Then, passing on to the doctrine of the sacraments, he was going to treat at large on the power of absolution and reprobation, of the means of purging all sins by a little water and a few words, when, uttering the words indulgence, power of the pope, sufficient grace, and efficacious grace, he was interrupted by a thousand cries.
"It is a horrible abuse," cried the Lutherans, "to pretend to remit sins for money." "The notion of the real presence," cried the Calvinists, "is contrary to the text of the Gospel." "The pope has no right to decide anything of himself," cried the Jansenists; and thirty other sects rising up, and accusing each other of heresies and errors, it was no longer possible to hear anything distinctly.
Silence being at last restored, the Mussulmans observed to the legislator: "Since you have rejected our doctrine as containing things incredible, can you admit that of the Christians?
Is not theirs still more contrary to common sense and justice?
A God, immaterial and infinite, to become a man! to have a son as old as himself! This god-man to become bread, to be eaten and digested! Have we any thing equal to that?
Have the Christians an exclusive right of setting up a blind faith?
And will you grant them privileges of belief to our detriment ?" Some savage tribes then advanced: "What!" said they, "because a man and woman ate an apple six thousand years ago, all the human race are damned?
And you call God just?
What tyrant ever rendered children responsible for the faults of their fathers?
What man can answer for the actions of another?
Does not this overturn every idea of justice and of reason ?" Others exclaimed: "Where are the proofs, the witnesses of these pretended facts?
Can we receive them without examining the evidence?
The least action in a court of justice requires two witnesses; and we are ordered to believe all this on mere tradition and hearsay!" A Jewish Rabbin then addressing the assembly, said: "As to the fundamental facts, we are sureties; but with regard to their form and their application, the case is different, and the Christians are here condemned by their own arguments.

For they cannot deny that we are the original source from which they are derived--the primitive stock on which they are grafted; and hence the reasoning is very short: Either our law is from God, and then theirs is a heresy, since it differs from ours, or our law is not from God, and then theirs falls at the same time." "But you must make this distinction," replied the Christian: "Your law is from God as typical and preparative, but not as final and absolute: you are the image of which we are the substance." "We know," replied the Rabbin, "that such are your pretensions; but they are absolutely gratuitous and false.

Your system turns altogether on mystical meanings, visionary and allegorical interpretations.* With violent distortions on the letter of our books, you substitute the most chimerical ideas for the true ones, and find in them whatever pleases you; as a roving imagination will find figures in the clouds.

Thus you have made a spiritual Messiah of that which, in the spirit of our prophets, is only a temporal king.

You have made a redemption of the human race out of the simple re-establishment of our nation.