In 1726, Mary Toft, a young woman who lived in Godalming, Surrey, England, gave birth to a large number of rabbits. Among those who were convinced of the authenticity of her miraculous delivery were several prominent men of science, including Nathanael St. Andre, the personal surgeon to George I, and Samuel Molyneux, the astronomer who also served as secretary to the Prince of Wales. Though Toft's “miracle” was eventually revealed to be a fraud, hers was not the only claim of miraculous events in Enlightenment England. The era that came to be identified by its rationality and skepticism produced an ample supply of miracles, an aspect of the period often overlooked by modern scholars, according to Jane Shaw, dean of divinity and fellow of New College, Oxford. Rather than being dismissed by contemporaries as vestiges of Catholicism or medieval superstition, Shaw argues, the miracles that were frequently reported, witnessed, or argued over by contemporary Englishmen took place among Protestants and actually played an important role in helping to define the character of the Enlightenment.

Shaw's focus is upon the period from the 1650s to the 1750s, an era in which a variety of attitudes toward miracles coexisted, along with the array of positions on religion and reason. These amazing events gained notoriety through reports in the increasing numbers of pamphlets and newspapers available, as well as by discussions among the customers in coffeehouses and the members of the learned societies. Thus, they came to absorb the attentions of the public, but no less than the new scientific ideas in circulation, miracles also engaged the clergy and the intellectuals.

According to Shaw, three approaches to the problem of miracles were common in England during the Age of Reason. The first of these was to argue the cessation of miracles—that they had ceased to occur after the biblical era, since God had no more need of them. God was, without question, able to perform miracles if he wished to do so, but once Christianity had become established during the fourth century, his use of miracles to lead people to Christian doctrine had ended

The second approach to the question of miracles was to claim that extraordinary works not only affirmed the correctness of the particular Protestant faith in which the miracle took place but proved that those who demonstrated evidence of miraculous skills had earned God's favor by their piety. These miracle workers, selected by God as most worthy of miraculous gifts, had been granted the ability to heal the sick or to survive for long periods without food or water. This sort of claim, popular among certain dissenting faiths like the Baptists or Quakers, appeared regularly among the wider population but also created some serious questions at higher levels. For centuries, English monarchs had claimed the miraculous ability to cure sufferers of “the King's Evil,” or scrofula, by touch. The king's power to cure was proof of God's favor and the monarch's divine right to the throne, and after the restoration of Charles II, the king took care to continue the tradition. If, however, itinerant preachers and devout members of the dissenting masses could cure the sick, then the king's ability was a less compelling sign of his exalted status. Queen Anne was the last to engage in the practice of “touching” to cure her subjects; the Hanoverians chose not to demonstrate their authority in such mystical terms.

The third approach toward the occurrence of miracles was the “middle way” of the Anglican latitudinarians, who agreed that miracles might, indeed, occur, and since they might, any such claims must be subjected to thorough investigation. This approach was an attempt to balance reason with religious “enthusiasm.” One such example was the healing power of the Irishman Valentine Greatrakes, who came to the attention of Robert Boyle and other members of the Royal Society. Before a miracle could be certified as such, the evidence must be examined to determine whether the event could be explained any other way. In the case of Greatrakes, some of his examiners argued that while the healer's talent was a gift from God, the ability was based upon the existence of unusual effluvia in Greatrakes's body, which achieved the healing naturally. This approach, allowing for the possibility of miracles but insisting upon an explanation that could be made to fit in with natural philosophy, appears to have waned by the beginning of the eighteenth century, in the face of increasing ridicule and skepticism by the deists.

Deists and other intellectuals examined and dissected claims of miracles using the experimental method, arguing that God had created the laws of nature as he wanted them and would not have reason to alter them. To imagine otherwise was to suppose that God's will was changeable. During the period under examination, Shaw writes, as deism produced additional points of view concerning the veracity of witnesses and the validity of evidence supporting miracles, the question became less the immutability of God's will and more the irrationality of supposing that the rules of nature could be violated. Making this argument, David Hume pointed out that the evidence in support of a miracle could never be produced to any extent that could overcome the evidence that supported one of Nature's laws.

Shaw concludes that Enlightenment England was not as overwhelmingly skeptical as historians have depicted. Instead, miracles, recast to fit Protestant needs in the late seventeenth century, continued to appear and to find advocates during the early eighteenth century, while being met with a variety of responses. Shaw's lively and readable account makes rich use of primary materials as well as secondary sources, and the result adds depth to the existing scholarship on the English Enlightenment.