test sweetness of his eloquence
and persuasion? "For," says he, "as comedies have in them sometimes
ridiculous epigrams, which, though bad in themselves, give nevertheless
a certain grace to the whole poem; so, though you may blame vice in
itself, yet is it not useless to other things." First, then, to say that
vice was made by the providence of God, as a wanton epigram by the will
of the poet, transcends in absurdity all imagination. For this being
granted, how will the gods be rather givers of good than evil? How will
wickedness be displeasing to them, and hated by them? And what shall we
have to oppose against these ill-sounding sentences of the poets.--

A cause to men God sends,
When to chastise some house his wrath intends;
(From the "Niobe" of Aeschylus, Frag. 151.)

and again,

What God those seeds of strife 'twixt them did sow?
(Iliad, i. 8.)

Moreover, a lewd epigram adorns the comedy and contributes to its end,
which is to delight the spectators and make them laugh. But Jupiter,
who is surnamed fatherly, supreme, just, and (as Pindar has it) the most
perfect artist, framing the world, not as a great interlude, full of
variety and great learning, but as a common city of Gods and men, living
together in concord and happiness with justice and virtue,--what need
had he, for the attaining to this excellent end, of thieves, murderers,
parricides, and tyrants? For vice entered not as a morris-dance,
pleasing and delightful to the Divinity; nor was it brought in amongst
the affairs of men, to cause mirth and laughter by its raillery and
facetiousness, since there is not to be seen in it so much as a dream of
that celebrated agreement with Nature. Besides, that foolish epigram is
a very small part of the poem, and takes up but a very little place in
the comedy; neither do such things abound in it, nor do they corrupt any
of those things which seem to have been well done, or spoil their grace.
But all human affairs are replete with vice, and the whole life, from
the very prologue and beginning to the end, being disordered, depraved,
and disturbed, and having no part of it pure or irreprehensible (as
these men say), is the most filthy and most unpleasant of all farces.

Wherefore I would willingly ask, in what vice is profitable to the
universe. Not surely in respect of heavenly things, and such as are
divine by nature. For it would be ridiculous to say, that if there had
not arisen, or we