5. Jesus predicted many things which God permitted never to come to pass. He predicted the end of the world, and his coming in the clouds with great power and majesty, before or about the end of the then existing generation. The world, however, has lasted to the present moment, and in all probability will last much longer. 6. If Julian had written an account of this miracle, I should say that he had been imposed upon by a false and ridiculous report; I should think that the Christians, his enemies, employed every artifice to oppose his enterprise, that they themselves killed the workmen, and excited and promoted the belief of their being destroyed by a miracle; but Julian does not say a single word on the subject. The war against the Persians at that time fully occupied his attention; he put off the rebuilding of the temple to some other time, and he died before he was able to commence the building. 7. This prodigy is related by Ammianus Marcellinus, who was a Pagan. It is very possible that it may have been an interpolation of the Christians. They have been charged with committing numberless others which have been clearly proved. But it is not the less probable that at a time when nothing was spoken of but prodigies and stories of witchcraft, Ammianus Marcellinus may have reported this fable on the faith of some credulous narrator. From Titus Livius to de Thou, inclusively, all historians have been infected with prodigies. 8. Contemporary authors relate that at the same period there was in Syria a great convulsion of the earth, which in many places broke out in conflagrations and swallowed up many cities. There was therefore more miracle. 9. If Jesus performed miracles, would it be in order to prevent the rebuilding of a temple in which he had himself sacrificed, and in which he was circumcised? Or would he not rather perform miracles to convert to Christianity the various nations who at present ridicule it? Or rather still, to render more humane, more kind, Christians themselves, who, from Arius and Athanasius down to Roland and the Paladins of the Cévennes, have shed torrents of human blood, and conducted themselves nearly as might be expected from cannibals? Hence I conclude that "nature" is not in "collusion", as La Bletterie expresses it, with Christianity, but that La Bletterie is in collusion with some old women's stories, one of those persons, as Julian phrases it, "quibus cum stolidis aniculis negotium erat."