Of Superstition, or Indiscreet Devotion (13-14)

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.

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.