Page:Ante-Nicene Christian Library Vol 3.djvu/125

Rh things to be governed by self-regulated action. And Plato, who spoke so much of the unity of God and of the soul of man, asserting that the soul is immortal, is not he himself afterwards found, inconsistently with himself, to maintain that some souls pass into other men, and that others take their departure into irrational animals? How can his doctrine fail to seem dreadful and monstrous—to those at least who have any judgment—that he who was once a man shall afterwards be a wolf, or a dog, or an ass, or some other irrational brute? Pythagoras, too, is found venting similar nonsense, besides his demolishing providence. Which of them, then, shall we believe? Philemon, the comic poet, who says,

or those whom we have mentioned—Euhemerus, and Epicurus, and Pythagoras, and the others who deny that the gods are to be worshipped, and who abolish providence? Concerning God and providence, Ariston said:

And one can see how inconsistent with each other are the things which others, and indeed almost the majority, have said about God and providence. For some have absolutely