and again,
Exempt from sickness and old age are they,
And free from toil, and have escaped the flood
Of roaring Acheron?[190]
One may perhaps light upon some nations so barbarous and savage as
not to think there is a God; but there was never found any man who,
believing a God, did not at the same time believe him immortal and
eternal. Certainly, those who were called Atheists, like Theodorus,
Diagoras, and Hippo, durst not say that the Divinity is corruptible,
but they did not believe that there is any thing incorruptible; not
indeed admitting the subsistence of an incorruptibility, but keeping
the idea of a God. But Chrysippus and Cleanthes, having filled (as
one may say) heaven, earth, air, and sea with Gods, have not yet made
any one of all these Gods immortal or eternal, except Jupiter alone,
in whom they consume all the rest; so that it is no more proper for
him to consume others than to be consumed himself. For it is alike an
infirmity to perish by being resolved into another, and to be saved by
being nourished by the resolution of others into himself. Now these are
not like other of their absurdities, gathered by argument from their
suppositions or drawn by consequence from their doctrines; but they
themselves proclaim it aloud in their writings concerning the Gods,
Providence, Fate, and Nature, expressly saying that all the other Gods
were born, and shall die by the fire, melting away, in their opinion,
as if they were of wax or tin. It is indeed as much against common
sense that God should be mortal as that man should be immortal; nay,
indeed, I do not see what the difference between God and man will be,
if God also is a reasonable and corruptible animal. For if they oppose
us with this subtle distinction, that man is mortal, and God not mortal
but corruptible, see what they get by it. For they will say either that
God is at the same time both immortal and corruptible, or else that
he neither is mortal nor immortal; the absurdity of which even those
cannot exceed who set themselves industriously to devise positions
repugnant to common sense. I speak of others; for these men have left
no one of the absurdest things unspoken or unattempted.
To these things Cleanthes, contending for the conflagration of the
world, says, that the sun will make the moon and all the other stars
like to himself, and will change them into himself. Indeed, if the
stars, being Gods, should contribute any thing to the sun towards their
own destruction by contributing to its conflagration, it would be very
ridiculous for us to make prayers to them for our salvation, and to
think them the saviors of men, whose nature it is to accelerate their
own corruption and dissolution.
32. And yet these men leave nothing unsaid against Epicurus, crying
out, Fie, fie upon him, as confounding their presumption concerning
God by taking away Providence; for God (they say) is presumed and
understood to be not only immortal and happy, but also a lover of
men and careful of them and beneficial to them; and herein they say
true. Now if they who abolish Providence take away the preconception
concerning God, what do they who say that the Gods indeed have care
of us, but deny them to be helpful to us, and make them not bestowers
of good things but of indifferent ones, giving, to wit, not virtue,
but wealth, health, children, and such like things, none of which
is helpful, profitable, desirable, or available? Or shall we not
rather think, that the Epicureans do not take away the conceptions
concerning the Gods; but that these Stoics scoff at the Gods and deride
them, saying one is a God of fruits, another of marriage, another a
physician, and another a diviner, while yet health, issue, and plenty
of fruits are not good things, but indifferent things and unprofitable
to those who have them?
33. The third point of the conception concerning the Gods is, that the
Gods do in nothing so much differ from men as in happiness and virtue.
But according to Chrysippus, they have not so much as this difference.
For he says that Jupiter does not exceed Dion in virtue, but that
Jupiter and Dion, being both wise, are equally aided by one another,
when one falls into the motion of the other. For this and none else is
the good which the Gods do to men, and likewise men to the Gods when
they are wise. For they say, that a man who falls not short in virtue
comes not behind them in felicity, and that he who, being tormented
with diseases and being maimed in the body, makes himself away, is
equally happy with Jupiter the Savior, provided he be but wise.
But this man neither is nor ever was upon the earth; but there are
infinite millions of men unhappy to the highest degree in the state and
government of Jupiter, which is most excellently administered. Now what
can be more against sense than that, when Jupiter governs exceedingly
well, we should be exceedingly miserable? But if (which it is unlawful
even to say) he would wish no longer to be a savior, nor a deliverer,
nor a protector, but the contrary to all these glorious appellations,
there can no goodness be added to the things that are, either as to
their multitude or magnitude, since, as these men say, all men live to
the height miserably and wickedly, neither vice receiving addition, nor
unhappiness increase.
34. Nor is this the worst; but they are angry with Menander for saying
upon the stage,
The chief beginning of men’s miseries
Are things exceeding good;
for that this is against sense. And yet they make God, who is good,
the beginning of evils. “For matter,” they say, “produced not any evil
of itself; for it is without quality, and whatever differences it has,
it has received them all from that which moves and forms it.” But that
which moves and forms it is the reason dwelling in it, since it is not
made to move and form itself. So that of necessity evil, if it come
by nothing, must have been produced from that which has no being; but
if by some moving principle, from God. But if they think that Jupiter
has not the command of his parts nor uses every one of them according
to his reason, they speak against common sense, and imagine an animal,
many of whose parts are not subservient to his will but use their
own operations and actions, to which the whole gives no incitation
nor begins their motion. For there is nothing which has life so ill
compacted as that, against its will, its feet shall go, its tongue
speak, its horns push, or its teeth bite. The most of which things God
must of necessity suffer, if the wicked, being parts of him, do against
his will lie, cheat, rob, and murder one another. But if, as Chrysippus
says, the very least part cannot possibly behave itself otherwise than
according to Jupiter’s pleasure, and if every living thing is so framed
by Nature as to rest and move according as he inclines it and as he
turns, stays, and disposes it,