yet the superstitious believe, if a man taste of a minnow or bleak,
the Syrian Goddess will eat his shins through, fill his body with
sores, and dissolve his liver.
11. Is it a sin then to speak amiss of the Gods, and is it not to
think amiss of them? And is not thinking the cause of speaking ill?
For the only reason of our dislike to detraction is that we look upon
it as a token of ill-will to us; and we therefore take those for our
enemies that misrepresent us, because we look upon them as untrusty
and disaffected. You see then what the superstitious think of the
divinity, while they fancy the Gods such heady, faithless, fickle,
revengeful, cruel, and fretful things. The consequence of which is
that the superstitious person must needs both fear and hate them at
once. And indeed, how can he otherwise choose, while he thinks the
greatest calamities he either doth now or must hereafter undergo are
wholly owing to them? Now he that both hates and fears the Gods must
of necessity be their enemy. And if he trembles, fears, prostrates,
sacrifices, and sits perpetually in their temples, that is no marvel at
all. For the very worst of tyrants are complimented and attended, yea,
have statues of gold erected to them, by those who in private hate them
and wag their heads. Hermolaus waited on Alexander, and Pausanias was
of Philip’s guard, and so was Chaerea of Caligula’s; yet every one of
these said, I warrant you, in his heart as he went along,—
Had I a power as my will is good,
Know this, bold tyrant, I would have thy blood.[108]
The atheist believes there are no Gods; the superstitious would have
none, but is a believer against his will, and would be an infidel if
he durst. He would be as glad to ease himself of the burthen of his
fear, as Tantalus would be to slip his head from under the great stone
that hangs over him, and would bless the condition of the atheist as
absolute freedom, compared with his own. The atheist now has nothing
to do with superstition; while the superstitious is an atheist in his
heart, but is too much a coward to think as he is inclined.
12. Moreover, atheism hath no hand at all in causing superstition;
but superstition not only gave atheism its first birth, but serves it
ever since by giving it its best apology for existing, which, although
it be neither a good nor a fair one, is yet the most specious and
colorable. For men were not at first made atheists by any fault they
found in the heavens or stars, or in the seasons of the year, or in
those revolutions or motions of the sun about the earth that make the
day and night; nor yet by observing any mistake or disorder either in
the breeding of animals or the production of fruits. No, it was the
uncouth actions and ridiculous and senseless passions of superstition,
her canting words, her foolish gestures, her charms, her magic, her
freakish processions, her taborings, her foul expiations, her vile
methods of purgation, and her barbarous and inhuman penances, and
bemirings at the temples,—it was these, I say, that gave occasion to
many to affirm, it would be far happier there were no Gods at all than
for them to be pleased and delighted with such fantastic toys, and to
thus abuse their votaries, and to be incensed and pacified with trifles.
13. Had it not been much better for the so much famed Gauls and
Scythians to have neither thought nor imagined nor heard any thing of
their Gods, than to have believed them such as would be pleased with
the blood of human sacrifices, and would account such for the most
complete and meritorious of expiations? How much better had it been
for the Carthaginians to have had either a Critias or a Diagoras for
their first lawmaker, that so they might have believed in neither God
nor spirits, than to make such offerings to Saturn as they made?—not
such as Empedocles speaks of, where he thus touches the sacrifices of
beasts:—
The sire lifts up his dear beloved son,
Who first some other form and shape did take;
He doth him slay and sacrifice anon,
And therewith vows and foolish prayers doth make.
But they knowingly and wittingly themselves devoted their own children;
and they that had none of their own bought of some poor people, and
then sacrificed them like lambs or pigeons, the poor mother standing by
the while without either a sigh or tear; and if by chance she fetched
a sigh or let fall a tear, she lost the price of her child, but it was
nevertheless sacrificed. All the places round the image were in the
mean time filled with the noise of hautboys and tabors, to drown the
poor infants’ crying. Suppose we now the Typhons and Giants should
depose the Gods and make themselves masters of mankind, what sort of
sacrifices, think you, would they expect? Or what other expiations
would they require? The queen of King Xerxes, Amestris, buried twelve
men alive, as a sacrifice to Pluto to prolong her own life; and yet
Plato saith, This God is called in Greek Hades, because he is placid,
wise, and wealthy, and retains the souls of men by persuasion and
oratory. That great naturalist Xenophanes, seeing the Egyptians beating
their breasts and lamenting at the solemn times of their devotions,
gave them this pertinent and seasonable admonition: If they are Gods
(said he), don’t cry for them; and if they are men, don’t sacrifice to
them.
14. There is certainly no infirmity belonging to us that contains
such a multiplicity of errors and fond passions, or that consists of
such incongruous and incoherent opinions, as this of superstition
doth. It behooves us therefore to do our utmost to escape it; but
withal, we must see we do it safely and prudently, and not rashly and
inconsiderately, as people run from the incursions of robbers or from
fire, and fall into bewildered and untrodden paths full of pits and
precipices. For so some, while they would avoid superstition, leap over
the golden mean of true piety into the harsh and coarse extreme of
atheism.