LXIII. (344) The advocates of the mind and of the outward senses, having put these arguments together, make gods of both of them, the one deifying the first, and the other the last; both classes out of their self-will and self-conceit forgetting the truly living God. On which account the lawgiver very naturally excludes them all from the sacred assembly, calling those who would take away the ideas, broken in the stones, and those too who are utterly atheistical, to whom he has given the appropriate name of eunuchs; and those who are the teachers of an opposite system of theogony, whom he calls the sons of a harlot; and besides all these classes he excludes also the self-willed and self-conceited, some of whom have deified reason, and others have called each separate one of the outward senses gods. For all these men are hastening to the same end, even though they are not all influenced by the same intentions. (345) But we who are the followers and disciples of the prophet Moses, will never abandon our investigation into the nature of the true God; looking upon the knowledge of him as the true end of happiness; and thinking that the true everlasting life, as the law says, {49}{#de 4:4.} is to live in obedience to and worship of God; in which precept it gives us a most important and philosophical lesson; for in real truth those who are atheists are dead as to their souls, but those who are marshalled in the ranks of the true living God, as his servants, enjoy an everlasting Life.
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