owing how it was
done; that this saint being once near the sea-shore, and calling the
fishes, they came to him in a great multitude, and raised their heads
out of the water and listened to him attentively. We should never come
to an end if we had to report all this idle talk; there is no subject,
however vain, frivolous, and even ridiculous, on which the authors of
these "LIVES OF THE SAINTS" do not take pleasure in heaping miracles
upon miracles, for they are skillful in forging absurd falsehoods.

It is certainly not without reason that we consider these things as
lies; for it is easy to see that all these pretended miracles have been
invented but by imitating the fables of the Pagan poets. This is
sufficiently obvious by the resemblance which they bear one to another.

III.--SIMILARITY BETWEEN ANCIENT AND MODERN MIRACLES.

If our Christ-worshipers claim that God endowed their saints with power
to perform the miracles related in their lives, some of the Pagans claim
also that the daughters of Anius, high-priest of Apollo, had really
received from the god Bacchus the power to change all they desired into
wheat, into wine, or into oil, etc.; that Jupiter gave to the nymphs who
took care of his education, a horn of the goat which nursed him in his
infancy, with this virtue, that it could give them an abundance of all
they wished for.

If our Christ-worshipers assert that their saints had the power of
raising the dead, and that they had Divine revelations, the Pagans had
said before them that Athalide, son of Mercury, had obtained from his
father the gift of living, dying, and coming to life whenever he wished,
and that he had also the knowledge of all that transpired in this world
as well as in the other; and that Esculapius, son of Apollo, had raised
the dead, and, among others, he brought to life Hyppolites, son of
Theseus, by Diana's request; and that Hercules, also, raised from the
dead Alceste, wife of Admetus, King of Thessalia, to return her to her
husband.

If our Christ-worshipers say that Christ was miraculously born of a
virgin, the Pagans had said before them that Remus and Romulus, the
founders of Rome, were miraculously born of a vestal virgin named Ilia,
or Silvia, or Rhea Silvia; they had already said that Mars, Argus,
Vulcan, and others were born of the goddess Juno without sexual union;
and, also, that Minerva, goddess of the sciences, sprang from Jupiter's
brain, and that she came out of it,