er of children would
remain idle and useless; it would be inconsistent to suppose this of
Divine Personages, One of whom had already produced a Son.

Our Christ-worshipers blame and condemn the Pagans because they
attribute Divinity to mortal men, and worship them as Gods after their
death; they are right in doing this. But these Pagans did only what our
Christ-worshipers still do in attributing Divinity to their Christ;
doing which, they condemn themselves also, because they are in the same
error as these Pagans, in that they worship a man who was mortal, and so
very mortal that He died shamefully upon a cross.

It would be of no use for our Christ-worshipers to say that there was a
great difference between their Jesus Christ and the Pagan Gods, under
the pretense that their Christ was, as they claim, really God and man at
the same time, while the Divinity was incarnated in Him, by means of
which, the Divine nature found itself united personally, as they say,
with human nature; these two natures would have made of Jesus Christ a
true God and a true man; this is what never happened, they claim, in the
Pagan Gods.

But it is easy to show the weakness of this reply; for, on the one hand,
was it not as easy to the Pagans as to the Christians, to say that the
Divinity was incarnated in the men whom they worshiped as Gods? On the
other hand, if the Divinity wanted to incarnate and unite in the human
nature of their Jesus Christ, how did they know that this Divinity would
not wish to also incarnate and unite Himself personally to the human
nature of those great men and those admirable women, who, by their
virtue, by their good qualities, or by their noble actions, have
excelled the generality of people, and made themselves worshiped as Gods
and Goddesses? And if our Christ-worshipers do not wish to believe that
Divinity ever incarnated in these great personages, why do they wish to
persuade us that He was incarnated in their Jesus? Where is the proof?
Their faith and their belief; but as the Pagans rely on the same proof,
we conclude both to be equally in error.

But what is more ridiculous in Christianity than in Paganism, is that
the Pagans have generally attributed Divinity but to great men, authors
of arts and sciences, and who excelled in virtues useful to their
country. But to whom do our God-Christ-worshipers attribute Divinity? To
a nobody, to a vile and contemptible man, who had neither talent,
science, nor abili