that Jesus Christ was His Son, as
the Evangelists say, Vulcan showed by the apparition of a miraculous
flame, that Coceculus was really his son.

If God has miraculously nourished some of His saints, the Pagan poets
pretend that Triptolemus was miraculously nourished with Divine milk by
Ceres, who gave him also a chariot drawn by two dragons, and that
Phineus, son of Mars, being born after his mother's death, was
nevertheless miraculously nourished by her milk.

If several saints miraculously tamed the ferocity of the most cruel
beasts, it is said that Orpheus attracted to him, by the sweetness of
his voice and by the harmony of his instruments, lions, bears, and
tigers, and softened the ferocity of their nature; that he attracted
rocks and trees, and that even the rivers stopped their course to listen
to his song.

Finally, to abbreviate, because we could report many others, if our
Christ-worshipers pretend that the walls of the city of Jericho fell by
the sound of their trumpets, the Pagans say that the walls of the city
of Thebes were built by the sound of the musical instruments of
Amphion; the stones, as the poets say, arranging themselves to the
sweetness of his harmony; this would be much more miraculous and more
admirable than to see the walls demolished.

There is certainly a great similarity between the Pagan miracles and our
own. As it would be great folly to give credence to these pretended
miracles of Paganism, it is not any the less so to have faith in those
of Christianity, because they all come from the same source of error. It
was for this that the Manicheans and the Arians, who existed at the
commencement of the Christian Era, derided these pretended miracles
performed by the invocation of saints, and blamed those who invoked them
after death and honored their relics.

Let us return at present to the principal end which God proposed to
Himself, in sending His Son into the world to become man; it must have
been, as they say, to redeem the world from sin and to destroy
entirely the works of the pretended Devil, etc. This is what our
Christ-worshipers claim also, that Jesus Christ died for them according
to His Father's intention, which is plainly stated in all the pretended
Holy Books. What! an Almighty God, who was willing to become a mortal
man for the love of men, and to shed His blood to the last drop, to save
them all, would yet have limited His power to only curing a few diseases
and physical