But it might easily happen that Cirinus, or Cyrenius, having been sent to Jerusalem by Quintilius Varus to impose a poll-tax, Joseph and Mary were summoned by the magistrate of Bethlehem to go and pay the tax in the town of Bethlehem, the place of their birth. In this there is nothing contradictory. The critics may endeavor to weaken this solution by representing that it was Herod only who imposed taxes; that the Romans at that time levied nothing on Judæa; that Augustus left Herod completely his own master for the tribute which that Idumean paid to the empire. But, in an emergency, it is not impossible to make some arrangement with a tributary prince, and send him an intendant to establish in concert with him the new tax. We will not here say, like so many others, that copyists have committed many errors, and that in the version we possess there are to be found more than ten thousand; we had rather say with the doctors of the Church and the most enlightened persons, that the Gospels were given us only to teach us to live holily, and not to criticise learnedly. These pretended contradictions produced a dreadful impression on the much lamented John Meslier, rector of Etrepigni and But in Champagne. This truly virtuous and charitable, but at the same time melancholy, man, being possessed of scarcely any other books than the Bible and some of the fathers, read them with a studiousness of attention that became fatal to him. Although bound by the duties of his office to inculcate docility upon his flock, he was not sufficiently docile himself. He saw apparent contradictions, and shut his eyes to the means suggested for reconciling them. He imagined that he perceived the most frightful contradictions between Jesus being born a Jew and afterwards being recognized as God; in regard to that God known from the first as the son of Joseph the carpenter and the brother of James, yet descended from an empyrean which does not exist, to destroy sin upon earth that is still covered with crimes; in regard to that God, the son of a common artisan and a descendant of David on the side of his father, who was not in fact his father; between the creator of all worlds, and the descendant of the adulterous Bathsheba, the prurient Ruth, the incestuous Tamar, the prostitute of Jericho, the wife of Abraham, so suspiciously attractive to a king of Egypt, and again at the age of ninety years to a king of Gerar.