taken, did not consider
that the Deity himself must, in consequence of this doctrine, be maimed
and torn with the rending every human soul from it; nor that, when the
human mind is afflicted (as is the case in many instances), that part
of the Deity must likewise be afflicted, which cannot be. If the human
mind were a Deity, how could it be ignorant of any thing? Besides, how
could that Deity, if it is nothing but soul, be mixed with, or infused
into, the world?

Then Xenophanes, who said that everything in the world which had any
existence, with the addition of intellect, was God, is as liable to
exception as the rest, especially in relation to the infinity of it, in
which there can be nothing sentient, nothing composite.

Parmenides formed a conceit to himself of something circular like a
crown. (He names it Stephane.) It is an orb of constant light and heat
around the heavens; this he calls God; in which there is no room to
imagine any divine form or sense. And he uttered many other absurdities
on the same subject; for he ascribed a divinity to war, to discord, to
lust, and other passions of the same kind, which are destroyed by
disease, or sleep, or oblivion, or age. The same honor he gives to the
stars; but I shall forbear making any objections to his system here,
having already done it in another place.

XII. Empedocles, who erred in many things, is most grossly mistaken in
his notion of the Gods. He lays down four natures[84] as divine, from
which he thinks that all things were made. Yet it is evident that they
have a beginning, that they decay, and that they are void of all sense.

Protagoras did not seem to have any idea of the real nature of the
Gods; for he acknowledged that he was altogether ignorant whether there
are or are not any, or what they are.

What shall I say of Democritus, who classes our images of objects, and
their orbs, in the number of the Gods; as he does that principle
through which those images appear and have their influence? He deifies
likewise our knowledge and understanding. Is he not involved in a very
great error? And because nothing continues always in the same state, he
denies that anything is everlasting, does he not thereby entirely
destroy the Deity, and make it impossible to form any opinion of him?

Diogenes of Apollonia looks upon the air to be a Deity. But what sense
can the air have? or what divine form can be attributed to it?

It would be tedious to show the uncerta