spare nothing, either sacred or profane. The histories
of the Old and New Testament, the most sacred ceremonies of our
religion, the lives of the most respectable saints, are not safe from
their dull, tasteless pleasantry.

I have been reproached for having related several false histories,
several doubtful facts, and several fabulous events. This is true; but
I give them for what they are. I have declared several times, that I
did not vouch for their truth, that I repeated them to show how false
and ridiculous they were, and to deprive them of the credit they might
have with the people; and if I had gone at length into their
refutation, I thought it right to let my reader have the pleasure of
refuting them, supposing him to possess enough good sense and
self-sufficiency, to form his own judgment upon them, and feel the
same contempt for such stories that I do myself. It is doing too much
honor to certain things to refute them seriously.

But another objection, and a much more serious one, is said to be,
what I say of the illusions of the demon, leading some persons to
doubt of the truth of the apparitions related in Scripture, as well as
of the others suspected of falsehood.

I answer, that the consequences deduced from principles are not right,
except when things are equal, and the subjects and circumstances the
same; without that there can be no application of principles. The
facts to which my reasoning applies are related by authors of small
authority, by ordinary or common-place historians, bearing no
character which deserves a belief of anything superhuman. I can,
without attacking their person or their merit, advance that they may
have been badly informed, prepossessed, and mistaken; that the spirit
of seduction may have been of the party; that the senses, the
imagination, and superstition, may have made them take that for truth,
which was only seeming.

But, in regard to the apparitions related in the Holy Scriptures, they
borrow their infallible authority from the sacred and inspired authors
who wrote them; they are verified by the events which followed them,
by the execution or fulfilment of predictions made many ages
preceding; and which could neither be done, nor foreseen, nor
performed, either by the human mind, or by the strength of man, not
even by the angel of darkness.

I am but little concerned at the opinion passed on myself and my
intentions in the publication of this treatise. Some have though