¹ Ex. 14, 26–29; Num. 11, 9; Ex. 7, 8–12.

² See John 11,43–44 and 2, 1–11; Mark 1, 40–42; Matt. 8, 2–4; John 9, 1–7.

³ Aquinas’s views are enshrined in his Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 110, a. 4. See also 1a, q. 105, a. 6–8. Key passages from his Summa Contra Gentiles are extracted in Richard Swinburne, ed., Miracles (New York and London, 1989), 19–22.

⁴ Texeda, Fernando de, Miracles Unmasked (London, 1625), 4–5.Google Scholar

⁵ Ibid.; Calvin, John, Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV/19/18–19, ed. McNeill, John T., transl. Battle, F. L., 2 vols (London, 1961), 2: 1466–7 Google Scholar. The passage concerns the apostolic gift of healing, but Calvin also made the point in other contexts.

⁶ See for example Later Writings of Bishop Hooper, ed. Nevinson, Charles, PS 21 (Cambridge, 1852), 44–5 Google Scholar; Calfhill, James, An Answer to John Martiall’s Treatise on the Cross, ed. Gibbings, Richard, PS 11 (Cambridge, 1846), 333 Google Scholar; Dering, Edward, XXVII Lectures, or Readings, upon Part of the Epistle Written to the Hebrues (London, 1590)Google Scholar, sigs G3v-G5r; Tynley, Robert, Two Learned Sermons (London, 1609), 59–60, 63–5 Google Scholar; Sheldon, Richard, A Survey of the Miracles of the Church of Rome, Proving them to be Antichristian (London, 1616), esp. 50–1 Google Scholar; Downame, John, The Summe of Sacred Divinitie (London, [1620?]), 377.Google Scholar

⁷ William Shakespeare, All’s Well that Ends Well, II. iii. 1–6; Henry V, I. i. 68–70. References are to the first folio of 1623.

⁸ Weber, Max, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, transl. Parsons, Talcott (London, 1930), 105 Google Scholar (though Parsons translates ‘Entzauberung der Welt’ as ‘the elimination of magic from the world’). Scribner, Robert W., ‘The Reformation, Popular Magic and the “Disenchantment of the World”’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 23 (1993), 475–94 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘Reformation and Desacralisation: from Sacramental World to Moralised Universe’, in Hsia, R. Po-Chia and Scribner, R. W., eds, Problems in the Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Europe, Forschungen, Wolfenbütteler 78 (Wiesbaden, 1997), 75–92.Google Scholar

⁹ See Thomas, , Religion and the Decline of Magic, 27–59 Google Scholar; Scribner, R. W., ‘Cosmic Order and Daily Life: Sacred and Secular in Pre-Industrial German Society’ and ‘Ritual and Popular Belief in Catholic Germany at the Time of the Reformation’, in idem, Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany (London, 1987), 1–16, 17–47 Google Scholar; Duffy, Eamon, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c. 1400–1580 (New Haven, CT, and London, 1992), esp. 155–205, 266–98 Google Scholar; Finucane, , Miracles and Pilgrims.Google Scholar

¹⁰ See Finucane, , Miracles and Pilgrims, 191–202 Google Scholar; Sumption, Jonathan, Pilgrimage: an Image of Mediaeval Religion (London, 1975), 35–40 Google Scholar; Marshall, Peter, ‘Forgery and Miracles in the Reign of Henry VIII’, P&P 178 (2003), 39–73, 46–7.Google Scholar

¹¹ See ‘The Shipwreck’, ‘The Apparition’ and ‘The Religious Pilgrimage’, in The Whole Familiar Colloquies of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, transl. Bailey, Nathan (London, 1877)Google Scholar; The Dialogue concerning Heresies, bk. I, chs 14–15, in The Complete Works of St Thomas More, ed. Thomas M. C. Lawler et al., 15 vols (New Haven, CT, and London, 1981), 6.1: 85–92.

