Generally speaking it is St. Paul, or the author of the Epistles, (wherever he be) that are attributed to him, that ought to be regarded as the true founder of Christian theology. The mysterious obscurity of his works, the tone of fanaticism which reigns in them, and the unintelligible oracles with which they are filled, render them well suited to impose on the vulgar, who respect things only in proportion as they are impossible to be comprehended. Devout enthusiasm and pious melancholy there finds a continual feast for its sickly brain. Oracles and enigmas are taken for divine mysteries, which without a strong dose of faith we should conclude were the production of delirium or the inventions of imposture, which seeks to put reason to flight. Reason had no means of examining ideas which are totally unreasonable; thus they persuaded men that it was necessary to renounce reason in order to become a good Christian. In consequence of this principle, so humiliating to mankind and derogatory to the character of a God, the author of reason, it was no longer permitted to examine anything; man was commanded blindly to subscribe to the most incomprehensible reveries, and it was considered meritorious to renounce common sense and adopt fables and opinions revolting to every thinking being. Thus delirium was changed into wisdom, deception into truth, and frequently crime became virtue. They closed the mouths of reasoners by citing the language of Paul, who had said "that the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men." According to the same Apostle God himself had predicted by the mouth of a prophet, the revolution that Christianity was to produce in the minds of mankind. "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent." Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world, &c.* And he concludes by saying, "But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness." * 1 Corinth, chap. i. ver. 19.