However violent Paul's enthusiasm may have been, he well knew how odd the doctrine he preached, must appear to reasonable beings. He must have been aware, that it overturned all received ideas; that it would not bear the test of examination; that it was a difficult enterprise to persuade sensible beings that a God could die, that this God had arisen again, that an immutable God had changed and annulled the eternal alliance he had made with the Jews, and which been so repeatedly confirmed with oaths, &c. Thus our Apostle in order to pass such improbable opinions, believed it requisite, to substitute folly in the place of reason, and to fortify his disciples against the weapons of logic. For the evidence which results from the testimony of the senses be substituted faith, which according to him is the evidence of things not seen, and evidence which can only be founded on the most stupid credulity. Thus this prudent orator took care to guard against the philosophy of common sense, and against all science, seeing clearly that they opposed, invincible obstacles to the religion that he sought to establish, and of which he pretended to be the soul and chief. Hence we find he attached the greatest merit to faith, that is to say, to a blind submission to his authority; and such an unbounded confidence in himself as prevented any doubt of those things, the truth of which he attested. As science was injurious to the establishment of his empire he decried it. "Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth." By charity, we may here understand that affection to a spiritual director which closing the eyes against those defects, which in common with other men he may possess, convinces us that he is always right, that he is incapable of the wish to deceive, and in short, that he ought to be believed in preference to the evidence of our senses. It is thus that this great Apostle laboured incessantly to establish his own authority on the ruins of wisdom, reason, and science. However we may reply to his doctrine, so useful to those whose interest it is to maintain absurd opinions and incredible fables, that God who, is, according to them, the author of reason could not have destroyed his own work. We shall demand of St. Paul and of those who like him preach up implicit faith, if folly is more able than wisdom to attain to the knowledge of God? We shall ask of them, if God has given wisdom to men on condition of their never using it, and if it is not by the aid of human wisdom, that man gains some idea of the divine wisdom? We shall ask if God can, without absolutely changing the nature of things, make wisdom folly, and folly wisdom? In short we shall ask them, if in order to become a Christian it is necessary to renounce common sense, or how far our folly must prevail to have a religion?