Those who call upon the Gods are individuals.

Divine Providence, therefore, regards individuals, which consequently proves that they are more at leisure than you imagine.

Let us suppose the Divine Providence to be greatly busied; that it causes the revolutions of the heavens, supports the earth, and rules the seas; why does it suffer so many Gods to be unemployed?
Why is not the superintendence of human affairs given to some of those idle Deities which you say are innumerable?
This is the purport of what I had to say concerning "the Nature of the Gods;" not with a design to destroy their existence, but merely to show what an obscure point it is, and with what difficulties an explanation of it is attended.
XL.

Balbus, observing that Cotta had finished his discourse--You have been very severe, says he, against a Divine Providence, a doctrine established by the Stoics with piety and wisdom; but, as it grows too late, I shall defer my answer to another day.

Our argument is of the greatest importance; it concerns our altars,[291] our hearths, our temples, nay, even the walls of our city, which you priests hold sacred; you, who by religion defend Rome better than she is defended by her ramparts.