arge. But this again troubles
many as of old, wicked men generally thrive, professed atheists thrive,

[6642] "Nullos esse Deos, inane coelum,
Affirmat Selius: probatque, quod se
Factum, dum negat haec, videt beatum."

"There are no gods, heavens are toys,
Selius in public justifies;
Because that whilst he thus denies
Their deities, he better thrives."

This is a prime argument: and most part your most sincere, upright, honest,
and [6643]good men are depressed, "The race is not to the swift, nor the
battle to the strong" (Eccles. ix. 11.), "nor yet bread to the wise, favour
nor riches to men of understanding, but time and chance comes to all."
There was a great plague in Athens (as Thucydides, _lib. 2._ relates), in
which at last every man, with great licentiousness, did what he list, not
caring at all for God's or men's laws. "Neither the fear of God nor laws of
men" (saith he) "awed any man, because the plague swept all away alike,
good and bad; they thence concluded it was alike to worship or not worship
the gods, since they perished all alike." Some cavil and make doubts of
scripture itself: it cannot stand with God's mercy, that so many should be
damned, so many bad, so few good, such have and hold about religions, all
stiff on their side, factious alike, thrive alike, and yet bitterly
persecuting and damning each other; "It cannot stand with God's goodness,
protection, and providence" (as [6644]Saint Chrysostom in the Dialect of
such discontented persons) "to see and suffer one man to be lame, another
mad, a third poor and miserable all the days of his life, a fourth
grievously tormented with sickness and aches, to his last hour. Are these
signs and works of God's providence, to let one man be deaf, another dumb?
A poor honest fellow lives in disgrace, woe and want, wretched he is; when
as a wicked caitiff abounds in superfluity of wealth, keeps whores,
parasites, and what he will himself:" _Audis Jupiter haec? Talia multa
connectentes, longum reprehensionis sermonem erga Dei providentiam
contexunt._ [6645]Thus they mutter and object (see the rest of their
arguments in Marcennus in Genesin, and in Campanella, amply confuted), with
many such vain cavils, well known, not worthy the recapitulation or
answering: whatsoever they pretend, they are _interim_ of little or no
religion.

Cousin-germans to these men are many of our great philosophers and deists,
who, though