3. "Of what new God dost thou speak? Knowest thou not, unfortunate man that thou art! that Saint Zoroaster is the only Just One, to whom alone was vouchsafed the honor of receiving revelations from the Most High;
4. "By whose command the angels compiled His Word in laws for the governance of His people, which were given to Zoroaster in Paradise?
5. "Who, then, art thou, who darest to utter blasphemies against our God and sow doubt in the hearts of believers?"
6. And Issa said to them: "I preach no new God, but our celestial Father, who has existed before the beginning and will exist until after the end.
7. "Of Him I have spoken to the people, who--even as innocent children--are incapable of comprehending God by their own intelligence, or fathoming the sublimity of the divine Spirit;
8. "But, as the newborn child in the night recognizes the mother's breast, so your people, held in the darkness of error by your pernicious doctrines and religious ceremonies, have recognized instinctively their Father, in the Father whose prophet I am.
9. "The eternal Being says to your people, by my mouth, 'Ye shall not adore the sun, for it is but a part of the universe which I have created for man;
10. "It rises to warm you during your work; it sets to accord to you the rest that I have ordained.
11. "To me only ye owe all that ye possess, all that surrounds you and that is above and below you.'"
12. "But," said the priests, "how could the people live according to your rules if they had no teachers?"
13. Whereupon Issa answered: "So long as they had no priests, they were governed by the natural law and conserved the simplicity of their souls;
14. "Their souls were in God and to commune with the Father they had not to have recourse to the intermediation of idols, or animals, or fire, as taught by you.
15. "Ye pretend that man must adore the sun, and the Genii of Good and Evil. But I say unto you that your doctrine is pernicious. The sun does not act spontaneously, but by the will of the invisible Creator, who has given to it being."
16. "Who, then, has caused that this star lights the day, warms man at his work and vivifies the seeds sown in the ground?"
17. "The eternal Spirit is the soul of everything animate, and you commit a great sin in dividing Him into the Spirit of Evil and the Spirit of Good, for there is no God other than the God of Good.