fear, hope, &c. are such as err both in doctrine and manners,
Sadducees, Herodians, libertines, politicians: all manner of atheists,
epicures, infidels, that are secure, in a reprobate sense, fear not God
at all, and such are too distrustful and timorous, as desperate persons
be. That grand sin of atheism or impiety, [6617]Melancthon calls it
monstrosam melancholiam, monstrous melancholy; or venenatam
melancholiam, poisoned melancholy. A company of Cyclops or giants, that
war with the gods, as the poets feigned, antipodes to Christians, that
scoff at all religion, at God himself, deny him and all his attributes,
his wisdom, power, providence, his mercy and judgment.
[6618]Esse aliquos manes, et subterranea regna,
Et contum, et Stygio ranas in gurgite nigras,
Atque una transire vadum tot millia cymba,
Nec pueri credunt, nisi qui nondum aere lavantur.
That there is either heaven or hell, resurrection of the dead, pain,
happiness, or world to come, credat Judaeus Apella; for their parts
they esteem them as so many poet's tales, bugbears, Lucian's Alexander;
Moses, Mahomet, and Christ are all as one in their creed. When those
bloody wars in France for matters of religion (saith [6619]Richard
Dinoth) were so violently pursued between Huguenots and Papists, there
was a company of good fellows laughed them all to scorn, for being such
superstitious fools, to lose their wives and fortunes, accounting
faith, religion, immortality of the soul, mere fopperies and illusions.
Such loose [6620]atheistical spirits are too predominant in all
kingdoms. Let them contend, pray, tremble, trouble themselves that
will, for their parts, they fear neither God nor devil; but with that
Cyclops in Euripides,
Haud ulla numina expavescunt caelitum,
Sed victimas uni deorum maximo,
Ventri offerunt, deos ignorant caeteros.
They fear no God but one,
They sacrifice to none.
But belly, and him adore,
For gods they know no more.
Their God is their belly, as Paul saith, Sancta mater saturitas;—quibus
in solo vivendi causa palato est. The idol, which they worship and
adore, is their mistress; with him in Plautus, mallem haec mulier me
amet quam dii, they had rather have her favour than the gods'. Satan is
their guide, the flesh is their instructor, hypocrisy their counsellor,
vanity their fellow-soldier, their will their law, ambition their
captain, custom their rule; temerity, boldness, impudence their art,
toys their trading, damnation their end. All their endeavours are to
satisfy their lust and appetite, how to please their genius, and to be
merry for the present, Ede, lude, bibe, post mortem nulla
voluptas.[6621]The same condition is of men and of beasts; as the one
dieth, so dieth the other, Eccles. iii. 19. The world goes round,
[6622]———truditur dies die,
Novaeque pergunt interire Lunae:
[6623]They did eat and drink of old, marry, bury, bought, sold,
planted, built, and will do still. [6624]Our life is short and tedious,
and in the death of a man there is no recovery, neither was any man
known that hath returned from the grave; for we are born at all
adventure, and we shall be hereafter as though we had never been; for
the breath is as smoke in our nostrils, &c., and the spirit vanisheth
as the soft air. [6625]Come let us enjoy the pleasures that are
present, let us cheerfully use the creatures as in youth, let us fill
ourselves with costly wine and ointments, let not the flower of our
life pass by us, let us crown ourselves with rose-buds before they are
withered, &c. [6626]Vivamus mea Lesbia et amemus, &c. [6627] Come let
us take our fill of love, and pleasure in dalliance, for this is our
portion, this is our lot.
Tempora labuntur, tacitisque senescimus annis.[6628] For the rest of
heaven and hell, let children and superstitious fools believe it: for
their parts, they are so far from trembling at the dreadful day of
judgment that they wish with Nero, Me vivo fiat, let it come in their
times: so secure, so desperate, so immoderate in lust and pleasure, so
prone to revenge that, as Paterculus said of some caitiffs in his time
in Rome, Quod nequiter ausi, fortiter executi: it shall not be so
wickedly attempted, but as desperately performed, whatever they take in
hand. Were it not for God's restraining grace, fear and shame, temporal
punishment, and their own infamy, they would. Lycaon-like exenterate,
as so many cannibals eat up, or Cadmus' soldiers consume one another.
