r God, the Author of nature, the
Father of all men, ought to love them all alike as His own work, and,
consequently, He ought to be equally their protector and their
benefactor; giving them life, He ought to give all that is necessary for
the well-being of His creatures.

If all these pretended miracles of the Old and of the New Testament were
true, we could say that God would have had more care in providing for
the least good of men than for their greatest and principal good; that
He would have punished more severely trifling faults in certain persons
than He would have punished great crimes in others; and, finally, that
He would not have desired to show Himself as beneficent in the most
pressing needs as in the least. This is easy enough to show as much by
the miracles which it is pretended that He performed, as by those which
He did not perform, and which He would have performed rather than any
other, if it is true that He performed any at all. For example, it is
claimed that God had the kindness to send an angel to console and to
assist a simple maid, while He left, and still leaves every day, a
countless number of innocents to languish and starve to death; it is
claimed that He miraculously preserved during forty years the clothes
and the shoes of a few people, while He will not watch over the natural
preservation of the vast quantities of goods which are useful and
necessary for the subsistence of great nations, and that are lost every
day by different accidents. It is claimed that He sent to the first
beings of the human race, Adam and Eve, a devil, or a simple serpent, to
seduce them, and by this means ruin all men. This is not credible! It is
claimed, that by a special providence, He prevented the King of Gerais,
a Pagan, from committing sin with a strange woman, although there would
be no results to follow; and yet He did not prevent Adam and Eve from
offending Him and falling into the sin of disobedience--a sin which,
according to our Christ-worshipers was to be fatal, and cause the
destruction of the human race. This is not credible!

Let us come to the pretended miracles of the New Testament. They
consist, as is pretended, in this: that Jesus Christ and His apostles
cured, through the Deity, all kinds of diseases and infirmities, giving
sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, speech to the dumb, making the
lame to walk, curing the paralytics, driving the devils from those who
were possessed, and bringing