no miracle; and yet, we know no more by what operation of God the one is brought to pass than the other.
The first rainbow that was seen in the world was a miracle, because the first; and consequently strange; and served for a sign from God, placed in heaven, to assure His people there should be no more any universal destruction of the world by water. But at this day, because they are frequent, they are not miracles, neither to them that know their natural causes, nor to them who know them not. Again, there be many rare works produced by the art of man: yet when we know they are done, because thereby we know also the means how they are done, we count them not for miracles, because not wrought by the immediate hand of God, but of human industry.
Furthermore, seeing admiration and wonder are consequent to the knowledge and experience wherewith men are endued, some more, some less; it followeth that the same thing may be a miracle to one and not to another. And thence it is that ignorant and superstitious men make great wonders of those works which other men, knowing to proceed from Nature (which is not the immediate, but the ordinary work of God), admire not at all: as when eclipses of the sun and moon have been taken for supernatural works by the common people; when nevertheless there were others who could from their natural causes have foretold the very hour they should arrive: or as when a man, by confederacy and secret intelligence, getting knowledge of the private actions of an ignorant, unwary man, thereby tells him what he has done in former times; it seems to him a miraculous thing; but amongst wise and cautelous men such miracles as those cannot easily be done.
Again, it belongeth to the nature of a miracle that it be wrought for the procuring of credit to God’s messengers, ministers, and prophets, that thereby men may know they are called, sent, and employed by God, and thereby be the better inclined to obey them. And therefore, though the