These are most impious, and commonly professed atheists, that never use
the name of God but to swear by it; that express nought else but
epicurism in their carriage, or hypocrisy; with Pentheus they neglect
and contemn these rites and religious ceremonies of the gods; they will
be gods themselves, or at least socii deorum. Divisum imperium cum Jove
Caesar habet. Caesar divides the empire with Jove. Aproyis, an Egyptian
tyrant, grew, saith [6629]Herodotus, to that height of pride, insolency
of impiety, to that contempt of Gods and men, that he held his kingdom
so sure, ut a nemine deorum aut hominum sibi eripi posset, neither God
nor men could take it from him. [6630]A certain blasphemous king of
Spain (as [6631]Lansius reports) made an edict, that no subject of his,
for ten years' space, should believe in, call on, or worship any god.
And as [6632]Jovius relates of Mahomet the Second, that sacked
Constantinople, he so behaved himself, that he believed neither Christ
nor Mahomet; and thence it came to pass, that he kept his word and
promise no farther than for his advantage, neither did he care to
commit any offence to satisfy his lust. I could say the like of many
princes, many private men (our stories are full of them) in times past,
this present age, that love, fear, obey, and perform all civil duties
as they shall find them expedient or behoveful to their own ends.
Securi adversus Deos, securi adversus homines, votis non est opus,
which [6633] Tacitus reports of some Germans, they need not pray, fear,
hope, for they are secure, to their thinking, both from Gods and men.
Bulco Opiliensis, sometime Duke of [6634]Silesia, was such a one to a
hair; he lived (saith [6635]Aeneas Sylvius) at [6636]Vratislavia, and
was so mad to satisfy his lust, that he believed neither heaven nor
hell, or that the soul was immortal, but married wives, and turned them
up as he thought fit, did murder and mischief, and what he list
himself. This duke hath too many followers in our days: say what you
can, dehort, exhort, persuade to the contrary, they are no more
moved,—quam si dura, silex aut stet Marpesia cautes, than so many
stocks, and stones; tell them of heaven and hell, 'tis to no purpose,
laterem lavas, they answer as Ataliba that Indian prince did friar
Vincent, [6637]when he brought him a book, and told him all the
mysteries of salvation, heaven and hell, were contained in it: he
looked upon it, and said he saw no such matter, asking withal, how he
knew it: they will but scoff at it, or wholly reject it. Petronius in
Tacitus, when he was now by Nero's command bleeding to death, audiebat
amicos nihil referentes de immortalitate animae, aut sapientum
placitis, sed levia carmina et faciles versus; instead of good counsel
and divine meditations, he made his friends sing him bawdy verses and
scurrilous songs. Let them take heaven, paradise, and that future
happiness that will, bonum est esse hic, it is good being here: there
is no talking to such, no hope of their conversion, they are in a
reprobate sense, mere carnalists, fleshly minded men, which howsoever
they may be applauded in this life by some few parasites, and held for
worldly wise men. [6638]They seem to me (saith Melancthon) to be as mad
as Hercules was when he raved and killed his wife and children. A
milder sort of these atheistical spirits there are that profess
religion, but timide et haesitanter, tempted thereunto out of that
horrible consideration of diversity of religions, which are and have
been in the world (which argument Campanella, Atheismi Triumphati, cap.
9. both urgeth and answers), besides the covetousness, imposture, and
knavery of priests, quae faciunt (as [6639]Postellus observes) ut rebus
sacris minus faciant fidem; and those religions some of them so
fantastical, exorbitant, so violently maintained with equal constancy
and assurance; whence they infer, that if there be so many religious
sects, and denied by the rest, why may they not be all false? or why
should this or that be preferred before the rest? The sceptics urge
this, and amongst others it is the conclusion of Sextus Empericus, lib.
