To the Nations 2.1

Now our defense desires to engage with you, pitiable nations, about your gods, calling on your own conscience to judge whether they are truly gods, as you would have it, or falsely, as you would rather not know. For this is the material of human error, supplied by its contriver, that ignorance of the error may not be lacking, so that you may be the more guilty. The eyes are open, and they do not see; the ears gape, and they do not hear; the heart, though it beats, is benumbed; the mind does not know what it recognizes. Indeed, if such perversity could be dispelled by a single prescription, the verdict would be ready to hand: since we know that all these gods were instituted by men, the credit of true divinity falls away at once, because nothing that ever had a beginning can rightly be regarded as divine. But there are many things by which the tenderness of conscience is hardened into the callousness of willful error. Truth is besieged by a huge host, and yet is secure in its own strength! And why not? It takes whomever it will from among its very adversaries as allies and protectors for itself, and lays low that whole multitude of assailants. Against these things, then, we have to contend: against the institutions of the ancestors, the authority of accepted writers, the laws of rulers, the arguments of the wise; against antiquity, custom, and necessity; against examples, portents, and miracles, all of which have strengthened this adulterated divinity. So, following step by step your own commentaries, which you have drawn from every kind of theology, since among you in such matters the authority of writings counts for more than that of facts, I have chosen for brevity the works of Varro, who, having written on divine matters from everything set out before him, has offered himself to us as a suitable target. If I ask him who introduced the gods, he points either to the philosophers, or to the peoples, or to the poets. For he divided the roll of the gods into three kinds: one natural, which the philosophers treat; another mythical, which is passed about among the poets; the third national, which the peoples have each adopted for themselves. So, since the philosophers have put together the natural kind by conjectures, the poets have drawn the mythical from fables, and the peoples have taken up the national of their own accord, where then is truth to be placed? In conjectures? But the conception is uncertain. In fables? But the account is foul. In adoptions? But the adoption is arbitrary and local. In short, with the philosophers everything is uncertain, because varied; with the poets everything is unworthy, because shameful; with the peoples everything is arbitrary, because voluntary. But divinity, if you consider the true one, is by definition such that it is neither gathered by uncertain arguments, nor defiled by unworthy fables, nor decided by arbitrary adoptions; for it ought to be held, as it is, certain, whole, and common, because it belongs to all. For the rest, what god am I to believe? One whom suspicion guessed at? One whom story boasted of? One whom a city chose? Far more fittingly would I believe in none than in one who is doubtful, or shameful, or adopted.