6. Well then, is not this the very case of the atheist, compared with the superstitious? The former sees not the Gods at all, the latter believes that he really sees them; the former wholly overlooks them, but the latter mistakes their benignity for terror, their paternal affection for tyranny, their providence for cruelty, and their frank simplicity for savageness and brutality. Again, the workman in copper, stone, and wax can persuade such that the Gods are in human shape; for so they make them, so they draw them, and so they worship them. But they will not hear either philosophers or statesmen that describe the majesty of the Divinity as accompanied by goodness, magnanimity, benignity, and beneficence. The one therefore hath neither a sense nor belief of that divine good he might participate of; and the other dreads and fears it. In a word, atheism is an absolute insensibility to God (or _want of passion_), which does not recognize goodness; while superstition is a blind heap of passions, which imagine the good to be evil. They are afraid of their Gods, and yet run to them; they fawn upon them, and reproach them; they invoke them, and accuse them. It is the common destiny of humanity not to enjoy uninterrupted felicity. Nor pains, nor age, nor labor they e’er bore, Nor visited rough Acheron’s hoarse shore, saith Pindar of the Gods; but human passions and affairs are liable to a strange multiplicity of uncertain accidents and contingencies. 7. Consider well the atheist, and observe his behavior first in things not under the disposal of his will. If he be otherwise a man of good temper, he is silent under his present circumstances, and is providing himself with either remedies or palliatives for his misfortunes. But if he be a fretful and impatient man, his whole complaint is against Fortune. He cries out, that nothing is managed here below either after the rules of a strict justice or the orderly course of a providence, and that all human affairs are hurried and driven without either premeditation or distinction. This is not the demeanor of the superstitious; if the least thing do but happen amiss to him, he sits him down plunged in sorrow, and raises himself a vast tempest of intolerable and incurable passions, and presents his fancy with nothing but terrors, fears, surmises, and distractions, until he hath overwhelmed himself with groans and fears. He blames neither man, nor Fortune, nor the times, nor himself; but charges all upon God, from whom he fancies a whole deluge of vengeance to be pouring down upon him; and, as if he were not only unfortunate but in open hostility with Heaven, he imagines that he is punished by God and is now making satisfaction for his past crimes, and saith that his sufferings are all just and owing to himself. Again, when the atheist falls sick, he reckons up and calls to his remembrance his several surfeits and debauches, his irregular course of living, excessive labors, or