Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/395

Rh repose, it stingeth, it pricketh it and setteth it a-gadding, it throweth it down headlong (as it were) from high rocks, it stifleth and strangleth it, and in one word, it bereaveth it of all liberty and frank speech. Again, are there some persuaded that virtue and vice be substances corporal and material? this haply is a gross ignorance and a foul error, howbeit not lamentable nor worthy to be deplored: but there be other judgments and opinions like unto this: O virtue, wretched and miserable. Nought else but words and wind variable; Thee serv'd I daily with all reverence, As if thou hadst been some real essence: Whereas injustice neglected I have, Which would have made me a man rich and brave; Intemperance eke have I cast behind: Of pleasures all, the mother dear and kind. Such as these verily we ought to pity, yea, and withal to be offended at, because in whose minds they are once entered and settled they engender many maladies and passions like unto worms and such filthy vermin.

But now to come unto those which at this present are in question: impiety or atheism, being a false persuasion and lewd belief that there is no sovereign nature most happy and incorruptible, seemeth by incredulity of a Godhead to bring miscreants to a certain stupidity, bereaving them of all sense and feeling, considering that the end of this misbelief that there is no God, is to be void altogether of fear. As for superstition, according as the nature of the Greek word (which signifieth fear of the gods) doth imply, is a passionate opinion and turbulent imagination, imprinting in the heart of man a certain fearfulness, which doth abate his courage and humble him down to the very ground, whiles he is persuaded that they be gods indeed, but such as be noisome, hurtful, and doing mischief unto men: In such sort, that the impious atheist, having no motion at all as touching the Deity and divine power, and the superstitious person moved and affected thereto after a perverse sort, and otherwise than he should, are both out of the right way. For ignorance, as it doth ingenerate in the one an unbelief of that sovereign nature which is the cause of all goodness, so it imprinteth in the other a misbelief of the Deity, as being the cause of evil: so that as it should seem, impiety or atheism is a false judgment and opinion of the Godhead; and superstition a passion proceeding from an erroneous persuasion. True it is that all maladies of the soul are foul and the passions naught;