acknowledge that some have applied the terms to Ebion and Cerinthus, two great adversaries of Jesus Christ, whose pretended divinity they disputed. But if this interpretation be the meaning of the Apostle, which is far from being credible, the words referred to must point out a host of Antichrists in all ages--it being impossible that truly learned men should think of injuring the cause of truth, by declaring that the history of Jesus Christ was a contemptible fable, [49] and that his law was nothing but a series of dreams and reveries, which ignorance had brought in repute, which self-interest had encouraged, and which tyranny had taken under its especial protection. § 16. They pretend, nevertheless, that a religion built upon so weak foundations is divine and supernatural, as if it were not an ascertained fact that there is no class of people more fitted to give currency to the most absurd opinions than women and lunatics. It is not to be wondered at that Jesus Christ reckoned none of the learned amongst his followers. He well knew that his law was inconsistent with common sense; and therefore he always declaimed against the sages, excluding them from that kingdom into which he admitted the poor in spirit, the simple and the imbecile. Rational minds ought to be thankful that they have nothing to do with such insanities. § 17. ON THE MORALITY OF JESUS CHRIST. We find nothing more divine in the morality of Jesus Christ than what can be drawn from the works of ancient authors; for this reason, perhaps every text in his code of morals is either borrowed from their's or is an imitation of it. St. Augustine [50] acknowledges that in one of the so-called heathen writers, he discovered the whole of the commencement of the gospel according to St. John. We must remark also, that this apostle was so much accustomed to plunder others, that he has not scrupled to pillage from the prophets their enigmas and visions, for the purpose of composing his Apocalypse. Again, whence arises that agreement between the doctrines of the Old and New Testament and those of Plato, unless the Rabbis and others who composed the Jewish Scriptures had stolen from that distinguished man. The account of the creation of the world given in his Timaeus, is much more satisfactory than that recorded in the book of Genesis; and it will not do to say that Plato, in his tour through Egypt, had read the books of the Jews, since, by the confession of St. Augustine, king Ptolemy had not ordered them to be translated till long after the philosopher had left the country. The landscape which Socrates describes to Simias (Phæton,) possesses infinitely more beauty than the Paradise of Eden: and the fable of the Hermaphrodites [51] is beyond comparison a better invention than that which we read of in Genesis, where we are told that one of Adam's ribs was taken from him for the purpose of creating a female out of it.