3. advers. Mathematicos: after many philosophical arguments and reasons
pro and con that there are gods, and again that there are no gods, he
so concludes, cum tot inter se pugnent, &c. Una tantum potest esse
vera, as Tully likewise disputes: Christians say, they alone worship
the true God, pity all other sects, lament their case; and yet those
old Greeks and Romans that worshipped the devil, as the Chinese now do,
aut deos topicos, their own gods; as Julian the apostate,
[6640]Cecilius in Minutius, Celsus and Porphyrius the philosopher
object: and as Machiavel contends, were much more noble, generous,
victorious, had a more flourishing commonwealth, better cities, better
soldiers, better scholars, better wits. Their gods overcame our gods,
did as many miracles, &c. Saint Cyril, Arnobius, Minutius, with many
other ancients of late, Lessius, Morneus, Grotius de Verit. Relig.
Christianae, Savanarola de Verit. Fidei Christianae, well defend; but
Zanchius, [6641]Campanella, Marinus Marcennus, Bozius, and Gentillettus
answer all these atheistical arguments at large. But this again
troubles many as of old, wicked men generally thrive, professed
atheists thrive,
[6642]Nullos esse Deos, inane coelum,
Affirmat Selius: probatque, quod se
Factum, dum negat haec, videt beatum.
There are no gods, heavens are toys,
Selius in public justifies;
Because that whilst he thus denies
Their deities, he better thrives.
This is a prime argument: and most part your most sincere, upright,
honest, and [6643]good men are depressed, The race is not to the swift,
nor the battle to the strong (Eccles. ix. 11.), nor yet bread to the
wise, favour nor riches to men of understanding, but time and chance
comes to all. There was a great plague in Athens (as Thucydides, lib.
2. relates), in which at last every man, with great licentiousness, did
what he list, not caring at all for God's or men's laws. Neither the
fear of God nor laws of men (saith he) awed any man, because the plague
swept all away alike, good and bad; they thence concluded it was alike
to worship or not worship the gods, since they perished all alike. Some
cavil and make doubts of scripture itself: it cannot stand with God's
mercy, that so many should be damned, so many bad, so few good, such
have and hold about religions, all stiff on their side, factious alike,
thrive alike, and yet bitterly persecuting and damning each other; It
cannot stand with God's goodness, protection, and providence (as
[6644]Saint Chrysostom in the Dialect of such discontented persons) to
see and suffer one man to be lame, another mad, a third poor and
miserable all the days of his life, a fourth grievously tormented with
sickness and aches, to his last hour. Are these signs and works of
God's providence, to let one man be deaf, another dumb? A poor honest
fellow lives in disgrace, woe and want, wretched he is; when as a
wicked caitiff abounds in superfluity of wealth, keeps whores,
parasites, and what he will himself: Audis Jupiter haec? Talia multa
connectentes, longum reprehensionis sermonem erga Dei providentiam
contexunt. [6645]Thus they mutter and object (see the rest of their
arguments in Marcennus in Genesin, and in Campanella, amply confuted),
with many such vain cavils, well known, not worthy the recapitulation
or answering: whatsoever they pretend, they are interim of little or no
religion.
Cousin-germans to these men are many of our great philosophers and
deists, who, though they be more temperate in this life, give many good
moral precepts, honest, upright, and sober in their conversation, yet
in effect they are the same (accounting no man a good scholar that is
not an atheist), nimis altum sapiunt, too much learning makes them mad.
Whilst they attribute all to natural causes, [6646]contingence of all
things, as Melancthon calls them, Pertinax hominum genus, a peevish
generation of men, that misled by philosophy, and the devil's
suggestion, their own innate blindness, deny God as much as the rest,
hold all religion a fiction, opposite to reason and philosophy, though
for fear of magistrates, saith [6647]Vaninus, they durst not publicly
profess it. Ask one of them of what religion he is, he scoffingly
replies, a philosopher, a Galenist, an [6648]Averroist, and with
Rabelais a physician, a peripatetic, an epicure. In spiritual things
God must demonstrate all to sense, leave a pawn with them, or else seek
some other creditor. They will acknowledge Nature and Fortune, yet not
God: though in effect they grant both: for as Scaliger defines, Nature
signifies God's ordinary power; or, as Calvin writes, Nature is God's
order, and so things extraordinary may be called unnatural: Fortune his
unrevealed will; and so we call things changeable that are beside
reason and expectation. To this purpose [6649]Minutius in Octavio, and
[6650] Seneca well discourseth with them, lib. 4. de beneficiis, cap.
