now those beings by your senses or their
reflections, render them in like manner perceptible to us; or if you
speak of them on testimony and tradition, show us a uniform account, and
give a determinate basis to our creed."

There now arose among the theologians a great controversy respecting God
and his nature, his manner of acting, and of manifesting himself; on the
nature of the soul and its union with the body; whether it exists before
the organs, or only after they are formed; on the future life, and the
other world. And every sect, every school, every individual, differing
on all these points, and each assigning plausible reasons, and
respectable though opposite authorities for his opinion, they fell into
an inextricable labyrinth of contradictions.

Then the legislator, having commanded silence and recalled the dispute
to its true object, said: "Chiefs and instructors of nations; you came
together in search of truth. At first, every one of you, thinking he
possessed it, demanded of the others an implicit faith; but perceiving
the contrariety of your opinions, you found it necessary to submit them
to a common rule of evidence, and to bring them to one general term of
comparison; and you agreed that each should exhibit the proofs of his
doctrine. You began by alleging facts; but each religion and every sect,
being equally furnished with miracles and martyrs, each producing an
equal number of witnesses, and offering to support them by a voluntary
death, the balance on this first point, by right of parity, remained
equal.

"You then passed to the trial of reasoning; but the same arguments
applying equally to contrary positions--the same assertions, equally
gratuitous, being advanced and repelled with equal force, and all having
an equal right to refuse his assent, nothing was demonstrated. What
is more, the confrontation of your systems has brought up more and
extraordinary difficulties; for amid the apparent or adventitious
diversities, you have discovered a fundamental resemblance, a common
groundwork; and each of you pretending to be the inventor, and first
depositary, have taxed each other with adulterations and plagiarisms;
and thence arises a difficult question concerning the transmission of
religious ideas from people to people.

"Finally, to complete your embarrassment: when you endeavored to explain
your doctrines to each other, they appeared confused and foreign, even
to their adherents; they were founde