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Of moral and spiritual evils, which are above all others to be
deprecated, I think enough has already been said to show that the
false gods took no steps to prevent the people who worshipped them from
being overwhelmed by such calamities, but rather aggravated the ruin.
I see I must now speak of those evils which alone are dreaded by the
heathen, famine, pestilence, war, pillage, captivity, massacre,
and the like calamities, already enumerated in the first book. For
evil men account those things alone evil which do not make men evil;
neither do they blush to praise good things, and yet to remain evil
among the good things they praise. It grieves them more to own a bad
house than a bad life, as if it were man's greatest good to have
everything good but himself. But not even such evils as were alone
dreaded by the heathen were warded off by their gods, even when they
were most unrestrictedly worshipped. For in various times and places
before the advent of our Redeemer, the human race was crushed with
numberless and sometimes incredible calamities; and at that time what
gods but those did the world worship, if you except the one nation of
the Hebrews, and, beyond them, such individuals as the most secret
and most just judgment of God counted worthy of divine grace? But
that I may not be prolix, I will be silent regarding the heavy
calamities that have been suffered by any other nations, and will speak
only of what happened to Rome and the Roman empire, by which I mean
Rome properly so called, and those lands which already, before the
coming of Christ, had by alliance or conquest become, as it were,
members of the body of the state.
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