The contradictions of the Stoics (38-39)

He contends much against Epicurus and those that take away providence from the conceptions we have of the Gods, whom we esteem beneficial and gracious to men. And these things being frequently said by them, there is no necessity of setting down the words. Yet all do not conceive the Gods to be good and favorable to us. For see what the Jews and Syrians think of the Gods; see also with how much superstition the poets are filled. But there is not any one, in a manner to speak of, that imagines God to be corruptible or to have been born. And to omit all others, Antipater the Tarsian, in his book of the Gods writes thus, word for word: At the beginning of our discourse we will briefly repeat the opinion we have

concerning God. We understand therefore God to be an animal, blessed and incorruptible, and beneficial to men. And then expounding every one of these terms he says: And indeed all men esteem the Gods to be incorruptible. Chrysippus therefore is, according to Antipater, not one of all men; for he thinks none of the Gods, except Fire, to be incorruptible, but that they all equally were born and will die. These things are, in a manner, everywhere said by him. But I will set down his words out of his Third Book of the Gods: It is otherwise with the Gods. For some of them are born and corruptible, but others not born. And to demonstrate these things from the beginning will be more fit for a treatise of Nature. For the Sun, the Moon, and other Gods who are of a like nature, were begotten; but Jupiter is eternal. And again going on: But the like will be said concerning dying and being born, both concerning the other Gods and Jupiter. For they indeed are corruptible, but his parts incorruptible. With these I compare a few of the things said by Antipater: Whosoever they are that take away from the Gods beneficence, they attack in some part our preconception of them; and according to the same reason they also do this, who think they participate of generation and corruption. If then he who esteems the Gods corruptible is equally absurd with him who thinks them not to be provident and gracious to men, Chrysippus is no less in an error than Epicurus. For one of them deprives the Gods of beneficence, the other of incorruptibility.

And moreover, Chrysippus, in his Third Book of the Gods treating of the other Gods being nourished, says thus: The other Gods indeed use nourishment, being equally sustained by it; but Jupiter and the World are sustained after another manner from those who are consumed and were engendered by fire. Here indeed he declares, that all the other Gods are nourished except the World and

Jupiter; but in his First Book of Providence he says. Jupiter increases till he has consumed all things into himself. For since death is the separation of the soul from the body, and the soul of the World is not indeed separated, but increases continually till it has consumed all matter into itself, it is not to be said that the World dies. Who can therefore appear to speak things more contradictory to himself than he who says that the same God is now nourished and again not nourished? Nor is there any need of gathering this by argument; for himself has plainly written in the same place: But the World alone is said to be self-sufficient, because it alone has in itself all things it stands in need of, and is nourished and augmented of itself, the other parts being mutually changed into one another. He is then repugnant to himself, not only by declaring in one place that all the Gods are nourished except the World and Jupiter, and saying in another, that the World also is nourished; but much more, when he affirms that the World increases by nourishing itself. Now the contrary had been much more probable, to wit, that the World alone does not increase, having its own destruction for its food; but that addition and increase are incident to the other Gods, who are nourished from without, and the World is rather consumed into them, if so it is that the World feeds on itself, and they always receive something and are nourished from that.