Of Miracles, and Their Use
By “miracles” are signified the admirable works of God: and therefore they are also called “wonders.” And because they are for the most part done for a signification of His commandment, in such occasions, as without them, men are apt to doubt, (following their private natural reasoning,) what He hath commanded, and whatnot, they are commonly, in Holy Scripture, called “signs,” in the same sense as they are called by the Latins ostenta and portenta , from showing and fore-signifying that which the Almighty is about to bring to pass.
To understand therefore what is a miracle, we must first understand what works they are which men wonder at and call admirable. And there be but two things which make men wonder at any event: the one is, if it be strange, that is to say, such as the like of it hath never, or very rarely, been produced: the other is, if when it is produced, we cannot imagine it to have been done by natural means, but only by the immediate hand of God. But when we see some possible, natural cause of it, how rarely soever the like has been done, or if the like have been often done, how impossible soever it be to imagine a natural means thereof, we no more wonder nor esteem it for a miracle.
Therefore, if a horse or cow should speak, it were a miracle; because both the thing is strange, and the natural cause difficult to imagine. So also were it to see a strange deviation of Nature, in the production of some new shape of a living creature. But when a man, or other animal, engenders his like, though we know no more how this is done than the other; yet because it is usual, it is no miracle. In like manner, if a man be metamorphosed into a stone, or into a pillar, it is a miracle; because strange: but if a piece of wood be so changed; because we see it often, it is