¹² See for example, Tyndale, William, Doctrinal Treatises and Introductions to Different Portions of the Holy Scriptures, ed. Walter, Henry, PS 42 (Cambridge, 1848), 195, 232–5, 286–9 Google Scholar; Bale, John, The Actes of English Votaryes (2nd edn, Wesel [Antwerp], 1546)Google Scholar.

¹³ Marshall, ‘Forgery and Miracles’, passim; see also Finucane, , Miracles and Pilgrims, 203–16.Google Scholar

¹⁴ The Works of a Lollard Preacher: the Sermon ‘Omnis plantacio’, the Tract ‘Fundamentum aliud nemo potest ponere’ and the Tract ‘De oblacione iugis sacrificii’, ed. Hudson, Anne, EETS, os 317 (Oxford, 2001), 231.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Marshall, , ‘Forgery and Miracles’, 72–3, 40.Google Scholar

¹⁶ See Walker, D. P., ‘The Cessation of Miracles’, in Merkel, Ingrid and Debus, Allen G., eds, Hermeticism and the Renaissance: Intellectual History and the Occult in Early Modern Europe (London and Washington, DC, 1988), 111–24, 112 Google Scholar. For the complexity of Calvin’s thinking on the issue, see also Eire, Carlos M. N., War against the Idols: the Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin (Cambridge, 1986), 221–4 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sluhovsky, Moshe, ‘Calvinist Miracles and the Concept of the Miraculous in Sixteenth-Century Huguenot Thought’, Renaissance and Reformation 19 (1995), 5–25, 9–11.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Such arguments are expounded with particular clarity in Sheldon’s Survey of the Miracles of the Church of Rome (see n. 6 above). For a close study of how the miracles associated with St Dunstan were redefined as diabolical magic and fabricated legends, see Parish, Helen L., ‘“Impudent and Abominable Fictions”: Rewriting Saints’ Lives in the English Reformation’, Sixteenth Century Journal 32 (2001), 45–65 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the devil as a natural magician, see Clark, Stuart, Thinking with Demons: the Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford, 1997), 161–78 Google Scholar. On the theme of ‘lying wonders’, see also Iliffe, Rob, ‘Lying Wonders and Juggling Tricks: Religion, Nature, and Imposture in Early Modern England’, in Force, James E. and Katz, David S., eds, Everything Connects: in Conference with Richard H. Popkin (Leiden, 1999), 185–209.Google Scholar

¹⁸ It was, he alleged, to ‘doo injurie to our Saviour Christ’: Dering, XXVII Lectures, sigs G4V-5r.

¹⁹ Tynley, , Two Learned Sermons, 64 Google Scholar. Seeking to refute his Catholic adversaries from their own mouths, Tynley was, in fact, quoting from the Spanish Franciscan theologian Diego de Estella (1524–78). At pp. 64–5, Tynley also cited similar assertions by Ambrosius Catharinus, John Fisher and Thomas Stapleton, whose comments reflected the distinct ambivalence of mid sixteenth-century Catholic apologists about the miraculous, as alluded to below.

²⁰ Dering, XXVII Lectures, sig. G5r.

²¹ Sheldon, , Survey, 35.Google Scholar

²² See Tynley, , Two Learned Sermons, 66 Google Scholar: ‘we therefore thinke miracles superfluous unto us … because we professe the same doctrine which our Saviour and his Apostles … have confirmed to our hands, by so many true signes, and divine miracles… As for the faith of the Church of Rome, as it is new and strangely degenerating from the ancient Catholike faith, so it is no marvell if it bee confirmed by new miracles…’.

