Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/408

386 those we take for to be our enemies who give out bad words of us, in this respect that we suppose them to be faithless and not to be trusted, but rather ill affected unto us, and thinking badly of us. Thus you see what judgment superstitious folk have of the gods, when they imagine them to be dull and blockish, treacherous and disloyal, variable and fickle-minded, full of revenge, cruel, melancholic and apt to fret at every little matter: whereupon it must needs follow, that the superstitious man doth both hate and also dread the gods; for how can it otherwise be, considering that he is persuaded that all the greatest calamities which either he hath endured in times past, or is like to suffer hereafter, proceed from them; now whosoever hateth and feareth the gods, he is no doubt their enemy; neither is it to be wondered at for all this, that although he stand in dread of them, yet he adoreth and worshippeth them, he prayeth and sacrificeth unto them, frequenteth duly and devoutly their temples, and is not willingly out of them; for do we not see it ordinarily that reverence is done unto tyrants, that men make court unto them, and cry: God save your grace; yea, and erect golden statues to the honour of them: howbeit as great devotion and divine honour as they do unto them in outward appearance, they hate and abhor them secretly to the heart. Hermolaus courted Alexander, and was serviceable about him: Pausanias was one of the squires of the body to King Philip, and so was Chæreas to Caligula the emperor; but there was not of these but even when he served them said thus in his heart:

Certes, in case it did now lie in me, Of thee (thou tyrant) revenged would I be.

Thus you see the atheist thinketh there be no gods; but the superstitious person wisheth that there were none; yet he believeth even against his will that there be, nay, he dare not otherwise do for fear of death. Now if he could (like as Tantalus desired to go from under the stone that hung over his head) be discharged of this fear which no less doth press him down, surely he would embrace, yea, and think the disposition and condition of an atheist to be happy, as the state of freedom and liberty: but now the atheist hath no spark at all of superstition, whereas the superstitious person is in will and affection a mere atheist, howbeit weaker than to believe and shew in opinion that of the gods which he would and is in his mind. Moreover, the atheist in no wise giveth any cause or ministereth occasion that superstition should arise; but superstition not only was the first