calamities; by two suns, which, as I have heard my father say, happened
in the consulate of Tuditanus and Aquillius, and in which year also
another sun (P. Africanus) was extinguished. These things terrified
mankind, and raised in them a firm belief of the existence of some
celestial and divine power.

His fourth cause, and that the strongest, is drawn from the regularity
of the motion and revolution of the heavens, the distinctness, variety,
beauty, and order of the sun, moon, and all the stars, the appearance
only of which is sufficient to convince us they are not the effects of
chance; as when we enter into a house, or school, or court, and observe
the exact order, discipline, and method of it, we cannot suppose that
it is so regulated without a cause, but must conclude that there is
some one who commands, and to whom obedience is paid. It is quite
impossible for us to avoid thinking that the wonderful motions,
revolutions, and order of those many and great bodies, no part of which
is impaired by the countless and infinite succession of ages, must be
governed and directed by some supreme intelligent being.

VI. Chrysippus, indeed, had a very penetrating genius; yet such is the
doctrine which he delivers, that he seems rather to have been
instructed by nature than to owe it to any discovery of his own. "If,"
says he, "there is anything in the universe which no human reason,
ability, or power can make, the being who produced it must certainly be
preferable to man. Now, celestial bodies, and all those things which
proceed in any eternal order, cannot be made by man; the being who made
them is therefore preferable to man. What, then, is that being but a
God? If there be no such thing as a Deity, what is there better than
man, since he only is possessed of reason, the most excellent of all
things? But it is a foolish piece of vanity in man to think there is
nothing preferable to him. There is, therefore, something preferable;
consequently, there is certainly a God."

When you behold a large and beautiful house, surely no one can persuade
you it was built for mice and weasels, though you do not see the
master; and would it not, therefore, be most manifest folly to imagine
that a world so magnificently adorned, with such an immense variety of
celestial bodies of such exquisite beauty, and that the vast sizes and
magnitude of the sea and land were intended as the abode of man, and
not as the mansion of the immortal Gods?