²³ Gee, John, The Foot out of the Snare (London, 1624)Google Scholar; idem, Hold fast: a Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse (London, 1624), 38.Google Scholar

²⁴ See my ‘Miracles and the Counter Reformation Mission to England’, HistJ 46 (2003), 779–815 Google Scholar. For parallel strategies on the Continent, see Soergel, Philip M., Wondrous in his Saints: Counter-Reformation Propaganda in Bavaria (Berkeley, CA, 1993), 159–216 Google Scholar, and Johnson, Trevor, ‘Blood, Tears and Xavier-Water: Jesuit Missionaries and Popular Religion in the Eighteenth-Century Upper Palatinate’, in Scribner, Bob and Johnson, Trevor, eds, Popular Religion in Germany and Central Europe, 1400–1800 (Basingstoke, 1996), 183–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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²⁶ Bellarmine, Robert, Disputationes… de controversiis christianae fidei (3rd edn, Ingolstadt, 1590-3)Google Scholar, bk. 4, ch. 14, no. 11, cols 1347–54. See also Bristow, Richard, A Briefe Treatise of Diverse Plaine and Sure Waies to Finde out the Truth (Antwerp, 1574; repr. 1599)Google Scholar, fols 15a-39a; Hill, Thomas, A Quartron of Reasons of Catholike Religion (Antwerp, 1600), 33–9.Google Scholar

²⁷ Musket, George, The Bishop of London his Legacy (Saint Omer, 1623), 64–76, 65 Google Scholar; Numan, Philips, Miracles Lately Wrought by the Intervention of the Glorious Virgin Marie, at Mont-Aigu, transl. Chambers, Robert (Antwerp, 1606)Google Scholar, sigs A2V-C7V.

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²⁹ See Walsham, , ‘Miracles’, 788–99.Google Scholar

³⁰ Ibid., 800–5. These exorcisms were the subject of a devastating attack by S[amuel] H[arnset], A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures (London, 1604), which incorporates extensive summaries of the content of the ‘book of miracles’ prepared by Weston. See also Walker, D. P., Unclean Spirits: Possession and Exorcism in France and England in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries (London, 1981), 43–9 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brownlow, F. W., Shakespeare, Hausnett and the Devils of Denham (Newark, DA, 1993)Google Scholar.

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³³ Sheldon, , Survey, 23 Google ScholarPubMed; SirHoby, Edward, A Letter to Mr T. H[iggons] late Minister: Now Fugitive (London, 1609), 101–2 Google Scholar. Such allegations were commonplace. See, e.g., Rich, Barnaby, The True Report of a Late Practise Enterprised by a Papist (London, 1582)Google Scholar, sigs B 1r, E1r; Scot, Reginald, The Discovery of Witchcraft (London, 1665 edn; first publ. 1584), bk 8, ch. 7, 87–8.Google Scholar

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³⁵ This was probably only compiled in the late 1680s, towards the end of Fox’s life. The manuscript is now lost but its contents are ingeniously reconstructed by Cadbury, Henry J. in George Fox’s ‘Book of Miracles’ (Cambridge, 1948)Google Scholar.

³⁶ See Prynne, William, A Fresh Discovery of some Prodigious New Wandring-Blasing-Stars, and Firebrands, Stiling themselves New-Lights (2nd edn, London, 1646), 13 Google Scholar; Edwards, Thomas, Gangraena (3rd edn, London, 1646)Google Scholar, pt I,3 2; Pagitt, Ephraim, Heresiography (2nd edn, London, 1654), 140.Google Scholar

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³⁸ Pemble, William, A Treatise of the Providence of God, in The Workes of that Learned Minister of Gods holy Word, Mr. William Pemble (3rd edn, London, 1635), 259–79, 279, and see 278–9 Google Scholar passim.

³⁹ Walker, Ralph, A Learned and Profitable Treatise of Gods Providence (London, 1608), 54.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Ames, William, The Marrow of Sacred Divinity (London, 1642), 47.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Augustine, St, Concerning the City of God against the Pagans, bk 21, ch. 8 and bk 22, ch. 8, transl. Bettenson, Henry (Harmondsworth, 1972), 979–83 and 1033–47 Google Scholar respectively. John A. Hardon provides a useful, if somewhat apologetic, survey of changing conceptions of the miraculous in The Concept of Miracle from St. Augustine to Modern Apologetics’, Theological Studies 15 (1954), 229–57. For medieval views, see Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind, 3–19. ‘The blending of the miraculous and the natural in Calvinist cosmology’ is central to Sluhovsky’s argument in ‘Calvinist Miracles’, 20 and passim.

