ii ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY 255 



divinity when magically guided, but those are quite the 

 scum of the earth/' l Bruno is ironically contrasting 

 the Christian ideal, as he interprets it, with that of the 

 Greeks and Egyptians. The former is that of a being 

 only half-human, half-free ; on one side of his nature 

 he is reduced to the level of the beast, the ass, the 

 bearer of burdens, unquestioning, faithful. Again, one 

 of the constellations, the Corona Boreatis y is to be left 

 in the heavens, escaping the general fate, 2 until the 

 time when it shall be given in reward to " the invincible 

 arm that shall bring peace, the long-desired, to a 

 miserable, long-suffering Europe, cutting down the 

 many heads of that worse than Lernean monster that is 

 scattering its fateful poison of manifold heresy, and 

 sending it through every portion of her veins." 8 To 

 this decision of Jupiter, Momus, the critic and wit of 

 the assembly, adds that it would be enough " if a 

 certain sect of pedants could be rooted out, who, doing 

 no good themselves, as the divine and natural law bade, 

 yet thought themselves, and desired to be thought 

 by others, pious and pleasing to the gods ; they 

 said that to do good was good, to do evil, evil ; but 

 that men gained grace and favour with the gods, not 

 through the good that they did, but through hoping 

 and believing in accordance with their catechism. As 

 if the gods, said Mercury, were anxious about nothing 

 but their own vainglory, cared nothing for the injury 

 caused to human society. And they defame us, 

 Momus continued, by calling this an institution of 

 heaven, decrying effects or fruits ; while all the time 

 they are doing no work themselves, but living on the 



1 Lag. 427. 19. 



2 The constellations as typifying vices were to be expelled from the heavens and 

 replaced hy the personified virtues. 



3 Lag. p. 445. 



