Revelation 13:13

13. Doeth great wonders The Romanists to-day teach us that one of the marks of a true Church is miracles; and they claim a continual train of miracles as existing in their own Church. Chief among these is the act of transubstantiation, by which every priest is able to “create the Son of God.” But as this miracle is an invisible process, it is of no use in converting those who do not already believe. Romish books are full of transcendental marvels, narrating miraculous performances, sometimes ludicrous, often monstrous, and not seldom altogether surpassing those of Christ and his apostles in their prodigious character. The Bollandist volumes, more than sixty in number, approved by the pope, are full of tales written with a free inventive fancy, producing great wonders by the mere flourish of an unrestrained pen.

In modern times the “Holy Coat of Treves” was pronounced by Pope Gregory, predecessor of Pius IX., to be the true coat of Christ on which the soldiers cast lots, and for a time hundreds of thousands of pilgrims paid their visit to it.

Another specimen miracle is the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius, which is exhibited thrice a year at Naples. A red mass is first shown in a vial, and then this gradually melts, and the process is considered miraculous! Probably it is a red substance liquefied by the warmth of the priest’s hands. The classic Addison saw it and said, “So far from thinking it a miracle, I look upon it as one of the most bungling tricks I ever saw.”

The mechanical miracles of the moving eyes of the saints’ images could be easily repeated by the manufacturers of our Christmas toys, but they were once powerful aids to Romish superstition. True miracles may, indeed, be the marks of a true Church; but false miracles are the marks of a false Church, especially as fulfilling predictions like this verse.

Fire come down from heaven Said Pope Pius IX., “I cannot, like St. Peter, launch certain thunders which reduce bodies to ashes; but I can, nevertheless, launch the thunders which reduce souls to ashes.” Lightnings and thunderbolts are the terms under which excommunication is conceived. Gregory VII. pronounced the Emperor Henry IV. to be “struck with lightning,” afflatum fulmine, by his excommunication. Says Ducange, “To fulminate an excommunication is the established phrase of the present day.” So also we are told, in a work on the “Glories of Mary,” that she once descended with torches in her hands and consumed a church building, at which she was offended, with fifteen hundred guilty occupants. See “Medieval Miracles,” p. 138.