⁴² See Clark, , Thinking with Demons, esp. 153–5, 161–78, 262–6, 279 Google Scholar; Daston, Lorraine, ‘Marvelous Facts and Miraculous Evidence in Early Modern Europe’, Critical Inquiry 18 (1991), 93–124 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On contemporary understandings of the relationship between natural and miraculous causation, see also Kocher, Paul H., Science and Religion in Elizabethan England (San Marino, CA, 1953), 93–118, esp. 104–14.Google Scholar

⁴³ See Vogler, Bernard, ‘La Réforme et le miracle’, Revue d’histoire de la spiritualité 48 (1972), 145–9 Google Scholar; Eire, , War against the Idols, 221–4.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ To use the words of a mid-seventeenth-century writer: London, BL, MS Sloane 1926, fol. 1r.

⁴⁵ Odingsells, Charles, A Discourse of Miracles, in Two Sermons Lately Preached at hangar in the Valley of Belvoir (London, 1620), 59.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Baynes, Paul, The Mirrour or Miracle of Gods Love unto the World of his Elect (London, 1619), 9–10 Google Scholar and passim.

⁴⁷ Tynley, , Two Learned Sermons, 66.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ See A Most Excellent and Remarkable Speech Delivered, by that Mirrour and Miracle of Princes, Queen Elizabeth of Famous Memory (London, 1643)Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ See Walsham, , Providence, 243–7 Google Scholar. Ward, Samuel, To God, In Memorye of his Double Deliveraunce from the Invincible Navie and the Unmatcheable Powder Treason (Amsterdam, 1621)Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ The Diary of Sir Simonds D’Ewes (1622–1624): journal d’un étudiant londinien sous le règne de Jacques 1 er, ed. Bourcier, Elisabeth (Paris, 1975), 164 Google Scholar. See also Brome, Alexander, A Congratulatory Poem on the Miraculous, and Glorious Return of that Unparallel’d King Charles the II., May 29. 1660 (London, 1660)Google Scholar; A Proclamation… a Miraculous Deliverance from Popery and Arbitrary Power (London, 1689)Google Scholar. The Civil War defeats of the King were celebrated by Parliament’s supporters in similar terms: see, e.g., A Miraculous Victory Obtained by the Right Honourable Ferdinando, Lord Fairfax (London, 1643)Google Scholar; [E]nglands Miraculous Preservation Emblematically Described (London, 1647)Google Scholar.

⁵¹ For a more detailed exposition of this argument, see Walsham, Providence, 32–64.

⁵² Golding, Arthur, A Discourse upon the Earthquake that Hapned throughe this Realme of Englande (London, 1580)Google Scholar, sig. B3V. This tract was incorporated into the official order of prayer issued to appease divine wrath: ‘A godly Admonition for the time present’, in William Keatinge Clay, ed., Liturgical Services: Liturgies and Occasional Forms of Prayer Set Forth in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, PS 30 (Cambridge, 1847), 572.

⁵³ Miracle upon Miracle or A True Relation of the Great Floods which Happened in Coventry, in Lynne, and other Places (London, 1607), esp. 6.Google ScholarPubMed

⁵⁴ See for example, Gods Handy-worke in Wonders. Miraculously Shewen upon Two Women, Lately Delivered of Two Monsters (London, 1615)Google Scholar; A Myraculous, and Monstrous, but yet, most True, and Certayne Discourse of a Woman … in the Midst of whose Fore-head.… There Groweth out a Crooked Home… (London, 1588)Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ Miraculous Newes, from the Cittie of Holdt… Where there were Plainely Beheld Three Dead Bodyes Rise out of their Graves …, transl. T. F. (London, 1616)Google Scholar; Looke up and See Wonders. A Miraculous Apparition in the Ayre, Lately Seene in Barke-shire… (London, 1628)Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ T. I., A Miracle, of Miracles … (London, 1614)Google Scholar. See Johnson, Gerald D., ‘John Trundle and the Book-Trade 1603–1626’, Studies in Bibliography 39 (1986), 177–99.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ ‘Walsham, Providence, 116–224.

