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The City of God

Chapter 32.--In What Interest the Princes of the Nations Wished False Religions to Continue Among the People Subject to Them.

Varro says also, concerning the generations of the gods, that the people have inclined to the poets rather than to the natural philosophers; and that therefore their forefathers,--that is, the ancient Romans,--believed both in the sex and the generations of the gods, and settled their marriages; which certainly seems to have been done for no other cause except that it was the business of such men as were prudent and wise to deceive the people in matters of religion, and in that very thing not only to worship, but also to imitate the demons, whose greatest lust is to deceive. For just as the demons cannot possess any but those whom they have deceived with guile, so also men in princely office, not indeed being just, but like demons, have persuaded the people in the name of religion to receive as true those things which they themselves knew to be false; in this way, as it were, binding them up more firmly in civil society, so that they might in like manner possess them as subjects. But who that was weak and unlearned could escape the deceits of both the princes of the state and the demons?

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La cité de dieu

CHAPITRE XXXII.

DANS QUEL INTÉRÊT LES CHEFS D’ÉTAT ONT MAINTENU PARMI LES PEUPLES DE FAUSSES RELIGIONS.

Varron dit encore, au sujet de la génération des dieux, que les peuples s’en sont plutôt rapportés aux portes qu’aux philosophes, et que c’est pour cela que les anciens Romains ont admis des dieux mâles et femelles, des dieux qui naissent et qui se marient. Pour moi, je crois que l’origine de ces croyances est dans l’intérêt qu’on t eu les chefs d’Etat à tromper le peuple en matière de religion; en cela imitateurs fidèles des démons qu’ils adoraient, et qui n’ont pas de plus grande passion que de tromper les hommes. De même, en effet, que les démons ne peuvent posséder que ceux qu’ils abusent, ainsi ces faux sages, semblables aux démons, ont répandu parmi les hommes, sous le nom de religion, des croyances dont la fausseté leur était connue, afin de resserrer les liens de la société civile et de soumettre plus aisément les peuples à leur puissance. Or, comment des hommes faibles et ignorants auraient-ils pu résister à la double imposture des chefs d’Etat et des démons conjurés?