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O Marcus Varro! thou art the most acute, and without doubt the most
learned, but still a man, not God, now lifted up by the Spirit of
God to see and to announce divine things, thou seest, indeed, that
divine things are to be separated from human trifles and lies, but thou
fearest to offend those most corrupt opinions of the populace, and
their customs in public superstitions, which thou thyself, when thou
considerest them on all sides, perceivest, and all your literature
loudly pronounces to be abhorrent from the nature of the gods, even of
such gods as the frailty of the human mind supposes to exist in the
elements of this world. What can the most excellent human talent do
here? What can human learning, though manifold, avail thee in this
perplexity? Thou desirest to worship the natural gods; thou art
compelled to worship the civil. Thou hast found some of the gods to be
fabulous, on whom thou vomitest forth very freely what thou thinkest,
and, whether thou wiliest or not, thou wettest therewith even the
civil gods. Thou sayest, forsooth, that the fabulous are adapted to
the theatre, the natural to the world, and the civil to the city;
though the world is a divine work, but cities and theatres are the
works of men, and though the gods who are laughed at in the theatre are
not other than those who are adored in the temples; and ye do not
exhibit games in honor of other gods than those to whom ye immolate
victims. How much more freely and more subtly wouldst thou have
decided these hadst thou said that some gods are natural, others
established by men; and concerning those who have been so established,
the literature of the poets gives one account, and that of the priests
another, both of which are, nevertheless, so friendly the one to the
other, through fellowship in falsehood, that they are both pleasing to
the demons, to whom the doctrine of the truth is hostile.
That theology, therefore, which they call natural, being put aside
for a moment, as it is afterwards to be discussed, we ask if any one
is really content to seek a hope for eternal life from poetical,
theatrical, scenic gods? Perish the thought! The true God avert so
wild and sacrilegious a madness! What, is eternal life to be asked
from those gods whom these things pleased, and whom these things
propitiate, in which their own crimes are represented? No one, as I
think, has arrived at such a pitch of headlong and furious impiety.
So then, neither by the fabulous nor by the civil theology does any
one obtain eternal life. For the one sows base things concerning the
gods by feigning them, the other reaps by cherishing them; the one
scatters lies, the other gathers them together; the one pursues divine
things with false crimes, the other incorporates among divine things
the plays which are made up of these crimes; the one sounds abroad in
human songs impious fictions concerning the gods, the other consecrates
these for the festivities of the gods themselves; the one sings the
misdeeds and crimes of the gods, the other loves them; the one gives
forth or feigns, the other either attests the true or delights in the
false. Both are base; both are damnable. But the one which is
theatrical teaches public abomination, and that one which is of the
city adorns itself with that abomination. Shall eternal life be hoped
for from these, by which this short and temporal life is polluted?
Does the society of wicked men pollute our life if they insinuate
themselves into our affections, and win our assent? and does not the
society of demons pollute the life, who are worshipped with their own
crimes?, if with true crimes, how wicked the demons! if with false,
how wicked the worship!
When we say these things, it may perchance seem to some one who is
very ignorant of these matters that only those things concerning the
gods which are sung in the songs of the poets and acted on the stage are
unworthy of the divine majesty, and ridiculous, and too detestable to
be celebrated, whilst those sacred things which not stage-players but
priests perform are pure and free from all unseemliness. Had this been
so, never would any one have thought that these theatrical abominations
should be celebrated in their honor, never would the gods themselves
have ordered them to be performed to them. But men are in nowise
ashamed to perform these things in the theatres, because similar things
are carried on in the temples. In short, when the fore-mentioned
author attempted to distinguish the civil theology from the fabulous and
natural, as a sort of third and distinct kind, he wished it to be
understood to be rather tempered by both than separated from either.
For he says that those things which the poets write are less than the
people ought to follow, whilst what the philosophers say is more than
it is expedient for the people to pry into. "Which," says he,
"differ in such a way, that nevertheless not a few things from both of
them have been taken to the account of the civil theology; wherefore we
will indicate what the civil theology has in common with that of the
poet, though it ought to be more closely connected with the theology of
philosophers." Civil theology is therefore not quite disconnected
from that of the poets. Nevertheless, in another place, concerning
the generations of the gods, he says that the people are more inclined
toward the poets than toward the physical theologists. For in this
place he said what ought to be done; in that other place, what was
really done. He said that the latter had written for the sake of
utility, but the poets for the sake of amusement. And hence the
things from the poets' writings, which the people ought not to
follow, are the crimes of the gods; which, nevertheless, amuse both
the people and the gods. For, for amusement's sake, he says, the
poets write, and not for that of utility; nevertheless they write such
things as the gods will desire, and the people perform.
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