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IN the five former books, I think I have sufficiently disputed
against those who believe that the many false gods, which the
Christian truth shows to be useless images, or unclean spirits and
pernicious demons, or certainly creatures, not the Creator, are to
be worshipped for the advantage of this mortal life, and of terrestrial
affairs, with that rite and service which the Greeks call latreia,
and which is due to the one true God. And who does not know that, in
the face of excessive stupidity and obstinacy, neither these five nor
any other number of books whatsoever could be enough, when it is
esteemed the glory of vanity to yield to no amount of strength on the
side of truth, certainly to his destruction over whom so heinous a vice
tyrannizes? For, notwithstanding all the assiduity of the physician
who attempts to effect a cure, the disease remains unconquered, not
through any fault of his, but because of the incurableness of the sick
man. But those who thoroughly weigh the things which they read,
having understood and considered them, without any, or with no great
and excessive degree of that obstinacy which belongs to a
long-cherished error, will more readily judge that, in the five books
already finished, we have done more than the necessity of the question
demanded, than that we have given it less discussion than it required.
And they cannot have doubted but that all the hatred which the ignorant
attempt to bring upon the Christian religion on account of the
disasters of this life, and the destruction and change which befall
terrestrial things, whilst the learned do not merely dissimulate, but
encourage that hatred, contrary to their own consciences, being
possessed by a mad impiety;, they cannot have doubted, I say, but
that this hatred is devoid of right reflection and reason, and full of
most light temerity, and most pernicious animosity.
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