We are told it was necessary that the Deity should have a victim; that to repair the fault of the first man, no expedient would be sufficient but the death of another God; that the only God of the universe could not be appeased but by the blood of his own Son. I reply, in the first place, that God had only to prevent the first man from committing a fault; that this would have spared him much chagrin and sorrow, and saved the life of his dear Son. I reply, likewise, that man is incapable of offending God unless God either permitted it or consented to it. I shall not examine how it is possible for God to have a Son, who, being as much a God as himself, can be subject to death. I reply, also, that it is impossible to perceive such a grave fault and sin in taking an apple, and that we can find very little proportion between the crime committed against the Deity by eating an apple and his Son's death. I know well enough I shall be told that these are all mysteries; but I, in my turn, shall reply, that mysteries are imposing words, imagined by men who know not how to get themselves out of the labyrinth into which their false reasonings and senseless principles have once plunged them. Be this as it may, we are assured that the Messiah, or the deliverer of the Jews, had been clearly predicted and described by the prophecies contained in the Old Testament. In this case, I demand why the Jews have disowned this wonderful man, this God whom God sent to them. They answer me, that the incredulity of the Jews was likewise predicted, and that divers inspired writers had announced the death of the Son of God. To which I reply, that a sensible God ought not to have sent him under such circumstances, that an omnipotent God ought to have adopted measures more efficacious and certain to bring his people into the way in which he wished them to go. If he wished not to convert and liberate the Jews, it was quite useless to send his Son among them, and thereby expose him to a death that was both certain and foreseen.