continually suffered, even when the gods were worshipped._
Of moral and spiritual evils, which are above all others to be
deprecated, I think enough has already been said to show that the
false gods took no steps to prevent the people who worshipped them
from being overwhelmed by such calamities, but rather aggravated
the ruin. I see I must now speak of those evils which alone are
dreaded by the heathen--famine, pestilence, war, pillage, captivity,
massacre, and the like calamities, already enumerated in the first
book. For evil men account those things alone evil which do not make
men evil; neither do they blush to praise good things, and yet to
remain evil among the good things they praise. It grieves them more
to own a bad house than a bad life, as if it were man's greatest good
to have everything good but himself. But not even such evils as were
alone dreaded by the heathen were warded off by their gods, even when
they were most unrestrictedly worshipped. For in various times and
places before the advent of our Redeemer, the human race was crushed
with numberless and sometimes incredible calamities; and at that
time what gods but those did the world worship, if you except the
one nation of the Hebrews, and, beyond them, such individuals as the
most secret and most just judgment of God counted worthy of divine
grace?[115] But that I may not be prolix, I will be silent regarding
the heavy calamities that have been suffered by any other nations,
and will speak only of what happened to Rome and the Roman empire, by
which I mean Rome properly so called, and those lands which already,
before the coming of Christ, had by alliance or conquest become, as
it were, members of the body of the state.