matters which he has had no leisure to
study, and by which, if he had enjoyed that leisure, he would have
been a less industrious and a less expert artificer.

_Timotheus._ We cannot countenance those hard-hearted men who refuse
to hear the word of the Lord.

_Lucian._ The hard-hearted knowing this of the tender-hearted, and
receiving the declaration from their own lips, will refuse to hear the
word of the Lord all their lives.

_Timotheus._ Well, well; it cannot be helped. I see, cousin, my hopes
of obtaining a little of your assistance in your own pleasant way are
disappointed; but it is something to have conceived a better hope of
saving your soul, from your readiness to acknowledge your belief in
miracles.

_Lucian._ Miracles have existed in all ages and in all religions.
Witnesses to some of them have been numerous; to others of them fewer.
Occasionally, the witnesses have been disinterested in the result.

_Timotheus._ Now indeed you speak truly and wisely.

_Lucian._ But sometimes the most honest and the most quiescent have
either been unable or unwilling to push themselves so forward as to
see clearly and distinctly the whole of the operation; and have
listened to some knave who felt a pleasure in deluding their
credulity, or some other who himself was either an enthusiast or a
dupe. It also may have happened in the ancient religions, of Egypt for
instance, or of India, or even of Greece, that narratives have been
attributed to authors who never heard of them; and have been
circulated by honest men who firmly believed them; by half-honest, who
indulged their vanity in becoming members of a novel and bustling
society; and by utterly dishonest, who, having no other means of
rising above the shoulders of the vulgar, threw dust into their eyes
and made them stoop.

_Timotheus._ Ha! the rogues! It is nearly all over with them.

_Lucian._ Let us hope so. Parthenius and the Roman poet Ovidius Naso,
have related the transformations of sundry men, women, and gods.

_Timotheus._ Idleness! Idleness! I never read such lying authors.

_Lucian._ I myself have seen enough to incline me toward a belief in
them.

_Timotheus._ You? Why! you have always been thought an utter infidel;
and now you are running, hot and heedless as any mad dog, to the
opposite extreme!

_Lucian._ I have lived to see, not indeed one man, but certainly one
animal turned into another; nay, great numbers. I have seen sheep with
the most p