Therefore, on the same principle, if the heaven is destroyed, the sun and moon will also be destroyed, and all the other planets likewise will be destroyed, and all the fixed stars, and all that host of gods visible to the outward senses which was formerly considered so happy; and to imagine this is nothing else than to fancy the gods themselves in a process of destruction, for this is equivalent to considering men immortal. And yet in a comparison between different objects devoid of honour, if you were to consider the matter, you would find it more consistent with probability to look on men as immortal than to believe that the gods are perishable, since it might happen through the grace of God, for it is not improbable that a mortal might receive immortality, but it is impossible for gods to lose their immortality even if the sophistries of mankind should run on to ever such a degree of wicked insanity.

 And, moreover, those persons who allege conflagrations and regenerations of the world, think and confess that the stars are gods, which nevertheless they are not ashamed to destroy as far as their arguments go; for they are bound to prove them to be either red hot pieces of iron, as some do affirm, who argue about the whole of the heaven as if it were a prison,
 
talking utter nonsense, or else to look upon them as divine and godlike natures, and then to attribute to them that immortality which belongs to gods.
But as it is, they have wandered so far from true doctrine, that without being aware of it they have attributed corruptibility and perishableness to providence (and that is the soul of the world) by the inconsistent principles which they advocate. Therefore Chrysippus, the most celebrated philosopher of that sect, in his treatise about Increase, utters some such prodigious assertions as these, and after he has prefaced his doctrines with the assertion that it is impossible for two makers of a species to exist in the same substance, he proceeds, "Let it be granted for the sake of argument and speculation that there is one person entire and sound, and another wanting one foot from his birth, and that the sound man is called Dion and the cripple Theon, and afterwards that Dion also loses one of his feet, then if the question were asked which had been spoiled, it would be more natural to say this of Theon;" but this is the assertion of one who delights in paradox rather than in truth, for how could it be said that he who had suffered no mutilation whatever, namely Theon, was taken off, and that Dion, who had lost a foot, was not injured? Very appropriately, he will reply, for Dion, who had had his foot cut off, falls back upon the original imperfection of Theon, and there cannot be two specific differences in the same subject, therefore it follows of necessity that Dion must remain, and that Theon must be taken off—

 "So are we slain by arrows winged With our own feathers," 
 From the Myrmidons of AEschylus. The passage is evidently the original of the stanza in Waller’s Ode to a Lady " That eagle’s fate and mine are one, Who on the shaft that made him die, Espied a feather of his own, Wherewith he wont to soar so high." as the tragic poet says. For any one, copying the form of this argument and adapting it to the entire world, may prove in the clearest manner that providence itself is liable to corruption. Consider the matter thus: let the world be the subject of our argument, as Dion was just now, for it is perfect, and let the soul of the world take the place of Theon, who was
 From the Myrmidons of AEschylus. The passage is evidently the original of the stanza in Waller’s Ode to a Lady " That eagle’s fate and mine are one, Who on the shaft that made him die, Espied a feather of his own, Wherewith he wont to soar so high." 
 
imperfect, since a part is less than the whole; and as the foot was cut off from Dion, so also let everything which resembles a body be cut off from the world;