The unexposed remainder were treated as genuine supernatural phenomena,
but caused by diabolical, not divine, agency. The reforming divine
Calfhill, supporting this view of the Catholic miracles in his answer to
Martiall's "Treatise of the Cross," points out that the majority of
supernatural events that have taken place in this world have been, most
undoubtedly, the work of the devil; and puts his opponents into a rather
embarrassing dilemma by citing the miracles of paganism, which both
Catholic and Protestant concurred in attributing to the evil one. He
then clinches his argument by asserting that "it is the devil's cunning
that persuades those that will walk in a popish blindness" that they are
worshipping God when they are in reality serving him. "Therefore," he
continues, consciously following an argument of St. Cyprianus against
the pagan miracles, "these wicked spirits do lurk in shrines, in roods,
in crosses, in images: and first of all pervert the priests, which are
easiest to be caught with bait of a little gain. Then work they
miracles. They appear to men in divers shapes; disquiet them when they
are awake; trouble them in their sleeps; distort their members; take
away their health; afflict them with diseases; only to bring them to
some idolatry. Thus, when they have obtained their purpose that a lewd
affiance is reposed where it should not, they enter (as it were) into a
new league, and trouble them no more.
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