minds to approach nearest the divinity,
have conjoined with the honor and veneration they pay him a much more
transcending pleasure and satisfaction. Of this, he that hath renounced
God's providence hath not the least share; for what recreates and cheers
us at the festivals is not the store of good wine and roast meat, but
the good hope and persuasion that God is there present and propitious
to us, and kindly accepts of what we do. From some of our festivals
we exclude the flute and garland; but if God be not present at the
sacrifice, as the solemnity of the banquet, the rest is but unhallowed,
unfeast-like, and uninspired. Indeed the whole is but ungrateful and
irksome to such a man; for he asks for nothing at all, but only acts his
prayers and adorations for fear of the public, and utters expressions
contradictory to his philosophy. And when he sacrifices, he stands by
and looks upon the priest as he kills the offering but as he doth upon a
butcher; and when he hath done, he goes his way, saying with Menander,

To bribe the gods I sacrificed my best,
But they ne'er minded me nor my request.

For so Epicurus would have us arrange ourselves, and neither to envy nor
to incur the hatred of the common herd by doing ourselves with disgust
what others do with delight. For, as Evenus saith,

No man can love what he is made to do.

For which very reason they think the superstitious are not pleased
in their minds but in fear while they attend at the sacrifices and
mysteries; though they themselves are in no better condition, if they
do the same things our of fear, and partake not either of as great good
hope as the others do, but are only fearful and uneasy lest they should
come to be discovered as cheating and abusing the public, upon whose
account it is that they compose the books they write about the gods and
the divine nature,

Involved, with nothing truly said.
But all around enveloped;

hiding out of fear the real opinions they contain.

And now, after the two former ranks of ill and common men, we will in
the third place consider the best sort and most beloved of the gods,
and what great satisfactions they receive from their clean and generous
sentiments of the deity, to wit, that he is the prince of all good
things and the parent of all things brave, and can no more do an
unworthy thing than he can be made to suffer it. For he is good, and he
that is good can upon no account fall into en