In mid-July 1765, Voltaire produced a twenty-page pamphlet entitled "Questions sur les miracles a M. le professeur Cla*** par un proposant", hoping at best for a reply from the said pastor, little thinking that it would lead to the publication eleven months later, in May 1766, of a 232-page volume entitled "Collection des lettres sur les miracles", composed of various short writings from the period. Voltaire's series of twenty imaginary letters might at first glance be seen as one chronological sequence, as superficial as the fickle and fleeting question they address. But the "Collection" is at the same time an attack on Christianity; an attack on John Turberville Needham, a new anti-philosophical adversary for Voltaire; and a political wrangle which questions the relationship between church authorities and civil government, challenged by the situation in Switzerland at the time.

The two texts in this second volume of 'Voltaire editeur' show very different approaches to the works presented. Behind the playful title "Sophonisbe, tragedie de Mairet, reparee a neuf" lies a thorough critique of a classical style that has become, in Voltaire's view, unplayable. Not a line of the play remains untouched by the 'editor'. By contrast it is in the annotation of the "Discours de l'Empereur Julien contre les chretiens" that Voltaire pursues his campaign against l'Infame, claiming the Roman emperor for the band of Enlightenment philosophes.

Voltaire's clever and moving defence of his "Philosophie de l'histoire" against an attack by Pierre Henri Larcher, lets his wit and insight shine through on a dizzying array of topics, and ultimately the defence of his fundamental beliefs about historical writing and Enlightenment principles. Penned in a week at the age of 73, it is an impassioned apologia of Voltaire's rational system of approaching history and civilization. "A Warburton", also contained in this volume, followed hot on the heels of the "Defense de mon oncle". It is a short but highly polemical pamphlet, directed against the prominent bishop and theological commentator, William Warburton.