Abraham saith unto him; They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them
And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent
And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.
This is the text that Coleridge cites in his discussion of spiritual truths and the understanding in Section the Second Essay II, The Friend He asks :
Whether miracles can, of themselves, work a true conviction in the mind? There are spiritual truths which must derive their evidence from within, which whoever rejects, “neither will he believe though a man were to rise from the dead” to confirm them.
That is so true, miracles, though they may leave one stunned and thunderstruck (stundered) in a state of momentary shock at the abrogation of natural experience will in cooler recollection evoke the reaction:
wonderful, but what has it to do with me.
….. is not a true efficient conviction of a moral truth, is not “the creating of a new heart,” which collects the energies of a man’s whole being in the focus of the conscience, the one essential miracle, the same and of the same evidence to the ignorant and the learned, which no superior skill can counterfeit, human or demoniacal?
Humean ingenuity is confounded by this inversion. Faith allows miracles as the ebulliance of divine power but they do not establish faith.
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