§ 1. So great is my confidence in the cause that I deliver the decision to an adversary: let him speak testimony for us against himself. A cause to which aid is furnished from the opposing camp cannot appear bad. Profane authors relate that their princes were reduced to madness because piety was violated. Look upon Tiberius in Tacitus, book 6 of the Annals: “What am I to write to you, Conscript Fathers, or how am I to write, or what at this time am I altogether not to write? May the gods and goddesses destroy me worse than I feel myself perishing daily, if I know.” To such a degree his own crimes and disgraceful deeds had turned against him as punishment. Nor without reason was the most distinguished teacher of wisdom accustomed to affirm that, if the minds of tyrants were laid open, lacerations and blows could be seen, since minds are torn by cruelty, lust, and evil counsels just as bodies are by lashes.
For among all the evils of sinners this is the greatest: that every crime is a punishment to itself.
Plato in the tenth book of The Republic: “I ask,” he says, “that you explain what reward justice receives from gods and human beings, so that it may also carry off the palm from opinion and manifest estimation, by which it too adorns its cultivators, after it has been openly seen that by its very appearance it confers benefits upon us and does not deceive those who truly possess it.”
“You ask what is owed. First, indeed, you will grant me this: that what sort each of the two is—the just and the unjust—does not escape the gods.” “We grant it.” “If it does not escape the gods, the former will be loved by God, the latter held in hatred, as we confessed at the beginning.” “It is so.” “The best things are altogether bestowed by the gods upon the friend of the gods, insofar as this can be done, unless some evil threatens from an earlier offense and a certain necessity.” “Altogether.” “Thus one must judge concerning the just man: whether he is subject to poverty, diseases, or any other things that seem evil, these things ultimately conduce to some good for him, either living or dead. For he is never neglected by the gods who will emerge as just and endeavor, through the duties of virtue, to become like God insofar as is permitted to a human being; for it is fitting that such a man not be despised by one like him. But concerning the unjust man, one must judge altogether to the contrary.”
And in book 4 of The Laws he impresses these things with many more words, so that it is remarkable that so great a knowledge of virtue and piety flourished in a gentile philosopher.
§ 2. Aristotle teaches wholly the same things: for him only the wise person is happy, and he proclaims that commonwealth happiest in which virtue is cultivated most greatly. This is so true that without reverence for God good laws are of no profit, nor is any discipline preserved, and therefore the ruin of governments necessarily follows.
Valerius, book 1: “Governments do not hesitate to serve sacred rites, for God is the keen avenger of his divinity. Although punishments for evil deeds are sometimes late, they are nevertheless never ineffectual.”
§ 3. Certain persons became so religious from this that they ended in superstition. Hence the image of Hercules is carried before the army into battle against Porus, Curtius, book 8. Hence the Germans carry into battle images and standards taken down from groves. Hence the innumerable imitations of piety recounted in sacred and profane histories.
Bias makes laws with the Prieneans: “Let the prince of the Prieneans be religious and the highest defender of sacred buildings; otherwise, if he does not revere God, there is no reason for human beings to hope that justice will be commanded to them by him.”
And Xenophon, On Revenues: Σὺν θεῷ τῷ προϊσταμένῳ, εἰκὸς καὶ τὰς πράξεις προϊέναι ἐπὶ τὸ λῷον ἀεὶ τῇ πόλει. “If affairs begin with God, it is reasonable that the undertakings will turn out for the advantage of the city.”
§ 4. How great a care the nations possessed concerning religion Plutarch shows in his book Against Colotes: “In the constitution of laws, the first and greatest thing is opinion concerning the gods. Therefore Lycurgus consecrated the Lacedaemonians to the gods, Numa the Romans, Ion the ancient Athenians, and Deucalion almost all the Greeks, rendering them devoted and bound to the gods by vows, oaths, divinations, and all things through hope and fear. And if you traverse the lands, you may find cities lacking walls, letters, kings, resources, or coin, and knowing nothing of gymnasia and theaters; but no one has ever seen a city lacking temples and gods, which does not employ prayers, an oath, or an oracle, does not sacrifice for the sake of goods, and does not strive to avert evils by sacred rites. But I think that a city could more readily be founded without ground than that, with opinion concerning the gods utterly removed, a civil community could assemble or remain standing.”
Papinian therefore also says rightly: “That is the highest reasoning which acts on behalf of religion.”
Isocrates to King Nicocles: “Preserve,” he says, “the religion you received from your ancestors, and consider this the solemn and most beautiful sacrifice and the greatest worship: if you yourself are the best and most just. For there is greater hope that persons of this kind will obtain something good from the gods than those who build altars and shrines.”
Varro, book 14, chapter 7: whenever the senate was convened at Rome, no matter was treated before religion.
It was also provided by the law of Octavius that supplication should first be made with incense and unmixed wine. And Plutarch, in the life of Marcellus, is assuredly witness that the Romans judged religion to possess more force than arms for preserving the commonwealth.
§ 5. From that source flowed hatred against Christians, as though they were enemies of piety. “Through sacrilege,” says the superstitious man, “this year has withered; it was necessary that all things perish because they were denied to the religions.”
Claudian, an enemy of the true religion, nevertheless sings that victory depends upon piety:
O you too greatly beloved by God, for whom Aeolus pours
Armed winters from his cave, for whom the sky fights,
And the winds come in league at the trumpet calls.
Nor does Cicero speak badly, if he changes the persons: “With piety toward the gods removed, it is necessary that trust and the association of the human race, and justice, the one most excellent virtue, also be removed.” Let piety therefore be preserved in the commonwealth. For just as pearls, although they are born in the sea, nevertheless possess more kinship with heaven, whose face they reproduce, so a pious and noble commonwealth depends more upon heaven, from which it draws its origin, than upon the earth on which it lives.
But human affairs would have been most badly provided for if the government and happiness of the commonwealth did not depend upon virtue and piety. Just as neither a household nor a commonwealth would appear to be ordered according to a certain reason and discipline if in it there were no rewards for right deeds and no punishments for sins, so there is assuredly no divine governance of the world over human beings if in it there is no distinction between good and evil persons. But leaving behind those who either did not acknowledge God or did not worship him, but vanished in their thoughts, let us fight atheists with other weapons.