it as part of their creed to preserve it in all its purity; that these men, by their own principles, were indispensably compelled to believe religiously all the transactions related in this volume, whenever mention was made of Cæsar and his dictatorship; own it, Lucilius, would you then question whether there ever was such a man as Cæsar? (23.) All kinds of music are not suited to praise God and to be heard in the sanctuary; all methods of philosophy are not fit for discoursing worthily of God, His power, the principles of His operations, and His mysteries. The more abstracted and ideal this philosophy is, the more vain and useless is it in explaining these things, which merely require common sense to be understood up to a certain point, and which cannot be explained farther. To pretend to give an account of the very essence of God, of His perfections, and, if I dare say so, of His actions, is indeed going beyond the ancient philosophers, beyond the apostles themselves, and the first teachers of the Gospel, but it is not arguing so much to the point as they did; for people may dig for a long time, and deeply, without discovering the sources of truth. If once people set aside such words as goodness, mercy, justice, and omnipotence, which are apt to form in their minds such lovely and majestic ideas of the divinity, let them afterwards strain their imagination as much as possible, they will find nothing but dry, barren, and senseless expressions; they must admit wild and empty thoughts, contrary to all ordinary ideas, or, at least, subtle and ingenious thoughts, by which their religion will be weakened according as they improve in the knowledge of these new metaphysics.[863] (24.) What excesses will a man not commit through his zeal for a religion, of the truth of which he is not entirely convinced, and which he practises so badly? (25.) That same religion which men will defend so zealously and with so much warmth against those of a different persuasion, they themselves corrupt, by joining to it their own peculiar ideas; they add or take from it numberless things, which are often very material, according as it best suits their convenience, and remain steadfastly and firmly attached to the form they have given it themselves. So that, though it may be commonly said of a nation that it has but one manner of worship and one religion, it truly and really has many religions, for almost every individual has one of his own.