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"But how shall we excuse the supine inattention of the Pagan
and philosophic world, to those evidences which were represented
by the hand of Omnipotence, not to their reason, but to their
senses? During the age of Christ, of his apostles, and of their
first disciples, the doctrine which they preached was confirmed
by innumerable prodigies. The lame walked, the blind saw, the
sick were healed, the dead were raised, dæmons were
expelled, and the laws of Nature were frequently suspended for
the benefit of the church. But the sages of Greece and Rome
turned aside from the awful spectacle, and, pursuing the ordinary
occupations of life and study, appeared unconscious of any
alterations in the moral or physical government of the world.
Under the reign of Tiberius, the whole earth, or at least a
celebrated province of the Roman empire, was involved in a
preternatural darkness of three hours. Even this miraculous
event, which ought to have excited the wonder, the curiosity, and
the devotion of mankind, passed without notice in an age of
science and history. It happened during the lifetime of Seneca
and the elder Pliny, who must have experienced the immediate
effects, or received the earliest intelligence, of the prodigy.
Each of these philosophers, in a laborious work, has recorded all
the great phenomena of Nature, earthquakes, meteors, comets, and
eclipses, which his indefatigable curiosity could collect. Both
the one and the other have omitted to mention the greatest
phenomenon to which the mortal eye has been witness since the
creation of the globe."
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