5, 6, 7. They do not understand what they say; what is Nature but God?
call him what thou wilt, Nature, Jupiter, he hath as many names as
offices: it comes all to one pass, God is the fountain of all, the
first Giver and Preserver, from whom all things depend, [6651]a quo, et
per quem omnia, Nam quocunque vides Deus est, quocunque moveris, God is
all in all, God is everywhere, in every place. And yet this Seneca,
that could confute and blame them, is all out as much to be blamed and
confuted himself, as mad himself; for he holds fatum Stoicum, that
inevitable Necessity in the other extreme, as those Chaldean
astrologers of old did, against whom the prophet Jeremiah so often
thunders, and those heathen mathematicians, Nigidius Figulus,
magicians, and Priscilianists, whom St. Austin so eagerly confutes,
those Arabian questionaries, Novem Judices, Albumazer, Dorotheus, &c.,
and our countryman [6652]Estuidus, that take upon them to define out of
those great conjunction of stars, with Ptolomeus, the periods of
kingdoms, or religions, of all future accidents, wars, plagues,
schisms, heresies, and what not? all from stars, and such things, saith
Maginus, Quae sibi et intelligentiis suis reservavit Deus, which God
hath reserved to himself and his angels, they will take upon them to
foretell, as if stars were immediate, inevitable causes of all future
accidents. Caesar Vaninus, in his book de admirandis naturae Arcanis,
dial. 52. de oraculis, is more free, copious, and open, in this
explication of this astrological tenet of Ptolemy, than any of our
modern writers, Cardan excepted, a true disciple of his master
Pomponatius; according to the doctrine of Peripatetics, he refers all
apparitions, prodigies, miracles, oracles, accidents, alterations of
religions, kingdoms, &c. (for which he is soundly lashed by Marinus
Mercennus, as well he deserves), to natural causes (for spirits he will
not acknowledge), to that light, motion, influences of heavens and
stars, and to the intelligences that move the orbs. Intelligentia quae,
movet orbem mediante coelo, &c. Intelligences do all: and after a long
discourse of miracles done of old, si haec daemones possint, cur non et
intelligentiae, coelorum motrices? And as these great conjunctions,
aspects of planets, begin or end, vary, are vertical and predominant,
so have religions, rites, ceremonies, and kingdoms their beginning,
progress, periods, in urbibus, regibus, religionibus, ac in
particularibus hominibus, haec vera ac manifesta, sunt, ut Aristoteles
innuere videtur, et quotidiana docet experientia, ut historias
perlegens videbit; quid olim in Gentili lege Jove sanctius et
illustrius? quid nunc vile magis et execrandum? Ita coelestia corpora
pro mortalium beneficio religiones aedificant, et cum cessat influxus,
cessat lex,[6653] &c. And because, according to their tenets, the world
is eternal, intelligences eternal, influences of stars eternal,
kingdoms, religions, alterations shall be likewise eternal, and run
round after many ages; Atque iterum ad Troiam magnus mittetur Achilles;
renascentur religiones, et ceremoniae, res humanae in idem recident,
nihil nunc quod non olim fuit, et post saeculorum revolutiones alias
est, erit,[6654]&c. idem specie, saith Vaninus, non individuo quod
Plato significavit. These (saith mine [6655]author), these are the
decrees of Peripatetics, which though I recite, in obsequium
Christianae fidei detestor, as I am a Christian I detest and hate. Thus
Peripatetics and astrologians held in former times, and to this effect
of old in Rome, saith Dionysius Halicarnassus, lib. 7, when those
meteors and prodigies appeared in the air, after the banishment of
Coriolanus, [6656] Men were diversely affected: some said they were
God's just judgments for the execution of that good man, some referred
all to natural causes, some to stars, some thought they came by chance,
some by necessity decreed ab initio, and could not be altered. The two
last opinions of necessity and chance were, it seems, of greater note
than the rest.
