PART ONE

HISTORICAL

CHAPTER I.

Concerning the various classes of prodigies.

I consider there to be nothing in this machine of the World among the works of the Divine, which so captures the breasts of mortals with admiration, or so strikes them with sudden dread, as those few things which, just as they are hidden away in the inaccessible cloisters of Divine Wisdom, likewise offer no access to even the most purified minds—I will not say to penetrate them, but not even to conceive of them; and these consist, for the most part, in a threefold distinction of kinds.

A threefold kind of miracles.Of the first kind are those miracles which the right hand of Almighty GOD performs, either immediately by Itself, or through the mediation of men conspicuous for their holiness, or by Angels in a certain ineffable manner.

The sec-