thoughts by this method. He presented in his tragedy Sisyphus,
the first and great patron of this opinion, and introduced himself
as one agreeing with him:--

Disorder in those days did domineer,
And brutal power kept the world in fear.

Afterwards by the sanction of laws wickedness was suppressed;
but by reason that laws could prohibit only public villanies, yet
could not hinder many persons from acting secret impieties, some
wise persons gave this advice, that we ought to blind truth with
lying disguises, and persuade men that there is a God:--

There's an eternal God does hear and see
And understand every impiety;
Though it in dark recess or thought committed be.

But this poetical fable ought to be rejected, he thought, along
with Callimachus, who thus saith:--

If you believe a God, it must be meant
That you conceive this God omnipotent.

But God cannot do everything; for, if it were so, then a God could
make snow black, and the fire cold, and him that is in a posture
of sitting to be upright, and so on the contrary. The brave-
speaking Plato pronounceth that God formed the world after his own
image; but this smells rank of the old dotages, old comic writers
would say; for how did God, casting his eye upon himself, frame
this universe? Or how can God be spherical, and be inferior