But, instead of this they make the transgressor triumph, and the Almighty fall.
That many good men have believed this strange fable, and lived very good lives under that belief (for credulity is not a crime) is what I have no doubt of.

In the first place, they were educated to believe it, and they would have believed anything else in the same manner.

There are also many who have been so enthusiastically enraptured by what they conceived to be the infinite love of God to man, in making a sacrifice of himself, that the vehemence of the idea has forbidden and deterred them from examining into the absurdity and profaneness of the story.

The more unnatural anything is, the more is it capable of becoming the object of dismal admiration.

[NOTE: The French work has "blind and" preceding dismal .-- Editor.].