Moixina was no scholar, but he had arguments. To those who lost heart he said: «Don't be alarmed, this law will pass. Do you want to see? The law of the god Apollo lasted eighteen hundred years, and this one has had no more than one thousand six hundred and eighty-seven, so it will pass.»
The number gives away the date: he was speaking in 1687. To him, Christianity was one more religion with its days numbered, as the religion of the ancient gods had been.
To debunk the priests' miracles he told an ancient tale: the knight who bribed a temple's servants so he could pose as a god before a lady. It is a story found in Flavius Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews. By some route it had reached an oil shop on Sagell Street.
He had his own reading of events, too. Two reconciled neighbors, Miguel Cortés «Calenos» and Juan Bautista Martí «Berder», had lost their minds. Moixina believed the God of Israel had punished them for abandoning the Law of Moses. The tribunal saw God's hand one way, and he saw it the other.
