SECTION THE SECOND: OF THE CREED OF THE AI SU YAH (CHRISTIANS). They say that, in the name of God the Father, God the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, every one ought to bear in his heart and to keep perpetually on his tongue the Lord Jesus, the Son of God, and never to deny him, if even it were at the peril of his head.* The holy cross is the sign of the Christians. They reckon fourteen parts of their creed: seven of which relate to God the Almighty, and seven to the human nature of the Lord Jesus. The first seven are as follow: 1. to confess that God is omnipotent and supreme; 2. to believe that he is the Father; 3. to believe that he is the Son; 4. that he is a pure spirit; 5. that he is the Creator; 6. that he bestows heaven; 7. that he grants salvation.* The seven other articles, which relate to the human nature of Jesus are the follow­ing: 1. to believe that he is the Son of God, by the power of the Holy Ghost, born in the body of Maria; 2. that he was born of Maria, the virgin, and without detriment to her virginity: 3. that for our sake he was crucified, died, and was buried; 4. that he shall descend from heaven, and raise up the former generations, who there anxiously expected his blessed arrival; 5. that he resuscitated on the third day; 6. that he ascended to heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father, the omnipotent and supreme God; 7. that he shall come at the end of the world to judge the living and the dead, and to reveal their good and bad actions. They call God a father, because he is bountiful to his servants as a father to his children. They maintain that, although God has three different persons, yet, in truth, he is but one being; in such a manner that the persons are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, without the unity of the blessed entity being affected by it, and this peculiarity belongs to the divinity; in no creature is such an attribute to be found. Jesus is in truth the Son of God; it is only metaphorically that other holy personages are called the sons of God; it is in an abstract sense,* inasmuch as, being God, that Jesus came forth in heaven from the Father, not from the mother; in a similar manner, in an abstract sense, inasmuch as, being a man upon earth, he has a mother, but no Father. Jesus did not die, but, having a perfect love for the sons of Adam, he sacrificed himself for the people, that they may be liberated again from all sins. They say further, that below the earth there are four places: the under­most of all is hell, which is the place of severe punish­ment for the Satans and the iniquitous. Another place, above this, is that which they call purgatory, that is, a place of purification for good men, as some of the disobedient who have rebelled, when they shall have there been purified, go to heaven. A third place, higher than the last, is called the lim­bus , in which are children under age; except that of being deprived of the sight of the Lord Almighty, they are there exempt from all other suffering. The fourth place is the most elevated of all; they call it “the House of Ibrahîm,” that is, the dwelling of the souls of the prophets and holy men: these were formerly not quite happy, because they expected anxiously the arrival of the Saviour, the Lord Jesus; when Jesus left the body which was buried, he descended to this fourth place, and when he rose from the grave, he brought the pure souls with him, leaving the souls in the three other places where they were. When, after having been put to death, he was restored to life, his soul was reunited to his body, and he remained forty days with his disciples; he then, before their eyes and those of others, ascended to heaven, and, in the highest place, seated himself at the side of God Almighty. They declare: “When we say that Jesus is seated at the right side of God, his Father, we mean not to say that God has a body and is any thing corporeal. No! the Divine Being has neither right nor left side. By such a description we intend to be intelligible to the vulgar; for Jesus, in the abstract sense of being the son of God, possesses the same greatness and power which his Father has, and in the abstract sense of his being a man, he dwells in the most glorious and most excellent place, which is in heaven.” They declare further: “When we say that Jesus shall come on the last day of the world to judge the dead and the living, and to give their due to all men, we mean not to imply that all men will then be alive, but by the living we denote the good men, and by the dead, the wicked.” Except Christians, nobody else will be found pure and holy. On the day of resurrection, all men shall live and their souls shall be reunited to their bodies, and none will ever more die.