All his characteristic scorn and ridicule come out when dealing with the fetish book of his adversaries. The _Philosophical Dictionary_ is full of wit upon biblical subjects. I content myself with an excerpt from the less known _Sermon of Fifty_: “If Moses changed the waters into blood, the sages of Pharoah did the same. He made frogs come upon the land; this also they were able to do. But when lice were concerned, they were vanquished; in the matter of lice, the Jews knew more and could do more than the other nations.” “Finally, Adonaï caused every first-born in Egypt to die, in order that his people might be at their ease. For his people the sea is cloven in twain; and we must confess it is the least that could be done on this occasion. All the other marvels are of the same stamp. The Jews wander in the desert. Some husbands complain of their wives. Immediately water is found, which makes every woman who has been faithless to her husband swell and burst. In the desert the Jews have neither bread nor dough, but quails and manna are rained upon them. Their clothes are preserved unworn for forty years; as the children grow, their clothes grow with them. Samson, because he had not undergone the operation of shaving, defeats a thousand Philistines with the jaw-bone of an ass. He ties together three hundred foxes, which, as a matter of course, come quite readily to his hand. “There is scarcely a page in which tales of this sort are not found. The ghost of Samuel appears, summoned by the voice of a witch. The shadow of a dial—as if miserable creatures like the Jews had dials—goes back ten degrees at the prayer of Hezekiah, who, with great judgment, asks for this sign. God gives him the choice of making the hour advance or recede, and the learned Hezekiah thinks that it is not difficult to make the shadow advance, but very difficult to make it recede. Elijah mounts to heaven in a chariot of fire; children sing in a hot and raging furnace. I should never stop if I entered into the detail of all the monstrous extravagances with which this book swarms. Never was common sense outraged so vehemently and indecently.” Noticing the comparison in the Song of Solomon, “Her nose is like the tower of Damascus,” etc., he says: “This, I own, is not in the style of the Eclogues of the author of the Æneid; but all have not a like style, and a Jew is not obliged to write like Virgil.”