6
Well then, is not this the very case of the atheist, compared with the superstitious? The former sees not the Gods at all, the latter believes that he really sees them; the former wholly overlooks them, but the latter mistakes their benignity for terror, their paternal affection for tyranny, their providence for cruelty, and their frank simplicity for savageness and brutality.
6
Again, the workman in copper, stone, and wax can persuade such that the Gods are in human shape; for so they make them, so they draw them, and so they worship them. But they will not hear either philosophers or statesmen that describe the majesty of the Divinity as accompanied by goodness, magnanimity, benignity, and beneficence. The one therefore hath neither a sense nor belief of that divine good he might participate of; and the other dreads and fears it. In a word, atheism is an absolute insensibility to God (or want of passion), which does not recognize goodness; while superstition is a blind heap of passions, which imagine the good to be evil. They are afraid of their Gods, and yet run to them; they fawn upon them, and reproach them; they invoke them, and accuse them. It is the common destiny of humanity not to enjoy uninterrupted felicity. Nor pains, nor age, nor labor they e’er bore, Nor visited rough Acheron’s hoarse shore, saith Pindar of the Gods; but human passions and affairs are liable to a strange multiplicity of uncertain accidents and contingencies.
