so
for four thousand years.

They declare that they hold from their ancestors that man has fallen
from communion with God, and is entirely estranged from God, but that He
has promised to redeem them; that this doctrine shall always exist on
the earth; that their law has a double signification; that during
sixteen hundred years they have had people, whom they believed prophets,
foretelling both the time and the manner; that four hundred years after
they were scattered everywhere, because Jesus Christ was to be
everywhere announced; that Jesus Christ came in the manner, and at the
time foretold; that the Jews have since been scattered abroad under a
curse, and nevertheless still exist.

618

I see the Christian religion founded upon a preceding religion, and this
is what I find as a fact.

I do not here speak of the miracles of Moses, of Jesus Christ, and of
the Apostles, because they do not at first seem convincing, and because
I only wish here to put in evidence all those foundations of the
Christian religion which are beyond doubt, and which cannot be called in
question by any person whatsoever. It is certain that we see in many
places of the world a peculiar people, separated from all other peoples
of the world, and called the Jewish people.

I see then a crowd of religions in many parts of the world and in all
times; but their morality cannot please me, nor can their proofs
convince me. Thus I should equally have rejected the religion of Mahomet
and of China, of the ancient Romans and of the Egyptians, for the sole
reason, that none having more marks of truth than another, nor anything
which should necessarily persuade me, reason cannot incline to one
rather than the other.

But, in thus considering this changeable and singular variety of morals
and beliefs at different times, I find in one corner of the world a
peculiar people, separated from all other peoples on earth, the most
ancient of all, and whose histories are earlier by many generations than
the most ancient which we possess.

I find, then, this great and numerous people, sprung from a single man,
who worship one God, and guide themselves by a law which they say that
they obtained from His own hand. They maintain that they are the only
people in the world to whom God has revealed His mysteries; that all men
are corrupt and in disgrace with God; that they are all abandoned to
their senses and their own imagination, whence come the strange errors