12. Moreover, atheism hath no hand at all in causing superstition; but superstition not only gave atheism its first birth, but serves it ever since by giving it its best apology for existing, which, although it be neither a good nor a fair one, is yet the most specious and colorable. For men were not at first made atheists by any fault they found in the heavens or stars, or in the seasons of the year, or in those revolutions or motions of the sun about the earth that make the day and night; nor yet by observing any mistake or disorder either in the breeding of animals or the production of fruits. No, it was the uncouth actions and ridiculous and senseless passions of superstition, her canting words, her foolish gestures, her charms, her magic, her freakish processions, her taborings, her foul expiations, her vile methods of purgation, and her barbarous and inhuman penances, and bemirings at the temples,—it was these, I say, that gave occasion to many to affirm, it would be far happier there were no Gods at all than for them to be pleased and delighted with such fantastic toys, and to thus abuse their votaries, and to be incensed and pacified with trifles. 13. Had it not been much better for the so much famed Gauls and Scythians to have neither thought nor imagined nor heard any thing of their Gods, than to have believed them such as would be pleased with the blood of human sacrifices, and would account such for the most complete and meritorious of expiations? How much better had it been for the Carthaginians to have had either a Critias or a Diagoras for their first lawmaker, that so they might have believed in neither God nor spirits, than to make such offerings to Saturn as they made?—not such as Empedocles speaks of, where he thus touches the sacrifices of beasts:— The sire lifts up his dear beloved son, Who first some other form and shape did take; He doth him slay and sacrifice anon, And therewith vows and foolish prayers doth make.