BOOK II.] History of Nature. 35 



CHAPTER VII. 

 Of God. 



I SUPPOSE, therefore, that to seek after any Shape of God 1 , 

 and to assign a Form and Image to him, is a Proof of Man's 

 Folly. For God, whosoever he be (if haply there be any other, 

 but the World itself), and in what Part soever resident, all 

 Sense He is, all Sight, all Hearing : He is the whole of the Life 

 and of the Soul, all of Himself. And to believe that there be 

 Gods innumerable, and those according to Men's Virtues and 

 Vices, as Chastity, Concord, Understanding, Hope, Honour, 

 Clemency, Faith ; or (as Democritus was of Opinion) that 

 there are two Gods only, that is, Punishment and Benefit : 

 these Conceits render Men's idle Negligence the greater. But 

 frail and wearisome mortal Men, remembering their own 

 Infirmity, have digested these Things apart, to the End that 

 each one might from thence choose to worship that whereof 

 he stood most in need. And hence it is, that in different 

 Nations we find the Gods named diversely : and in the same 

 Region there are innumerable Gods. The infernal Powers, 

 likewise, and Diseases, yea, and many Plagues, have been 

 ranged in Divisions, and reckoned for Gods ; which, with 



1 In this chapter the author openly asserts his disbelief of the truth of 

 the established system of religion of his country ; and his manner of doing 

 this sufficiently shews the confidence he felt, of finding sympathy in his 

 scepticism among the learned and refined classes of society. This system 

 was, indeed, singularly destitute of evidence ; and the reasons he gives 

 for his disbelief shew it to have been as absurd to the eye of examination 

 as it was unsupported by argument. That the chief deities of the Hea- 

 then were no more than deceased men who had benefited the world in 

 their lives, or at least acquired human respect, is asserted by many other 

 ancient authors ; but it is to be regretted that the author should so far 

 join in the error as from it to find occasion for thereby mixing up with 

 it the flattery of a court. The treatise of Cicero, " On the Nature of the 

 Gods," and the remarks of Pliny, are proofs that the ancient Heathens 

 were not slow to discern the errors of the popular system of religion, 

 though they were incapable of discovering or appreciating the true. 

 Wern. Club. 



