In the next place, ridiculing after his usual style the race of Jews and
Christians, he compares them all “to a flight of bats or to a swarm of
ants issuing out of their nest, or to frogs holding council in a marsh,
or to worms crawling together in the corner of a dunghill, and
quarrelling with one another as to which of them were the greater
sinners, and asserting that God shows and announces to us all things
beforehand; and that, abandoning the whole world, and the regions of
heaven,[554] and this great earth, he becomes a citizen[555] among us
alone, and to us alone makes his intimations, and does not cease sending
and inquiring, in what way we may be associated with him for ever.” And
in his fictitious representation, he compares us to “worms which assert
that there is a God, and that immediately after him, we who are made by
him are altogether like unto God, and that all things have been made
subject to us,—earth, and water, and air, and stars,—and that all things
exist for our sake, and are ordained to be subject to us.” And,
according to his representation, the worms—that is, we ourselves—say
that “now, since certain amongst us commit sin, God will come or will
send his Son to consume the wicked with fire, that the rest of us may
have eternal life with him.” And to all this he subjoins the remark,
that “such wranglings would be more endurable amongst worms and frogs
than betwixt Jews and Christians.”
Footnote 554:
τὴν οὐράνιον φορὰν.
Footnote 555:
ἐμπολιτεύεται.