vy, fear, anger, or hatred;
neither is it proper to a hot thing to cool, but to heat; nor to a
good thing to do harm. Now anger is by nature at the farthest distance
imaginable from complacency, and spleenishness from placidness, and
animosity and turbulence from humanity and kindness. For the latter
of these proceed from generosity and fortitude, but the former from
impotency and baseness. The deity is not therefore constrained by either
anger or kindnesses; but that is because it is natural to it to be kind
and aiding, and unnatural to be angry and hurtful. But the great Jove,
whose mansion is in heaven, is the first that descends downwards and
orders all things and takes the care of them. But of the other gods
one is surnamed the Distributor, and another the Mild, and a third the
Averter of Evil. And according to Pindar,

Phoebus was by mighty Jove designed
Of all the gods to be to man most kind.

And Diogenes saith, that all things are the gods', and friends have all
things common, and good men are the gods' friends; and therefore it is
impossible either that a man beloved of the gods should not be happy,
or that a wise and a just man should not be beloved of the gods. Can
you think then that they that take away Providence need any other
chastisement, or that they have not a sufficient one already, when they
root out of themselves such vast satisfaction and joy as we that
stand thus affected towards the deity have? Metrodorus, Polyaenus, and
Aristobulus were the confidence and rejoicing of Epicurus; the
better part of whom he all his lifetime either attended upon in their
sicknesses or lamented at their deaths. As did Lycurgus, when he was
saluted by the Delphic prophetess,

Dear friend to heavenly Jove and all the gods.

And did Socrates when he believed that a certain divinity was used out
of kindness to discourse him, and Pindar when he heard Pan sing one
of the sonnets he had composed, but a little rejoice, think you? Or
Phormio, when he thought he had treated Castor and Pollux at his house?
Or Sophocles, when he entertained Aesculapius, as both he himself
believed, and others too, that thought the same with him by reason of
the apparition that then happened? What opinion Hermogenes had of the
gods is well worth the recounting in his very own words. "For these
gods," saith he, "who know all things and can do all things, are so
friendly and loving to me that, because they take care of me, I nev