the Trojan war and again of the
Persian and Peloponnesian, were no way like to colonies unless these men
know of some cities built in hell and under the earth. But Chrysippus
makes God like to Deiotarus, the Galatian king, who having many sons,
and being desirous to leave his kingdom and house to one of them, killed
all the rest; as he that cuts and prunes away all the other branches
from the vine, that one which he leaves remaining may grow strong and
great. And yet the vine-dresser does this, the sprigs being slender
and weak; and we, to favor a bitch, take from her many of her new-born
puppies, whilst they are yet blind. But Jupiter, having not only
suffered and seen men to grow up, but having also both created and
increased them, plagues them afterwards, devising occasions of their
destruction and corruption; whereas he should rather not have given them
any causes and beginnings of generation.

However, this is but a small matter; but that which follows is greater.
For there is no war amongst men without vice. But sometimes the love of
pleasure, sometimes the love of money, and sometimes the love of glory
and rule is the cause of it. If therefore God is the author of wars, he
must be also of sins, provoking and perverting men. And yet himself says
in his treatise of Judgment and his Second Book of the Gods, that it is
no way rational to say that the Divinity is in any respect the cause of
dishonesty. For as the law can in no way be the cause of transgression,
so neither can the gods of being impious; therefore neither is it
rational that they should be the causes of anything that is filthy.
What therefore can be more filthy to men than the mutual killing of one
another?--to which Chrysippus says that God gives beginnings. But some
one perhaps will say, that he elsewhere praises Euripides for saying,

If gods do aught dishonest, they're no gods;

and again,

'Tis a most easy thing t' accuse the gods;
(From the "Bellerophontes" of Euripides, Frag. 294;
and the "Archelaus," Frag. 256.)

as if we were now doing anything else than setting down such words and
sentences of his as are repugnant to one another. Yet that very thing
which is now praised may be objected, not once or twice or thrice, but
even ten thousand times, against Chrysippus:--

'Tis a most easy thing t' accuse the gods.

For first having in his book of Nature compared the eternity of motion
to a drink made of divers specie