We are told that he performed miracles. He healed the sick, caused the lame to walk, gave sight to the blind, and raised the dead. At length he accomplished his own resurrection. It might be so believed; yet he has visibly failed in that miracle for which alone he came upon earth. He was never able either to persuade or to convert the Jews, who witnessed all the daily wonders that he performed. Notwithstanding those prodigies, they placed him ignominiously on the cross. In spite of his divine power, he was incapable of escaping punishment. He wished to die, to render the Jews culpable, and to have the pleasure of rising again the third day, in order to confound the ingratitude and obstinacy of his fellow-citizens. What is the result? Did his fellow-citizens concede to this great miracle, and have they at length acknowledged him? Far from it; they never saw him. The Son of God, who arose from the dead in secrecy, showed himself only to his adherents. They alone pretend to have conversed with him; they alone have furnished us with the particulars of his life and miracles; and yet by such suspicious testimony they wish to convince us of the divinity of his mission eighteen hundred years after the event, although he could not convince his contemporaries, the Jews.
We are then told that many Jews have been converted to Jesus Christ; that after his death many others were converted; that the witnesses of the life and miracles of the Son of God have sealed their testimony with their blood; that men will not die to attest falsehood; that by a visible effect of the divine power, the people of a great part of the earth have adopted Christianity, and still persist in the belief of this divine religion.
In all this I perceive nothing like a miracle. I see nothing but what is conformable to the ordinary progress of the human mind. An enthusiast, a dexterous impostor, a crafty juggler, can easily find adherents in a stupid, ignorant, and superstitious populace. These followers, captivated by counsels, or seduced by promises, consent to quit a painful and laborious life, to follow a man who gives them to understand that he will make them _fishers of men_; that is to say, he will enable them to subsist by his cunning tricks, at the expense of the multitude who are always credulous. The juggler, with the assistance of his remedies, can perform cures which seem miraculous to ignorant spectators. These simple creatures immediately regard him as a supernatural being. He adopts this opinion himself, and confirms the high notions which his partisans have formed respecting him. He feels himself interested in maintaining this opinion among his sectaries, and finds out the secret of exciting their enthusiasm. To accomplish this point, our empiric becomes a preacher; he makes use of riddles, obscure sentences, and parables to the multitude, that always admire what they do not understand. To render himself more agreeable to the people, he declaims among poor, ignorant, foolish men, against the rich, the great, the learned; but above all, against the _priests_, who in all ages have been _avaricious_, _imperious_, _uncharitable_, and _burdensome_ to the people. If these discourses be eagerly received among the vulgar, who are always morose, envious, and jealous, they displease all those who see themselves the objects of the invective and satire of the popular preacher.