pected of having been
deceived themselves, or having reasons to deceive others.

CXXIX.--ABSURDITY OF PRETENDED MIRACLES.

The founders of all religions have usually proved their mission by
miracles. But what is a miracle? It is an operation directly opposed to
the laws of nature. But, according to you, who has made these laws? It
is God. Thus your God, who, according to you, has foreseen everything,
counteracts the laws which His wisdom had imposed upon nature! These
laws were then defective, or at least in certain circumstances they
were but in accordance with the views of this same God, for you tell us
that He thought He ought to suspend or counteract them.

An attempt is made to persuade us that men who have been favored by the
Most High have received from Him the power to perform miracles; but in
order to perform a miracle, it is necessary to have the faculty of
creating new causes capable of producing effects opposed to those which
ordinary causes can produce. Can we realize how God can give to men the
inconceivable power of creating causes out of nothing? Can it be
believed that an unchangeable God can communicate to man the power to
change or rectify His plan, a power which, according to His essence, an
immutable being can not have himself? Miracles, far from doing much
honor to God, far from proving the Divinity of religion, destroy
evidently the idea which is given to us of God, of His immutability, of
His incommunicable attributes, and even of His omnipotence. How can a
theologian tell us that a God who embraced at once the whole of His
plan, who could make but perfect laws, who can change nothing in them,
should be obliged to employ miracles to make His projects successful, or
grant to His creatures the faculty of performing prodigies, in order to
execute His Divine will? Is it probable that a God needs the support of
men? An Omnipotent Being, whose wishes are always gratified, a Being who
holds in His hands the hearts and the minds of His creatures, needs but
to wish, in order to make them believe all He desires.

CXXX.--REFUTATION OF PASCAL'S MANNER OF REASONING AS TO HOW WE SHOULD
JUDGE MIRACLES.

What should we say of religions that based their Divinity upon miracles
which they themselves cause to appear suspicious? How can we place any
faith in the miracles related in the Holy Books of the Christians, where
God Himself boasts of hardening hearts, of blinding those whom He wishes
to ruin