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What says Varro himself, whom we grieve to have found, although not
by his own judgment, placing the scenic plays among things, divine?
When in many passages he is horting, like a religious man, to the
worship of the gods, does he not in doing so admit that he does not in
his own judgment believe those things which he relates that the Roman
state has instituted; so that he does not hesitate to affirm that if he
were founding a new state; he could enumerate the gods and their names
better by the rule of nature? But being born into a nation already
ancient, he says that he finds himself bound to accept the traditional
names and surnames of the gods, and the histories connected with them,
and that his purpose in investigating and publishing these details is to
incline the people to worship the gods, and not to despise them. By
which, words this most acute man sufficiently indicates that he does
not publish all things, because they would not only have been
contemptible to himself, but would have seemed despicable even to the
rabble, unless they had been passed over in silence. I should be
thought to conjecture these things, unless he himself, in another
passage, had openly said, in speaking of religious rites, that many
things are true which it is not only not useful for the common people to
know, but that it is expedient that the people should think otherwise,
even though falsely, and therefore the Greeks have shut up the
religious ceremonies and mysteries in silence, and within walls. In
this he no doubt expresses the policy of the so-called wise men by whom
states and peoples are ruled. Yet by this crafty device the malign
demons are wonderfully delighted, who possess alike the deceivers and
the deceived, and from whose tyranny nothing sets free save the grace
of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The same most acute and learned author also says, that those alone
seem to him to have perceived what God is, who have believed Him to
be the soul of the world, governing it by design and reason. And by
this, it appears, that although he did not attain to the truth, for
the true God is not a soul, but the maker and author of the soul, yet
if he could have been free to go against the prejudices of custom, he
could have confessed and counselled others that the one God ought to be
worshipped, who governs the world by design and reason; so that on
this subject only this point would remain to be debated with him, that
he had called Him a soul, and not rather the creator of the soul. He
says, also, that the ancient Romans, for more than a hundred and
seventy years, worshipped the gods without an image? "And if this
custom," he says, "could have remained till now, the gods would
have been more purely worshipped." In favor of this opinion, he
cites as a witness among others the Jewish nation; nor does he
hesitate to conclude that passage by saying of those who first
consecrated images for the people, that they have both taken away
religious fear from their fellow-citizens, and increased error,
wisely thinking that the gods easily fall into contempt when exhibited
under the stolidity of images. But as he does not say they have
transmitted error, but that they have increased it, he therefore
wishes it to be understood that there was error already when there were
no images. Wherefore, when he says they alone have perceived what
God is who have believed Him to be the governing soul of the world,
and thinks that the rites of religion would have been more purely
observed without images, who fails to see how near he has come to the
truth? For if he had been able to do anything against so inveterate,
an error, he would certainly have given it as his opinion both that the
one God should be worshipped, and that He should be worshipped
without an image; and having so nearly discovered the truth, perhaps
he might easily have been put in mind of the mutability of the soul,
and might thus have perceived that the true God is that immutable
nature which made the soul itself. Since these things are so,
whatever ridicule such men have poured in their writings against the
plurality of the gods, they have done so rather as compelled by the
secret will of God to confess them, than as trying to persuade
others. If, therefore, any testimonies are adduced by us from these
writings, they are adduced for the confutation of those who are
unwilling to consider from how great and malignant a power of the demons
the singular sacrifice of the shedding of the most holy blood, and the
gift of the imparted Spirit, can set us free.
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