How, then, can we conceive this to be a Deity that makes no use of reason, and is not endowed with any virtue?
However, when I consider what is advanced by the Stoics, my contempt for the ignorant multitude vanishes.

For these are their divinities.
The Syrians worshipped a fish.

The Egyptians consecrated beasts of almost every kind.

The Greeks deified many men; as Alabandus[249] at Alabandae, Tenes at Tenedos; and all Greece pay divine honors to Leucothea (who was before called Ino), to her son Palaemon, to Hercules, to AEsculapius, and to the Tyndaridae; our own people to Romulus, and to many others, who, as citizens newly admitted into the ancient body, they imagine have been received into heaven.
These are the Gods of the illiterate.
XVI.

What are the notions of you philosophers?
In what respect are they superior to these ideas?
I shall pass them over; for they are certainly very admirable.