No person doubts the power of the Creator, the supreme legislator and preserver of the universe, to suspend any law of nature in the course of its operation, or to select some individual case which he will except from the operation of that law, and during his own pleasure. The question can never be as to this power, as to the possibility of a miraculous interference; but it always must regard the fact, and that fact must be established by testimony, and without the evidence of testimony, no person who was not present can be required to believe. There does not, and cannot exist, any individual or tribunal, with power to require or command the humblest mortal to believe without evidence.

John England, from a speech to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1826, in Sebastian G. Messmer, ed., The Works of the Right Reverend John England, First Bishop of Charleston, vol. 7 (Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark, 1908), p. 19.