(His opinion of the Gods.)

It would be too great a neglect of the sacred laws of equity, to charge Epicurus with believing that the Gods do not deserve our worship, respects, and adorations: for he openly professed the contrary, and published excellent books touching the duties that men owe to the gods. “De sanctitate, de pietate adversus Deos libros scripsit Epicurus. At quo modo in his loquitur? Ut Coruncanum aut Scævolam

Pontifices maximos te audire dicas. Cicero de Natura Deorum, lib. 1, cap. 19. ¹⁰—Epicurus wrote of sanctity, and of the duty which we owe to the Gods. But how does he treat them? In such manner, that you would say you heard Coruncanus or Scævola, the high priests.” I own that it was objected to him, that if he acted according to his principles, he must have no religion; but this consequence did not destroy the matter of fact; for his outward religion was never questioned. We cannot produce a more creditable witness than Seneca, who speaks thus about it. “Tu denique, Epicure, Deum inermem facis: omnia illi tela, omnem detraxisti potentiam.... hunc non habes quare verearis, nulla illi nec tribuendi nec nocendi materia est. . . . Atqui hunc vis videri colere, non aliter quam parentem: grato, ut opinor, animo: aut si non vis videri gratus, quia nullum habes illius beneficium, sed te atomi et istæ micæ tuæ forte ac temere conglobaverunt, cur colis? Propter majestatem, inquis, ejus eximiam, singularemque naturam. Ut concedam tibi: nempe hoc facis nulla spe, nullo precio inductus. Est ergo aliquid per se expetendum, cujus te ipsa dignitas ducit: id est honestum. Senecan de Beneficius, lib. iv. cap. 19. ¹¹ —In short, Epicurus, you disarm God, you divest him of his thunder and his power. You have no reason to fear him, since he is incapable of doing either good or hurt; and yet you would revere him as a parent, from a principle of gratitude. If you do it not from this principle, as being formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, and consequently lying under no obligation to him, why do you worship him? You answer, for the majesty and the excellence of his nature; Be it granted that neither interest nor expectations are your motives. There is, therefore, something in itself desirable, by the dignity of which you are influenced: It is generous.” We see here, in few words, what religion Epicurus professed: he reverenced the Gods, because of the excellence of their nature, though he neither expected any good, nor feared any ill from them. He paid them a free, unmercenary worship, wherein he in no manner regarded his own interest, but purely the notions of reason, which require that we should respect and honour all that is great and perfect. Probably those were not mistaken, who accused him of doing this out of policy only, and to avoid the punishment he would infallibly have incurred, had he overthrown the worship of the Gods: but this accusation would have been rash, though perhaps not without ground; for we ought in equity to judge of our neighbour by his words and actions, and not by the secret intentions we fancy he may possess. We must leave to God, the only searcher of hearts, to judge of what passes in every man’s conscience. After all, why should we rob Epicurus of the notion of a worship which our most orthodox divines recommend as most lawful, rational, and perfect? They tell us daily, that though we should neither hope a paradise nor fear a hell, yet we ought to reverence God, and to do all things that we think will please him. I might also cite the testimony which Diogenes Laertius has given of Epicurus’s piety.

Therefore, the only proof of the text of this remark is, that Epicurus confined the divine nature to a state of inactivity; that he took from it the government of the world, and did not acknowledge it as the cause of this universe. Authors disagree about the question whether he taught that the gods were composed of atoms? If he had taught such. a thing, he had robbed the divine nature of its eternity and indestructibility, a monstrous and most blasphemous doctrine, but which, I think, cannot be charged upon him; for one of his first principles was, that God being happy and immortal, hurts nobody nor concerns himself in any thing. The first thing he proposed as a subject of meditation to his disciples was, the immortality and felicity of God.—“Look upon

God in the first place, as a being happy and incorruptible, such as the general idea represents him; ascribe nothing to him repugnant to bliss, or incomppatible with immortality.” Diog. Laert. lib. x, n. 123. ¹² He did not believe, therefore, that the gods were made like the world, by the fortuitous concourse of atoms. He was sensible enough that he would have thereby manifestly subjected them to death.