other sects rising up, and accusing each other
of heresies and errors, it was no longer possible to hear anything
distinctly.

Silence being at last restored, the Mussulmans observed to the
legislator:

"Since you have rejected our doctrine as containing things incredible,
can you admit that of the Christians? Is not theirs still more contrary
to common sense and justice? A God, immaterial and infinite, to become
a man! to have a son as old as himself! This god-man to become bread,
to be eaten and digested! Have we any thing equal to that? Have the
Christians an exclusive right of setting up a blind faith? And will you
grant them privileges of belief to our detriment?"

Some savage tribes then advanced: "What!" said they, "because a man
and woman ate an apple six thousand years ago, all the human race
are damned? And you call God just? What tyrant ever rendered children
responsible for the faults of their fathers? What man can answer for the
actions of another? Does not this overturn every idea of justice and of
reason?"

Others exclaimed: "Where are the proofs, the witnesses of these
pretended facts? Can we receive them without examining the evidence? The
least action in a court of justice requires two witnesses; and we are
ordered to believe all this on mere tradition and hearsay!"

A Jewish Rabbin then addressing the assembly, said: "As to the
fundamental facts, we are sureties; but with regard to their form and
their application, the case is different, and the Christians are here
condemned by their own arguments. For they cannot deny that we are the
original source from which they are derived--the primitive stock on
which they are grafted; and hence the reasoning is very short: Either
our law is from God, and then theirs is a heresy, since it differs from
ours, or our law is not from God, and then theirs falls at the same
time."

"But you must make this distinction," replied the Christian: "Your law
is from God as typical and preparative, but not as final and absolute:
you are the image of which we are the substance."

"We know," replied the Rabbin, "that such are your pretensions; but they
are absolutely gratuitous and false. Your system turns altogether on
mystical meanings, visionary and allegorical interpretations.* With
violent distortions on the letter of our books, you substitute the most
chimerical ideas for the true ones, and find in them whatever pleases
you; as a roving imagination will find figu