ble,
absurd, and unconnected jargon, entirely unworthy of a God who
intended to display his prescience, and to instruct his people with
regard to future events. There does not exist in the Holy Scriptures a
single prophecy sufficiently precise to be literally applied to Jesus
Christ. To convince yourself of this truth, ask the most learned of
our doctors which are the formal prophecies wherein they have the
happiness to discover the Messiah. You will then perceive that it is
only by the aid of forced explanations, figures, parables, and
mystical interpretations, by which they are enabled to bring forward
any thing sensible and applicable to the _god-made-man_ whom they tell
us to adore. It would seem as if the Deity had made predictions only
that we might understand nothing about them.

In these equivocal oracles, whose meaning it is impossible to
penetrate, we find nothing but the language of intoxication,
fanaticism, and delirium. When we fancy we have found something
intelligible, it is easy to perceive that the prophets intended to
speak of events that took place in their own age, or of personages who
had preceded them. It is thus that our doctors apply gratuitously to
Christ prophecies or rather narratives of what happened respecting
David, Solomon, Cyrus, &c.

We imagine we see the chastisement of the Jewish people announced in
recitals where it is evident the only matter in question was the
Babylonish captivity. In this event, so long prior to Jesus Christ,
they have imagined finding a prediction of the dispersion of the Jews,
supposed to be a visible punishment for their _deicide_, and which
they now wish to pass off as an indubitable proof of the truth of
Christianity.

It is not, then, astonishing that the ancient and modern Jews do not
see in the prophets what our doctors teach us, and what they
themselves imagine they have seen. Jesus himself has not been more
happy in his predictions than his predecessors. In the gospel he
announces to his disciples in the most formal manner the destruction
of the world and the last judgment, as events that were at hand, and
which must take place before the existing generation had passed away.
Yet the world still endures, and appears in no danger of finishing. It
is true, our doctors pretend that, in the prediction of Jesus Christ,
he spoke of the ruin of Jerusalem by Vespasian and Titus; but none but
those who have not read the gospel would submit to such a change, or