It is, they say, the love of truth which induces them to examine most
scrupulously the miracles of the saints; nothing should be believed,
or be proposed to belief, but what is true. But Bossuet said of bad
critics: "They are content, provided they can pass for more subtle
observers than others, and they find themselves sharper, in not giving
credit to so many wonders." The love of truth does not consist in
denying its existence, where so many persons of first-rate genius have
found it; it does not depend on rendering obscure the light it sheds,
nor in giving to the public Lives of Saints accompanied by a dry,
bitter, and licentious criticism, calculated to throw doubt on all
that is extraordinary in them, and thereby to give scandal. The learned
Jesuits, the continuators of Bollandus, show, by the precision of their
researches, that they are sincere lovers of truth, but we do not see
that they endeavor to diminish the number of miracles: "They have no
idea of taking them for fictions; nothing astonishes them in the lives
of the friends of God, provided it be well attested." Father Thomassen,
of the Oratory, in his treatise on the Celebration of Festivals, speaks
of a miraculous event which occurred in the sixth century, and which
is reported by Bollandus, and he adds: "These sorts of miracles are
by no means articles of faith, but nevertheless, they are not to be
rejected by sage and considerate persons. Upon reading the works of
St. Cyprian, St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, and St. Jerome, and those of
St. Gregory of Nyssa, of St. Basil, and St. Athanasius, we can have
no doubt that these fathers had no difficulty in believing similar
occurrences, similarly attested. St. Augustine, indeed, has related
several much more incredible; and it is greatly to be feared that to
set one's self above the Augustines, the Jeromes, the Gregories, and
the most learned Fathers of the Church, must be the effect of a most
dangerous pride."