be thought by others, pious and pleasing to the gods; they said that to do good was good, to do evil, evil; but that men gained grace and favour with the gods, not through the good that they did, but through hoping and believing in accordance with _their_ catechism. As if the gods, said Mercury, were anxious about nothing but their own vainglory, cared nothing for the injury caused to human society. And they defame us, Momus continued, by calling this an institution of heaven, decrying effects or fruits; while all the time they are doing no work themselves, but living on the works of others, who instituted temples, chapels, hospices, hospitals, colleges, universities, for quite other men than they. These others, even if they are not perfect, will not, like their usurpers, be perverse and pernicious to the world; they will be useful to the state, skilled in speculative science, studious of morality, fanning zeal and enthusiasm for doing good to one another, and maintaining the common weal for which all laws are ordained. The usurpers are worse than grubs, caterpillars, or destroying locusts, and should be exterminated accordingly."[442] How is it possible, we read elsewhere, that men should regard that as the highest type of religion which holds behaviour, the doing of good deeds, to be unimportant, or even to be vice and error; or pretends that the gods do not care for good deeds--that through such, however great they are, men are not justified?[443] This creed was a disease that ran through a man's nature and poisoned it for ever. "When one turned from any other profession or faith to this, his liberality was exchanged for avarice, mildness for insolence, humility for pride; formerly open handed with his own goods, he now became a robber and usurper of those of others; a good man became a hypocrite; a sincere one, cunningly evil; a simple one, malicious; he who was once conscious of his own defects became the most arrogant of men; he who was ready to do any good action, to learn any new knowledge, became prone to every kind of ignorance and ribaldry; he who had merely the makings of a rogue became the worst possible of men."[444] Miracle-working was the universal means by which the supremacy of faith was maintained. Momus therefore proposed to send Orion upon the earth. "He can do miracles--can walk upon the waves of the sea without sinking or wetting his feet; let us send him among men to make them believe everything we would have them believe--that black is white, that the human intellect is blind where it thinks itself to see best; that what to reason appears excellent, good, best, is vile, wicked, evil in the extreme; that nature is a strumpet, the law of nature a ribaldry; that nature and divinity cannot work together for one and the same good end; that the justice of the one is not subordinate to that of the other, but that they are as contrary as darkness and light."[445] [Sidenote: Asinity.]