⁵⁸ Ibid, 65–115.

⁵⁹ Beard, Thomas, The Theatre of Gods Judgements (1st edn, London, 1597; 3rd edn, 1631), 60–1.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Foxe, John, Actes and Monuments (4th edn, London, 1583), 775–6 Google Scholar. On Foxe’s errors in connection with this case, see Mozley, James Frederic, John Foxe and his Book (London, 1940), 163–4.Google Scholar

⁶¹ See Walsham, , Providence, 71–2.Google Scholar

⁶² Bede, , The History of the Church of Englande, trans. Stapleton, Thomas (Antwerp, 1565)Google Scholar, sig. C1r.

⁶³ Ibid.: Bramford was a mistake for Brentwood.

⁶⁴ [Nicholas Harpsfield] Alan Cope (pseud.), Dialogi sex (Antwerp, 1573; first publ. 1566), esp. 540–1, 666–8, 680–1, 688. Harpsfield’s comments also referred to miracles mentioned by Luther and other Protestant writers.

⁶⁵ Foxe, Actes and Monuments (1563 edn), 95, 433, 444, 520, 881, 1040, 1355, 1669. A number of these ‘miracles’ were left out of the second and later editions. See also Collinson, Patrick, ‘Truth, Lies and Fiction in Sixteenth-Century Protestant Historiography’, in Kelley, Donald R. and Sacks, David Harris, eds, The Historical Imagination in Early Modern Britain: History, Rhetoric, and Fiction 1500–1800 (Cambridge, 1997), 37–68, 55–7 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This is a complex topic, to which it is impossible to do justice in a single paragraph. I am grateful to Tom Freeman for comments that saved me from a serious lapse of judgement.

⁶⁶ Gods Power and Providence: Shewed in the Miraculous Preservation and Deliverance of Eight Englishmen, Left by Mischance in Green-land Anno 1630 (London, 1631)Google Scholar.

⁶⁷ Lamentable Newes, Shewing the Wonderfull Deliverance of Maister Edmond Pet Sayler (London, 1613)Google Scholar.

⁶⁸ Caesarius of Heisterbach, The Dialogue on Miracles, transl. H. von E. Scott and C. C. Swinton Bland, 2 vols (London, 1929), 1: 515–16; 2: 59, 209–10; Johannes Herolt, Miracles of the Blessed Virgin Mary, transl. C. C. Swinton Bland (London, 1928), 64–7.

⁶⁹ A True Relation of Gods Wonderfull Mercies, in Preserving One Alive, which Hanged Five Dayes, who was Falsely Accused (London, [1605?])Google Scholar. A ballad on the same topic survives in manuscript: Clark, Andrew, ed., The Shirburn Ballads 1585–1616 (Oxford, 1907), 159–63.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Newes from the Dead. Or A True and Exact Narration of the Miraculous Deliverance of A. Greene… (Oxford, 1651)Google Scholar, title-page. See also Burdet, W., A Wonder of Wonders. Being a Faithful Narrative and True Relation, of one Anne Green … (London, 1651)Google Scholar; A Declaration from Oxford, of Anne Green (London, 1651)Google Scholar.

⁷¹ Mercurius Politicus, 28 (12–19 December, 1650) and 32 (9–16 January 1650[1]), pr. in Joad Raymond, ed., Making the News: an Anthology of the Newsbooks of Revolutionary England 1641–1660 (Moreton-in-Marsh and New York, 1993), 182–4, and see Raymond’s commentary on 170–3.

⁷² Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogue on Miracles, 1: 53–5; 2: 60–1, 74; Herolt, Miracles, 22–3; Acta SS Octobris I, 682. See the article by Michael Goodich in this volume, 135–56.

