 To claim that Scripture made allowances for the weak understanding of most men and women was conventional. Patristic, Catholic and Protestant theologians acknowledged that Moses had addressed an ignorant, slavish people and that Scripture spoke in a way that the uneducated could understand. All agreed, too, that it focused on moral and spiritual issues and refrained from intricate philosophical arguments. Bruno’s appeal to these positions disguised his heterodoxy. The crucial deviation was his denial of miracles, the most important of all testimonies to the Christian faith. Given that the laws of nature were, essentially, “God in things”, they were inviolable (BOL I.2, 316). Repeatedly Bruno mocked, allusively, the miracles reported in the Old and New Testament, including those performed by Moses and Christ. Christ’s were bagatelle, “sleights of hand” (BOI II, 383). They were no more than natural magic, effects produced by manipulating “occult”, that is, natural, though imperceptible, forces (BOL III, 427). Or, indeed, they may have been the fruits of demonic magic, a comment which implied that Christ had commerce with demons. Christ began to perform miracles, Bruno noted, only “after his struggle with the devil in the desert” (BOL II.2, 181). The allusive style in which Bruno disguised his views only served to accentuate his blasphemies, mixing as they did ridicule and contempt with heresy. Handwritten annotations in copies of his works show that contemporaries or near contemporaries recognized his intentions easily enough.