Page 11 - FLIPBOOK - Life of Saint Gerard Majella - Vassall-Phillips

INTRODUCTION

S
aint Gerard Majella has often been called the Thaumaturgus or
Wonder-worker of the eighteenth century. Almighty God seems
to have raised up this lowly Lay-brother to confute in the very
age of Voltaire the flippant scepticism of a false philosophy by the
stern logic of incontestable facts. It should not therefore surprise us
to find his life full of marvels of all kinds.
It is, however, the duty of the author, in obedience to the decrees
of Pope Urban VIII, to protest at the outset that he attaches a purely
human value to any miracles, revelations, prophecies or other
apparently supernatural occurrences which he relates in the course of
this little book.
1
For the well-instructed Catholic this will be a superfluous
declaration. But, as Saint Gerard's Life may perchance fall into the
hands of some who are alien to the Catholic Faith, it may be well to
state explicitly that no child of the Church is required to believe in
the reality of any miraculous event excepting in that of those which
are contained in the Holy Scriptures. They alone rest on a Divine
foundation, since of their truth we are assured not by the fallible
word or opinion of man, but by the infallible Word of God. Any
other seemingly supernatural facts rest for their verification entirely

1 I.e., they depend for their credibility — like every other alleged historical fact
(save only those to which the veracity of the Inspired Writers is pledged) —
solely on the testimony of men. Together with that testimony the statements
based upon it will either stand or fall.

1