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[236]
Yet do the Lysimachi and the Molones, and some other writers, (unskillful
sophists as they are, and the deceivers of young men,) reproach us as the
vilest of all mankind. Now I have no mind to make an inquiry into the laws
of other nations; for the custom of our country is to keep our own laws,
but not to bring accusations against the laws of others. And indeed our
legislator hath expressly forbidden us to laugh at and revile those that
are esteemed gods by other people? on account of the very name of God ascribed
to them. But since our antagonists think to run us down upon the comparison
of their religion and ours, it is not possible to keep silence here, especially
while what I shall say to confute these men will not be now first said,
but hath been already said by many, and these of the highest reputation
also; for who is there among those that have been admired among the Greeks
for wisdom, who hath not greatly blamed both the most famous poets, and
most celebrated legislators, for spreading such notions originally among
the body of the people concerning the gods? such as these, that they may
be allowed to be as numerous as they have a mind to have them; that they
are begotten one by another, and that after all the kinds of generation
you can imagine. They also distinguish them in their places and ways of
living as they would distinguish several sorts of animals; as some to be
under the earth; as some to be in the sea; and the ancientest of them all
to be bound in hell; and for those to whom they have allotted heaven, they
have set over them one, who in title is their father, but in his actions
a tyrant and a lord; whence it came to pass that his wife, and brother,
and daughter (which daughter he brought forth from his own head) made a
conspiracy against him to seize upon him and confine hint, as he had himself
seized upon and confined his own father before.
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