such wonders, unheard of in my own country, took place; let me go and see why the inhabitants of Jerusalem put their God to death as a robber.  You tell me they did not know he was God.  What then shall I do, I who have only heard of him from you?  You say they have been punished, dispersed, oppressed, enslaved; that none of them dare approach that town.  Indeed they richly deserved it; but what do its present inhabitants say of their crime in slaying their God!  They deny him; they too refuse to recognise God as God.  They are no better than the children of the original inhabitants.

“What!  In the very town where God was put to death, neither the former nor the latter inhabitants knew him, and you expect that I should know him, I who was born two thousand years after his time, and two thousand leagues away?  Do you not see that before I can believe this book which you call sacred, but which I do not in the least understand, I must know from others than yourself when and by whom it was written, how it has been preserved, how it came into your possession, what they say about it in those lands where it is rejected, and what are their reasons for rejecting it, though they know as well as you what you are telling me?  You perceive I must go to Europe, Asia, Palestine, to examine these things for myself; it would be madness to listen to you before that.

“Not only does this seem reasonable to me, but I maintain that it is what every wise man ought to say in similar circumstances; that he ought to banish to a great distance the missionary who wants to instruct and baptise him all of a sudden before the evidence is verified.  Now I maintain that there is no revelation against which these or similar objections cannot be made, and with more force than against Christianity.  Hence it follows that if there is but one true religion and if every man is bound to follow it under pain of damnation, he must spend his whole life in studying, testing, comparing all these religions, in travelling through the countries in which they are established.  No man is free from a man’s first duty; no one has a right to depend on another’s judgment.  The artisan who earns his bread by his daily toil, the ploughboy who cannot read, the delicate and timid maiden, the invalid who can scarcely leave his bed, all without exception must study, consider, argue, travel over the whole world; there will be no more fixed and settled nations; the whole earth will swarm with pilgrims on their way, at great cost of time and trouble, to verify, compare, and examine for themselves the various religions to be found.  Then farewell to the trades, the arts, the sciences of mankind, farewell to all peaceful occupations; there can be no study but that of religion, even the strongest, the most industrious, the most intelligent, the oldest, will hardly be able in his last years to know where he is; and it will be a wonder if he manages to find out what religion he ought to live by, before the hour of his death.