2. The promise of the Holy Ghost was for perpetuity, to sanctify all believers: but the promise of that special gift of miracles, was for a time, because it was for a special use; that is, to be a standing seal to the truth of the gospel, which all after-ages may be convinced of in point of fact, and so may still have the use and benefit of. And Providence (ceasing miracles) thus expoundeth the promise. And if miracles must be common to all persons and ages, they would be as no miracles. And we have seen those that most confidently believed they should work them, all fail.

But I have written so largely of this point in a set disputation in my Treatise called “The Unreasonableness of Infidelity,” fully proving those first miracles satisfactory and obligatory to all following ages, that I must thither now refer the reader.

Luke xxiii. 8.

1 Cor. xii. 28, 29; Heb. ii. 3, 4; John x. 41.