DIADUMENUS. But lest these things should seem to have too much of logical difficulty, let us proceed to such as pertain more to natural philosophy. Since then, as themselves say, Jove is of all beginning, midst, and end, See Orphic Fragments, VI. 10 (Herm.). they ought chiefly to have applied themselves to remedy, redress, and reduce to the best order the conceptions concerning the Gods, if there were in them any thing confused or erroneous; or if not, to have left every one in those sentiments which they had from the laws and custom concerning the Divinity: For neither now nor yesterday These deep conceits of God began; Time out of mind they have been aye, But no man knows where, how, or when. Soph. Antigone, 456. But these men, having begun (as it were) from Vesta to disturb the opinions settled and received in every country concerning the Gods, have not (to speak sincerely) left any thing entire and uncorrupted. For what man is there or ever was, except these, who does not believe the Divinity to be immortal and eternal? Or what in the common anticipations is more unanimously chanted forth concerning the Gods than such things as these: There the blest Gods eternally enjoy Their sweet delights; Odyss. VI. 46. and again, Both Gods immortal, and earth-dwelling men; Il. V. 442. and again, Exempt from sickness and old age are they, And free from toil, and have escaped the flood Of roaring Acheron? From Pindar. 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. DIADUMENUS. 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. DIADUMENUS. 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 pre-conception 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? DIADUMENUS. 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. DIADUMENUS. 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, This saying is more impious than the first. See Nauck’s Tragic Fragments, p. 704 (No. 345). For it were more tolerable to say that many parts of Jupiter are, through his weakness and want of power, hurried on to do many absurd things against his nature and will, than that there is not any intemperance or wickedness of which Jupiter is not the cause. Moreover, since they affirm the world to be a city and the stars citizens, if this be so, there must be also tribes-men and magistrates, the sun must be some consul, and the evening star a praetor or mayor of a city. Now I know not whether any one that shall go about to confute such things will not show himself more absurd than those who assert and affirm them. DIADUMENUS. Is it not therefore against sense to say that the seed is more and greater than that which is produced of it? For we see that Nature in all animals and plants, even those that are wild, has taken small, slender, and scarce visible things for principles of generation to the greatest. For it does not only from a grain of wheat produce an ear-bearing stalk, or a vine from the stone of a grape; but from a small berry or acorn which has escaped being eaten by the bird, kindling and setting generation on fire (as it were) from a little spark, it sends forth the stock of a bush, or the tall body of an oak, palm, or pine tree. Whence also they say that seed is in Greek called σπέρμα , as it were, the σπείρασις or the coiling up of a great mass in a little compass; and that Nature has the name of φύσις , as if it were the inflation ( ἐμφύσησις ) and diffusion of reason and numbers opened and loosened by it. But now, in opposition to this, they maintain that fire is the seed of the world, which shall after the conflagration change into seed the world, which will then have a copious nature from a smaller body and bulk, and possess an infinite space of vacuum filled by its increase; and the world being made, the size again recedes and settles, the matter being after the generation gathered and contracted into itself.