CXXVIII.—­OBSCURE AND SUSPICIOUS ORIGIN OF ORACLES.

The oracles which the Deity has revealed to the nations through His different mediums, are they clear?  Alas! there are not two men who understand them alike.  Those who explain them to others do not agree among themselves; in order to make them clear, they have recourse to interpretations, to commentaries, to allegories, to parables, in which is found a mystical sense very different from the literal one.  Men are needed everywhere to explain the wishes of God, who could not or would not explain Himself clearly to those whom He desired to enlighten.  God always prefers to use as mediums men who can be suspected of having been deceived themselves, or having reasons to deceive others.

CXXIX.—­ABSURDITY OF PRETENDED MIRACLES.

The founders of all religions have usually proved their mission by miracles.  But what is a miracle?  It is an operation directly opposed to the laws of nature.  But, according to you, who has made these laws?  It is God.  Thus your God, who, according to you, has foreseen everything, counteracts the laws which His wisdom had imposed upon nature!  These laws were then defective, or at least in certain circumstances they were but in accordance with the views of this same God, for you tell us that He thought He ought to suspend or counteract them.

An attempt is made to persuade us that men who have been favored by the Most High have received from Him the power to perform miracles; but in order to perform a miracle, it is necessary to have the faculty of creating new causes capable of producing effects opposed to those which ordinary causes can produce.  Can we realize how God can give to men the inconceivable power of creating causes out of nothing?  Can it be believed that an unchangeable God can communicate to man the power to change or rectify His plan, a power which, according to His essence, an immutable being can not have himself?  Miracles, far from doing much honor to God, far from proving the Divinity of religion, destroy evidently the idea which is given to us of God, of His immutability, of His incommunicable attributes, and even of His omnipotence.  How can a theologian tell us that a God who embraced at once the whole of His plan, who could make but perfect laws, who can change nothing in them, should be obliged to employ miracles to make His projects successful, or grant to His creatures the faculty of performing prodigies, in order to execute His Divine will?  Is it probable that a God needs the support of men?  An Omnipotent Being, whose wishes are always gratified, a Being who holds in His hands the hearts and the minds of His creatures, needs but to wish, in order to make them believe all He desires.

CXXX.—­REFUTATION OF PASCAL’S MANNER OF REASONING AS TO HOW WE SHOULD JUDGE MIRACLES.