[6657]Sunt qui in Fortunae jam casibus omnia ponunt,
Et mundum credunt nullo rectore moveri,
Natura, volvente vices, &c.
For the first of chance, as [6658]Sallust likewise informeth us, those
old Romans generally received; They supposed fortune alone gave
kingdoms and empires, wealth, honours, offices: and that for two
causes; first, because every wicked base unworthy wretch was preferred,
rich, potent, &c.; secondly, because of their uncertainty, though never
so good, scarce any one enjoyed them long: but after, they began upon
better advice to think otherwise, that every man made his own fortune.
The last of Necessity was Seneca's tenet, that God was alligatus causis
secundis, so tied to second causes, to that inexorable Necessity, that
he could alter nothing of that which was once decreed; sic erat in
fatis, it cannot be altered, semel jussit, semper paret Deus, nulla vis
rumpit, nullae preces, nec ipsum fulmen, God hath once said it, and it
must for ever stand good, no prayers, no threats, nor power, nor
thunder itself can alter it. Zeno, Chrysippus, and those other Stoics,
as you may read in Tully 2. de divinatione, Gellius, lib. 6. cap. 2.
&c., maintained as much. In all ages, there have been such, that either
deny God in all, or in part; some deride him, they could have made a
better world, and ruled it more orderly themselves, blaspheme him,
derogate at their pleasure from him. 'Twas so in [6659]Plato's time,
Some say there be no gods, others that they care not for men, a middle
sort grant both. Si non sit Deus, unde mala? si sit Deus, unde mala? So
Cotta argues in Tully, why made he not all good, or at least tenders
not the welfare of such as are good? As the woman told Alexander, if he
be not at leisure to hear causes, and redress them, why doth he reign?
[6660]Sextus Empericus hath many such arguments. Thus perverse men
cavil. So it will ever be, some of all sorts, good, bad, indifferent,
true, false, zealous, ambidexters, neutralists, lukewarm, libertines,
atheists, &c. They will see these religious sectaries agree amongst
themselves, be reconciled all, before they will participate with, or
believe any: they think in the meantime (which [6661]Celsus objects,
and whom Origen confutes), We Christians adore a person put to
[6662]death with no more reason than the barbarous Getes worshipped
Zamolxis, the Cilicians Mopsus, the Thebans Amphiaraus, and the
Lebadians Trophonius; one religion is as true as another, new fangled
devices, all for human respects; great-witted Aristotle's works are as
much authentical to them as Scriptures, subtle Seneca's Epistles as
canonical as St. Paul's, Pindarus' Odes as good as the Prophet David's
Psalms, Epictetus' Enchiridion equivalent to wise Solomon's Proverbs.
They do openly and boldly speak this and more, some of them, in all
places and companies. [6663]Claudius the emperor was angry with Heaven,
because it thundered, and challenged Jupiter into the field; with what
madness! saith Seneca; he thought Jupiter could not hurt him, but he
could hurt Jupiter. Diagoras, Demonax, Epicurus, Pliny, Lucian,
Lucretius,—Contemptorque Deum Mezentius, professed atheists all in
their times: though not simple atheists neither, as Cicogna proves,
lib. 1. cap. 1. they scoffed only at those Pagan gods, their plurality,
base and fictitious offices. Gilbertus Cognatus labours much, and so
doth Erasmus, to vindicate Lucian from scandal, and there be those that
apologise for Epicurus, but all in vain; Lucian scoffs at all, Epicurus
he denies all, and Lucretius his scholar defends him in it:
[6664]Humana ante oculua foede cum vita jaceret
In terris oppressa gravi cum religione,
Quae caput a coeli regionibus ostendebat,
Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans, &c.
When human kind was drench'd in superstition,
With ghastly looks aloft, which frighted mortal men, &c.