own mode of vindicating this ceremony!


Ib. lxvi. 2. p. 432.

The Church had received from Christ a promise that such as have
believed in him these signs and tokens should follow them.

'To cast out devils, to speak with tongues, to drive away serpents, to
be free from the harm which any deadly poison could work, and to cure
diseases by imposition of hands.'

'Mark xvi'.

The man who verily and sincerely believes the narrative in St. John's
Gospel of the feeding of five thousand persons with a few loaves and
small fishes, and of the raising of Lazarus, in the plain and literal
sense, cannot be reasonably suspected of rejecting, or doubting, any
narrative concerning Christ and his Apostles, simply as miraculous. I
trust, therefore, that no disbelief of, or prejudice against, miraculous
events and powers will be attributed to me, as the ground or cause of my
strong persuasion that the latter verses of the last chapter of St.
Mark's Gospel were an additament of a later age, for which St. Luke's
Acts of the Apostles misunderstood supplied the hints.


Ib. lxxii. 15 & 16. p.539.

If Richard Hooker had written only these two precious paragraphs, I
should hold myself bound to thank the Father of lights and Giver of all