ertheless, it is
repugnant as well as absurd to claim that anything could be begotten
or born without having had a beginning. Now, according to our
Christ-worshipers, the Second and Third persons of Divinity were
begotten and born; then they had a beginning, and the First person had
none, not being begotten by another; it therefore follows necessarily
that one existed before the other.

Our Christ-worshipers, who feel these absurdities and can not avoid them
by any good reasoning, have no other resource than to say that we must
ignore human reason and humbly adore these sublime mysteries without
wishing to understand them; but that which they call faith is refuted
when they tell us that we must submit; it is telling us that we must
blindly believe that which we do not believe. Our Christ-worshipers
condemn the blindness of the ancient Pagans, who worshiped several
Gods; they deride the genealogy of those Gods, their birth, their
marriages, and the generating of their children; yet they do not observe
that they themselves say things which are much more ridiculous and
absurd.

If the Pagans believed that there were Goddesses as well as Gods, that
these Gods and Goddesses married and begat children, they thought of
nothing, then, but what is natural; for they did not believe yet that
the Gods were without body or feeling; they believed they were similar
to men. Why should there not be females as well as males? It is not more
reasonable to deny or to recognize the one than the other; and supposing
there were Gods and Goddesses, why should they not beget children in the
ordinary way? There would be certainly nothing ridiculous or absurd in
this doc trine, if it were true that their Gods existed. But in the
doctrine of our Christ-worshipers there is something absolutely
ridiculous and absurd; for besides claiming that one God forms Three,
and that these Three form but One, they pretend that this Triple and
Unique God has neither body, form, nor face; that the First person of
this Triple and Unique God, whom they call the Father, begot of Himself
a Second person, which they call the Son, and which is the same as His
Father, being, like Him, without body, form, or face. If this is true,
why is it that the First one is called Father rather than mother, or the
Second called Son rather than daughter? For if the First one is really
father instead of mother, and if the Second is son instead of daughter,
there must be something in