⁷³ A True Relation, sigs A3v-4r. Distinctively Tridentine variations on this theme also survive from seventeenth-century France. See Roger Chartier, ‘The Hanged Woman Miraculously Saved: An Occasionnel’, in idem, ed., The Culture of Print: Power and the Uses of Print in Early Modern Europe, transl. Lydia G. Cochrane (Cambridge, 1989), 59–91. A similar broadsheet about an innocent maiden who survived her hanging near Rheims in 1589 was published in Augsburg: Walter L. Strauss, The German Single-Leaf Woodcut 1550–1600: a Pictorial Catalogue, 3 vols (New York, 1975), 3: 1194.

⁷⁴ Finucane calculates that nine tenths of the late medieval miracles reported were medical: Miracles and Pilgrims, 59.

⁷⁵ Bailey, Walter, A Briefe Discours of certain Bathes or Medicinall Waters in the Countie of Warwicke neere unto a Village called Newnam Regis ([London?], 1587)Google Scholar, sig. A3V.

⁷⁶ G. W., Newes out of Cheshire of the New Found Well (London, 1600), sig. Dzv. See also sig. A3V and passim.

⁷⁷ St[anhope], M[ichael], Newes out of York-shire … (London, 1627), 20 Google Scholar. On the language used to describe cures, see my ‘Reforming the Waters: Holy Wells and Healing Springs in Protestant England’, in Wood, Diana, ed„ Life and Thought in the Northern Church c.1100- c.1700: Essays in Honour of Claire Cross, SCH.S 12 (Woodbridge, 1999), 227–55, 252.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Crawford, Raymond, The King’s Evil (Oxford, 1911)Google Scholar should be supplemented by Bloch, Marc, The Royal Touch: Sacred Monarchy and Scrofula in England and France, transl. Anderson, J. E. (London, 1973), esp. 181–92, 207–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷⁹ Stubbe, Henry, The Miraculous Conformist… (Oxford, 1666), 9.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ See the royal surgeon William Clowes’s A Right Frutefull and Approoved Treatise, for the Artificiall Cure of that Malady, called in Latin Struma, and in English, the Evill, Cured by Kinges and Queenes of England (London, 1602), sig. A2v, and also the royal chaplain William Tooker’s Charisma: Sive Donum Sanationis (London, 1597).

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⁸² Bloch, , Royal Touch, 212.Google Scholar

⁸³ There was, however, some theological ambiguity on this point Protestant writers admitted that God did employ human beings as the mechanisms of His Providence but emphatically insisted that His omnipotent power could not be communicated to any creature: see Dent, Arthur, A Sermon of Christes Miracles (London, 1610 edn, first publ. 1608)Google Scholar, sigs B2r-3r.

⁸⁴ Bloch, , Touch, Royal, 183.Google Scholar

⁸⁵ A Miracle of Miracles: Wrought by the Blood of King Charles the First, of Happy Memory, upon a Mayd at Detford… (London, 1649)Google Scholar, title-page.

⁸⁶ Ibid., passim. For the polemical content and purpose of this pamphlet, see Lacey, Andrew, The Cult of King Charles the Martyr (Woodbridge, 2003), 62–4 Google Scholar. In the 1680s, reports of cures wrought by the Duke of Monmouth and his sister were publicized as part of the campaign in support of his rival claim to succession to the Stuart throne. See A True and Wonderful Account of a Cure of the Kings-Evil (London, 1681).Google Scholar

⁸⁷ A Brief Account of Mr. Valentine GREATRAKS, and Divers of the Strange Cures by him Lately Performed… (London, 1666), 30–1 Google Scholar. See also Wonders if not Miracles, or A Relation of the Wondeful Performances of Valentine Greatrux (London, 1665)Google ScholarPubMed, and Stubbe, Miraculous Conformist. Greatrakes’s opponents marshalled the usual arguments to counteract these claims, insisting his cures were fraudulent, diabolical or purely natural wonders and reiterating the claim that miracles had ceased: see [Lloyd, David], Wonders no Miracles (London, 1666)Google Scholar and BL, MS Sloane 1926. For a detailed discussion, see Duffy, Eamon, ‘Valentine Greatrakes, the Irish Stroker: Miracle, Science and Orthodoxy in Restoration England’, in Robbins, Keith, ed., Religion and Humanism, SCH 17(Oxford, 1981), 251–73.Google Scholar

