Paul teaches us that Antichrist, "that man of perdition, will come
according to the working of Satan in all power, and signs, and lying
wonders." The father of lies has often inspired the heretics to produce
miracles, which they have asserted to have been performed by persons
of their party, living or dead, from whence they inferred that God
authorized the doctrines they taught. Ecclesiastical history furnishes
many examples of this, and there are some very recent ones.

But Jesus Christ has furnished us with a sure and infallible rule to
avoid the contagion: it is to hear the Church; it is to consider those
only as true miracles of which she approves, and of which she sanctions
the publication; it is to believe firmly that no one who is in revolt
against the Church will ever perform a miracle favorable to his sect,
whatever appearance of austerity, piety, charity, or sanctity, he may
put on; which St. Thomas bases mainly on this principle: that it is
impossible that God, who alone can give the power of working a true
miracle, shall ever communicate that power to confirm a false doctrine;
from whence it follows, that all the miracles produced by sectarians,
notwithstanding all their evidence, and all their pretended
attestations, must neither be examined nor listened to, and must only
be looked upon as purely natural effects, or as impostures, or as
delusions and diabolical operations. This is the way in which St.
Augustine expresses himself on the subject of the miracles which the
Donatists claimed to have performed, and claimed as evidence in favor
of their schism. Let Catholics, therefore, reject with horror the false
prodigies of sectarians, but let them piously give credit to the
miracles of the saints, without paying attention to the ultra-criticism
which strives to throw doubts upon them; and let them be intimately
persuaded that the Church, which approves of them, has founded that
approval on evidence irreproachable.