  Beyond all of these considerations, some authors have made a case for the restriction of the term “miracle” to events that are supernaturally caused and have some palpable religious significance. An insignificant shift in a few grains of sand in the lonesome desert might, if it exceeded the productive powers of nature, qualify as a miracle in some thin sense, but it would manifestly lack religious significance and could not be used as the fulcrum for any interesting argument. Considerations such as this have led many authors to build both the type of agency and some intimation of the purpose into the definition of a miracle. Thus, Samuel Clarke (1719: 311–12) writes that