⁸⁸ Cadbury, ed., George Fox’s ‘Book of Miracles’, 5–6 and see plate II. It should be noted that the allegation that such events were ‘miracles’ often came from the early Quakers’ opponents, who sought thereby to discredit them for their presumption. Only retrospectively did Fox and other Friends embrace this categorization. By the end of the century the Quakers were seeking to distance themselves from this aspect of sectarian enthusiasm. See Rosemary Moore’s essay in this volume, 336–45.

⁸⁹ Welwood, James, A True Relation of the Wonderful Cure of Mary Maillard (London, 1694)Google Scholar. Quotation from the summary in Turner, William, A Compleat History of the Most Remarkable Providences, both of Judgment and Mercy… (London, 1697), 109–10.Google Scholar

⁹⁰ See A Relation of the Miraculous Cure of Susannah Arch, of a Leprosy and Ptysick (London, 1695)Google Scholar; A Relation of the Miraculous Cure of Mrs Lydia Hills, of A Lameness of Seventeen or Eighteen Years Continuance (2nd edn, London, 1696)Google Scholar. See also the case of a shepherd cured while listening to a sermon at a nonconformist meeting: A True Copy of a Letter of the Miraculous Cure of David Wright (London, 1693[4])Google Scholar.

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⁹² Fleetwood, William, The Life and Miracles of St Wenefrede (London, 1713), 11 Google Scholar, and see 39–40, 63, and his declaration that ‘no understanding Protestant did ever maintain, that Miracles Ceased after the Apostles Preaching’, 95.

⁹³ Turner, Compleat History, pt I, ch. 82,109–20 and ch. 148, 160–3.

⁹⁴ See Westfall, Richard S., Science and Religion in Seventeenth-Century England (New Haven, CT, 1958), 70–105, esp. 85–91, and 203–4.Google Scholar

⁹⁵ Westfall is convincingly criticized by Burns, R. M., The Great Debate on Miracles: from Joseph Glanville to David Hume (Lewisburg, PA, 1981), esp. 52–7 and 247–51 Google Scholar. The argument is further developed in Harrison, Peter, ‘Newtonian Science, Miracles, and the Laws of Nature’, Journal of the History of Ideas 56 (1995), 531–53 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and MacIntosh, J.J., ‘Locke and Boyle on Miracles and God’s Existence’, in Hunter, Michael, ed., Robert Boyle Reconsidered (Cambridge, 1994), 193–214 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹⁶ Turner, , Compleat History, dedicatory epistle. Joseph Glanvill’s Saducismus Triumphatus (London, 1681)Google Scholar is the leading example of the attempt to use witchcraft and other manifestions of the supernatural in support of the existence of God. For the ways in which providentialism developed in the context of advances in natural philosophy, see Winship, Michael P., Seers of God: Puritan Providentialism in the Restoration and Early Enlightenment (Baltimore, MD, 1996), esp. 93–110 Google Scholar; Burns, William E., An Age of Wonders: Prodigies, Politics and Providence in England, 1657–1727 (Manchester, 2002), esp. 57–96.Google Scholar

⁹⁷ Nor was it as original as has often been alleged. R. M. Burns sees it as ‘a tail-end contribution to a flagging debate’ about the miraculous that was initiated by advocates of belief in their perpetuity. He argues that the attack on miracles was ‘a defensive reaction to this development’: Great Debate, quotations at 10 and 12 and see esp. chs 6–8, 131–246. See the essay in this volume by Françoise Deconinck-Brossard, 356–75.

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