770. What happens if you ask a clergyman or a layman whether they believe all these things for sure? For instance, that the people before the flood together with Adam and Eve, and the people after the flood together with Noah and his sons, as well as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob together with all the prophets and apostles, and likewise all the rest of human souls, are all still stored in the bowels of the earth or flit about in the ether or the air. Ask whether they believe that souls will be clothed again with their own bodies and coalesce with them, despite the fact that their corpses have been eaten by worms, rats or fish, and in the case of Egyptian mummies consumed by people*; when some have been reduced to skeletons burnt clean by the sun or have dissolved into dust. Ask too if they believe that the stars of the sky will then fall upon the earth, although the earth is smaller than a single star. Ask whether such things are not paradoxes, which reason can explode as it does contradictions. To this some will have no answer to make. Some will say that this is a matter of faith, 'and we keep our understanding subject to faith.' Some will say that not only these things, but much else that is beyond the grasp of reason, are possible to God's omnipotence. When they mention faith and omnipotence, reason is banished. Sound reason then either disappears, and becomes as nothing, or becomes like a spectre and is called madness. 'Are not these things,' they add, 'what the Word says? Surely everyone thinks and speaks as the Word tells us.'