ese things Cleanthes, contending for the conflagration of the
world, says, that the sun will make the moon and all the other stars
like to himself, and will change them into himself. Indeed, if the
stars, being gods, should contribute anything to the sun towards
their own destruction by adding to its conflagration, it would be very
ridiculous for us to make prayers to them for our salvation, and to
think them the saviours of men, whose nature it is to accelerate their
own corruption and dissolution.

And yet these men leave nothing unsaid against Epicurus, crying out,
Fie, fie upon him, as confounding their presumption concerning God by
taking away Providence; for God (they say) is presumed and understood to
be not only immortal and happy, but also a lover of men and careful of
them and beneficial to them, and herein they say true. Now if they who
abolish Providence take away the preconception concerning God, what do
they who say that the gods indeed have care of us, but deny them to
be helpful to us, and make them not bestowers of good things but of
indifferent ones, giving, to wit, not virtue, but wealth, health,
children, and such like things, none of which is helpful, profitable,
desirable, or available? Or shall we not rather think, that Epicurus
does not take away the conceptions concerning the gods; but that these
Stoics scoff at the gods and deride them, saying one is a god of fruits,
another of marriage, another a physician, and another a diviner,
while yet health, issue, and plenty of fruits are not good things, but
indifferent things and unprofitable to those who have them?

The third point of the conception concerning the gods is, that the gods
do in nothing so much differ from men as in happiness and virtue. But
according to Chrysippus, they have not so much as this difference. For
he says that Jupiter does not exceed Dion in virtue, but that Jupiter
and Dion, being both wise, are equally aided by one another, when one
comes into the motion of the other. For this and none else is the good
which the gods do to men, and likewise men to the gods when they are
wise. For they say, that a man who falls not short in virtue comes not
behind them in felicity, and that he who, tormented with diseases and
being maimed in the body, makes himself away, is equally happy with
Jupiter the Saviour, provided he be but wise. But this man neither is
nor ever was upon the earth; but there are infinite millions of men
unhappy t