• No man, not even many, can be of "such unquestioned good sense, education, and learning" or can be of "such undoubted integrity" or of "such credit and reputation in the eyes of mankind" that they can convince skeptics that the witnesses for miracles are not deluded or do not have "any design to deceive others" or are not exempt from self-interest and shame of being detected in promoting miracles (pp. 116-17).
• When the spirit of religion joins itself to the love of miracles, therefore, people of religion naturally or have a propensity to believe such things (p. 117).
• "A religionist may be an enthusiast, and imagine he sees what has no reality" (p. 117).
• An eloquent speaker may manipulate the masses (p. 118).
• Barbarous peoples in an unenlightened and bygone age produce the reports of miracles. But as we enter the civilizations of more enlightened peoples in recent times, the miracles, not surprisingly, dry up (pp. 119-21).

• Countless testimonies of forged miracles produce suspicion against all miracles; they also demonstrate how gullible people are (pp. 118-19; 125-27)
• Hume recounts "one of the best attested miracles in all profane [secular] history." The Emperor Vespasian healed a blind man and a lame man, as reported by Tacitus, whom Hume praises as reliable. But after all the confirmation of the miracles, "no evidence can well be supposed stronger for so gross and palpable falsehood" (pp. 122-23).
• Testimonies about the Cardinal de Retz also fall into the same categorical doubt. He seems to have witnessed the result of a miracle, but later thought better of it because even well-attested, strong evidence "carried falsehood upon the very face of it, and that a miracle, supported by human testimony, was more properly a subject of derision than of argument" (pp. 123-24).
• At the tomb of the Abbé of Paris alleged miracles were produced and confirmed by "judges of unquestioned integrity and attested by witnesses of credit and distinction, in a learned age." Hume goes on to build a theoretically strong case for the miracles, but none of this is sufficient or even supportive of belief in them (pp. 124-25).
• Hume offers a hypothetical. Let us imagine that Queen Elizabeth died on January 1, 1600. "All historians" (Hume's words) who specialize in English history agree on her time of death. She was seen by her physicians and courtiers before and after her death. She was interred (buried) a month. But then, lo! "She again appeared, resumed her throne, and governed England for three years." Would Hume believe this testimony of her death and then reappearance? Not in the slightest. (p. 128)

A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined. (p. 114)

A miracle may be accurately defined [as] a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent. (p. 115, note 1, emphasis original)

[And it is a general maxim (principle) worthy of our attention] that "no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish". . . (pp. 115-16)

But what have we to oppose to such a cloud of witnesses [to the miracles at the tomb of the Abbé of Paris], but the absolute impossibility or miraculous nature of the events, which they relate? And this surely, in the eyes of all reasonable people, will alone be regarded as sufficient refutation. (p. 125, emphasis added)

Upon the whole, then, it appears that no testimony for any kind of miracle has ever amounted to a probability, much less a proof. (p. 127)

And therefore we may establish it as a maxim [principle] that no human testimony can have such a force as to prove a miracle, and make it a just foundation for any such system of religion. (p. 127)

All this might astonish me; but I would still reply that the knavery and folly of men are such common phenomena that I should rather believe the most extraordinary events to arise from their concurrence than admit of so signal a violation of the laws of nature. (p. 128)

Now we must agree with Hume that if there is absolutely "uniform experience" against miracles, if in other words they have never happened, why then they never have. Unfortunately we know the experience against them to be uniform only if we know that all the reports of them are false. And we can know all the reports to be false only if we know already that miracles have never occurred. In fact we are arguing in a circle. (pp. 132-33)

It begs the question if Hume presumes to know the whole field of experience to be uniform in advance of looking at the evidence for uniformity. For how can one know that all possible experience will confirm naturalism [which says nature is all there is], unless one has access to all possible experiences, including those in the future? (p. 76).

Hume's argument, then, appears to be either question-begging or superfluous. If the laws of nature are needed to rule out (past) miracle reports, then these laws may not be used, for nothing will have rendered the reports "non-data" with respect to the laws. If the laws may be used to rule out the reported events, then it will only be because something else has already ruled out these events. The verdict against Flew [a modern Humean who seeks to strengthen Hume's arguments] (and others) is that it is question-begging. ("Hume on Miracles," p. 327)

...The fact that we/some use various nomologicals [law-like generalizations often of nature], whether drawn from science, conventional wisdom, or elsewhere, does not preclude an investigation of these nomologicals. Such an investigation of the nomologicals that Hume would wield against resurrections in no way challenges our ordinary practices. Rather such an investigation may simply show us the limits of what can be provided by our ordinary practices. The limits on our practices may be such that there simply is no particular stock of nomologicals that has epistemic primacy to rule out resurrections in the way attempted by the Humean argument. (p. 327)

Sometimes the "odds" against an event are high (based on past observation), but the evidence for the event is otherwise very good (based on current observation or reliable testimony). Hume's argument confuses quantity of evidence with the quality of evidence. Evidence must be weighed, not added. (p. 79, emphasis original)

For [Hume's] argument does not hold that miracles have not occurred but only that we should not believe they have occurred simply because the evidence for the regular is always greater than that for the rare. But on this logic, if a miracle did occur-rare as it may be-one should still not believe it. It is patently absurd, however, to claim that an event should be disbelieved, even if it has occurred, that is, when the evidence is overwhelming that the purported miracle has occurred. (p. 80)

A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined.

A miracle may be accurately defined [as] a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent.

[Hume] himself recognized the fallacy of this kind of reasoning [that the past always determines or even resembles the future] when he argued that based on past conformity, nothing can be known with certainty about the future. We cannot even know for sure that the sun will rise tomorrow morning. Hence, for Hume to deny future miracles based on past experience is inconsistent with his own principles . . . (p. 80)

It is therefore a mistake to define a miracle as something that breaks the laws of nature. It doesn't . . . If God annihilates or creates or deflects a unit of matter, He has created a new situation at that point. Immediately Nature domiciles this new situation, makes it at home in her realm, adapts all other events to it. It finds itself conforming to all the laws. If God creates a miraculous spermatozoon in the body of a virgin, it does not proceed to break any laws. The laws at once take over. Nature is ready. Pregnancy follows, according to all the normal laws, and nine months later a child is born . . . The moment [the newcomer, e.g. miracle] enters [Nature's] realm, it obeys her laws. Miraculous wine will intoxicate, miraculous conception will lead to pregnancy, inspired books will suffer all the ordinary processes of textual corruption, miraculous bread will be digested. The divine art of miracle is not an art of suspending the pattern to which events conform, but of feeding new events into that pattern. It does not violate the law's proviso, "If A, then B": it says, "But this time instead of A, A2" and Nature, speaking through all her laws, replies, "Then B2" and naturalizes the immigrant . . . . (pp. 80-81)

For I own that otherwise [from the foundation of a religion] there may be the possibility of miracles, or violations of the normal course of nature, of such a kind to admit of proof from human testimony; though perhaps it will be impossible to find any such in all the records of history. (Hume, p. 127)