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| What Kind of Things Even Their Worshippers Have Owned They Have Thought About the Gods of the Nations.
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Chapter 30.—What Kind of Things
Even Their Worshippers Have Owned They Have Thought About the Gods
of the Nations.
Cicero the augur laughs at
auguries, and reproves men for regulating the purposes of life by
the cries of crows and jackdaws.182
But it will be said that an
academic philosopher, who argues that all things are uncertain, is
unworthy to have any authority in these matters. In the second
book of his De Natura Deorum,183
| 183 Cic. De Nat. Deorum, lib.
ii. c. 28. | he introduces Lucilius Balbus, who,
after showing that superstitions have their origin in physical and
philosophical truths, expresses his indignation at the setting up
of images and fabulous notions, speaking thus: “Do you not
therefore see that from true and useful physical discoveries the
reason may be drawn away to fabulous and imaginary gods? This
gives birth to false opinions and turbulent errors, and
superstitions well-nigh old-wifeish. For both the forms of the
gods, and their ages, and clothing, and ornaments, are made
familiar to us; their genealogies, too, their marriages, kinships,
and all things about them, are debased to the likeness of human
weakness. They are even introduced as having perturbed minds; for
we have accounts of the lusts, cares, and angers of the gods.
Nor, indeed, as the fables go, have the gods been without their
wars and battles. And that not only when, as in Homer, some gods
on either side have defended two opposing armies, but they have
even carried on wars on their own account, as with the Titans or
with the Giants. Such things it is quite absurd either to say or
to believe: they are utterly frivolous and groundless.”
Behold, now, what is confessed by those who defend the gods of the
nations. Afterwards he goes on to say that some things belong to
superstition, but others to religion, which he thinks good to teach
according to the Stoics. “For not only the philosophers,” he
says, “but also our forefathers, have made a distinction between
superstition and religion. For those,” he says, “who spent
whole days in prayer, and offered sacrifice, that their children
might outlive them, are called superstitious.”184
| 184 Superstition, from
superstes. Against his etymology of Cicero, see Lact.
Inst. Div. iv. 28. | Who does not see that he is
trying, while he fears the public prejudice, to praise the religion
of the ancients, and that he wishes to disjoin it from
superstition, but cannot find out how to do so? For if those who
prayed and sacrificed all day were called superstitious by the
ancients, were those also called so who instituted (what he blames)
the
images of the gods of diverse age and distinct clothing,
and invented the genealogies of gods, their marriages, and
kinships? When, therefore, these things are found fault with as
superstitious, he implicates in that fault the ancients who
instituted and worshipped such images. Nay, he implicates
himself, who, with whatever eloquence he may strive to extricate
himself and be free, was yet under the necessity of venerating
these images; nor dared he so much as whisper in a discourse to the
people what in this disputation he plainly sounds forth. Let us
Christians, therefore, give thanks to the Lord our God—not to
heaven and earth, as that author argues, but to Him who has made
heaven and earth; because these superstitions, which that Balbus,
like a babbler,185
| 185 Balbus, from balbutiens,
stammering, babbling. | scarcely
reprehends, He, by the most deep lowliness of Christ, by the
preaching of the apostles, by the faith of the martyrs dying for
the truth and living with the truth, has overthrown, not only in
the hearts of the religious, but even in the temples of the
superstitious, by their own free service.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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