And now, after the two former ranks of ill and common men, we will
in the third place consider the best sort and most beloved of the
gods, and what great satisfactions they receive from their clean
and generous sentiments of the deity, to wit, that he is the
prince of all good things and the parent of all things brave, and
can no more do an unworthy thing than he can be made to suffer it.
For he is good, and he that is good can upon no account fall into
envy, fear, anger, or hatred; neither is it proper to a hot thing
to cool, but to heat; nor to a good thing to do harm. Now anger
is by nature at the farthest distance imaginable from complacency,
and spleenishness from placidness, and animosity and turbulence
from humanity and kindness. For the latter of these proceed from
generosity and fortitude, but the former from impotency and
baseness. The deity is not therefore constrained by either anger
or kindnesses; but that is because it is natural to it to be kind
and aiding, and unnatural to be angry and hurtful. But the great
Jove, whose mansion is in heaven, is the first that descends
downwards and orders all things and takes the care of them. But of
the other gods one is surnamed the Distributor, and another the
Mild, and a third the Averter of Evil. And according to Pindar,

Phoebus was by mighty Jove designed
Of all the gods to be to man most kind.

And Diogenes saith, that all things are the gods', and friends have
all things common, and good men are the gods' friends; and
therefore it is impossible either that a man beloved of the gods
should not he happy, or that a wise and a just man should not be
beloved of the gods. Can you think then that they that take away
Providence need any other chastisement, or that they have not a