sufficient one already, when they root out of themselves such vast
satisfaction and joy as we that stand thus affected towards the
deity have? Metrodorus, Polyaenus, and Aristobulus were the
confidence and rejoicing of Epicurus; the better part of whom he
all his lifetime either attended upon in their sicknesses or
lamented at their deaths. As did Lycurgus, when he was saluted by
the Delphic prophetess,

Dear friend to heavenly Jove and all the gods.

And did Socrates when he believed that a certain divinity was used
out of kindness to discourse him, and Pindar when he heard Pan sing
one of the sonnets he had composed, but a little rejoice, think
you? Or Phormio, when he thought he had treated Castor and Pollux
at his house? Or Sophocles, when he entertained Aesculapius, as
both he himself believed, and others too, that thought the same
with him by reason of the apparition that then happened?
What opinion Hermogenes had of the gods is well worth the
recounting in his very own words. "For these gods," saith he, "who
know all things and can do all things, are so friendly and loving
to me that, because they take care of me, I never escape them
either by night or by day, wherever I go or whatever I am about.
And because they know beforehand what issue everything will have,
they signify it to me by sending angels, voices, dreams,
and presages."

Very amiable things must those be that come to us from the gods;
but when these very things come by the gods too, this is what
occasions vast satisfaction and unspeakable assurance, a sublimity
of mind and a joy that, like a smiling brightness, doth as it were