by the eating of an apple, these Christian mythologists bring
the two ends of their fable together. They represent this
virtuous and amiable man, Jesus Christ, to be at once both
God and man, and also the Son of God, celestially begotten,
on purpose to be sacrificed, because they say that Eve in her
longing ¹ had eaten an apple.

PUTTING aside everything that might excite laughter by
its absurdity, or detestation by its prophaneness, and confin-
ing ourselves merely to an examination of the parts, it is
impossible to conceive a story more derogatory to the Al-
mighty, more inconsistent with his wisdom, more contradic-
tory to his power, than this story is.

In order to make for it a foundation to rise upon, the in-
ventors were under the necessity of giving to the being
whom they call Satan a power equally as great, if not
greater, than they attribute to the Almighty. They have
not only given him the power of liberating himself from the
pit, after what they call his fall, but they have made that
power increase afterwards to infinity. Before this fall they
represent him only as an angel of limited existence, as they
represent the rest. After his fall, he becomes, by their
account, omnipresent. He exists everywhere, and at the
same time. He occupies the whole immensity of space.

Not content with this deification of Satan, they represent
him as defeating by stratagem, in the shape of an animal of
the creation, all the power and wisdom of the Almighty.
They represent him as having compelled the Almighty to the
direct necessity either of surrendering the whole of the crea-
tion to the government and sovereignty of this Satan, or of
capitulating for its redemption by coming down upon earth,
and exhibiting himself upon a cross in the shape of a man.

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