vainglory, or prodigious fierceness, and that therefore it would be better to be a little concerned and affected, yea, and to liquor one's eyes and be melted, with other pretty things of the like kind, which they use artificially to affect and counterfeit, that they may be thought tender and loving-hearted people. For just in this manner Epicurus expressed himself upon the occasion of the death of Hegesianax, when he wrote to Dositheus the father and to Pyrson the brother of the deceased person; for I fortuned very lately to run over his epistles. And I say, in imitation of them, that atheism is no less an evil than inhumanity and vainglory, and into this they would lead us who take away with God's anger the comfort we might derive from him. For it would be much better for us to have something of the unsuiting passion of dauntedness and fear conjoined and intermixed with our sentiments of a deity, than while we fly from it, to leave ourselves neither hope, content, nor assurance in the enjoyment of our good things nor any recourse to God in our adversity and misfortunes. We ought, it is true, to remove superstition from the persuasion we have of the gods, as we would the gum from our eyes; but if that be impossible, we must not root out and extinguish with it the belief which the most have of the gods; nor is that a dismaying and sour one either, as these gentlemen feign, while they libel and abuse the blessed Providence, representing her as a witch or as some fell and tragic fury. Yea, I must tell you, there are some in the world that fear God in an excess, for whom yet it would not be better not so to fear him. For, while they dread him as a governor that is gentle to the good and severe to the bad, and are by this one fear, which makes them not to need many others, freed from doing ill and brought to keep their wickedness with them in quiet and (as it were) in an enfeebled languor, they come hereby to have less disquiet than those that indulge the practice of it and are rash and daring in it, and then presently after fear and repent of it. Now that disposition of mind which the greater and ignorant part of mankind, that are not utterly bad, are of towards God, hath, it is very true, conjoined with the regard and honor they pay him, a kind of anguish and astonished dread, which is also called superstition; but ten thousand times more and greater is the good hope, the true joy, that attend it, which both implore and receive the whole benefit of prosperity and good success from the gods only. And this is manifest by the greatest tokens that can be; for neither do the discourses of those that wait at the temples, nor the good times of our solemn festivals, nor any other actions or sights more recreate and delight us than what we see and do about the gods ourselves, while we assist at the public ceremonies, and join in the sacred balls, and attend at the sacrifices and initiations. For the mind is not then sorrowful depressed, and