shock the profaner sort of men, if the reputation of St Francis Xavier
were not well established in the world, and that the wonderful things he
did had not all the marks of true miracles. As the author who made the
collection of them has well observed, the mission of the saint gives them
an authority, even in our first conceptions of them: for being sent from
God for the conversion of infidels, it was necessary that the faith
should be planted in the East, by the same means as it had been through
all the world, in the beginning of the church.

Besides which, never any miracles have been examined with greater care,
or more judicially than these. They were not miracles wrought in private,
and which we are only to believe on the attestation of two or three
interested persons, such who might have been surprised into an opinion of
them; they were ordinarily public matters of fact, avowed by a whole city
or kingdom, and which had for witnesses the body of a nation, for the
most part Heathen, or Mahometan. Many of these miracles have been of long
continuance; and it was an easy matter for such who were incredulous, to
satisfy their doubts concerning them. All of them have been attended by
such consequences as have confirmed their truth, beyond dispute: such as
were--the conversions of kingdoms, and of kings, who were the greatest
enemies to Christianity; the wonderful ardency of those new Christians,
and the heroical constancy of their martyrs. But after all, nothing can
give a greater confirmation of the saint's miracles, than his saint-like
life; which was even more wonderful than the miracles themselves. It was
in a manner of necessity, that a man of so holy a conversation should
work those things, which other men could not perform; and that, resigning
himself to God, with an entire confidence and trust, in the most
dangerous occasions, God should consign over to him some part of his
omnipotence, for the benefit of souls.