IV.—­OF THE FALSITY OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.

Let us proceed to the pretended visions and Divine Revelations, upon which our Christ-worshipers establish the truth and the certainty of their religion.

In order to give a just idea of it, I believe it is best to say in general, that they are such, that if any one should dare now to boast of similar ones, or wish to make them valued, he would certainly be regarded as a fool or a fanatic.

Here is what the pretended Visions and Divine Revelations are: 

God, as these pretended Holy Books claim, having appeared for the first time to Abraham, said to him:  “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred and from thy father’s house, into a land that I will show thee.”  Abraham, having gone there, God, says the Bible, appeared the second time to him, and said, “Unto thy seed will I give this land,” and there builded he an altar unto the Lord, who appeared unto him.  After the death of Isaac, his son, Jacob going one day to Mesopotamia to look for a wife that would suit him, having walked all the day, and being tired from the long distance, desired to rest toward evening; lying upon the ground, with his head resting upon a few stones, he fell asleep, and during his sleep he saw a ladder set upon the earth, and the top of it reached to Heaven; and beheld the angels of God ascending and descending on it.  And behold, the Lord stood above it, and said:  “I am the Lord, God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac; the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed.  And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west and to the east, and to the north and to the south and in thee and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.  And behold, I am with thee and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land:  for I will not leave thee until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.”  And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said:  “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not.”  And he was afraid, and said:  “How dreadful is this place! this is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of Heaven.”  And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillow, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil on the top of it, and made at the same time a vow to God, that if he should return safe and sound, he would give Him a tithe of all he might possess.

Here is yet another vision.  Watching the flocks of his father-in-law, Laban, who had promised him that all the speckled lambs produced by his sheep should be his recompense, he dreamed one night that he saw all the males leap upon the females, and all the lambs they brought forth were speckled.  In this beautiful dream, God appeared to him, and said:  “Lift up now thine eyes and see that the rams