And so, while these men dispute about the sun and moon like the philosophers in Lucian, we may fear that the sun and moon will hide themselves, as offended as the moon was with those philosophers, and send another message to Jupiter through some newly contrived Icaromenippus, to put an end to all these prying controversies and scatter the disputants abroad.

But why should the sun and moon be angry or take offence at mathematicians and philosophers, when God himself receives the same treatment from a company of petty theologians? They are not content to observe the sun and moon, measure their positions and greatest distance through a telescope, calculate their movements, or visit the moon in a poetic fiction or a dream, as one writer says: “I shall now undertake a bold and memorable feat, not attempted before in this age: I shall tell what happened last night in the moon’s kingdom, where no one has ever arrived except in a dream”—apart from himself and Menippus.

Or, as Peter Cunaeus says, “I shall deal honestly: know that nothing I am about to write is true, and so forth. I shall tell of things that have neither happened nor will happen,” “merely to exercise my style and wit.” But these gigantic Cyclopes, quite seriously and without jesting, will pass beyond spheres, heaven, and stars into the Empyrean heaven, soar higher still, and see what God himself does.

The Jewish Talmudists take it upon themselves to determine how God spends all his time: sometimes playing with Leviathan, sometimes overseeing the world, and so forth. Like Lucian’s Jupiter, who spent much of the year painting butterflies’ wings and seeing who offered sacrifice; fixing the hours when it should rain, how much snow should fall in a particular place, which way the wind should blow in Greece, and which way in Africa.

In the Turks’ Koran, Muhammad is carried up to heaven on a Pegasus sent specially by God, as he lay in bed with his wife, and after some conversation with God is set down on earth again. The pagans depict God and distort him in a thousand ways; our heretics, schismatics, and some scholastics are not far behind.

Some portray him in the guise of an old man, draw maps of heaven, count the angels, and give their various names and offices. Some deny God and his providence; some take his office out of his hands, presuming to bind and loose in heaven, release, pardon, forgive, and share his command.

Some question his divinity, his power and attributes, his mercy, justice, and providence. Like Caecilius, they insist on knowing why good and bad are punished together, why war, fires, and plagues attack all alike, why wicked people prosper while the good are poor, imprisoned, sick, and miserable. Why does he allow so much mischief and evil if he can prevent it? Why does he not help the good, oppose the bad, or reform our wills, if he is not the author of sin? Why allow such enormities, unworthy of his knowledge, wisdom, government, mercy, and providence? Why let everything happen by fortune and chance?

Others make equally monstrous inquiries into his omnipotence: “Can he create several gods like himself? Can he make a god out of a beetle?” and so forth. “Where will you rush to at last, you paltry priests?” Some, through visions and revelations, claim intimacy with God and membership of his privy council. They will tell how many people will be saved and who they are; when the world will end, in what year and month; and everything else that God has reserved to himself and his angels.

Other prying fantasists insist on knowing still more, asking with Epicurus what God did before the world was made. Was he idle? Where did he live? What did he make the world from? Why make it then, and not earlier? If he made it anew, or intended it to end, how is he unchangeable and infinite? And so forth. Some will argue, quibble, and object, as Julian did long ago, whom Cyril refutes; as Simon Magus is represented as doing in that dialogue between himself and Peter; and as the philosopher Ammonius does in his dialogue and disputation with Zacharias the Christian.

If God is infinitely and exclusively good, why should he change or destroy the world? If he destroys what is good, how can he himself remain good? If he tears it down because it is evil, how can he be free of the evil, having made it evil? And so forth, with many such absurd, deranged questions and intricacies: the froth of human wit and the excrement of curiosity. These are things which, as our Saviour told his inquisitive disciples, it is not for them to know.

But ho! I have now gone quite out of sight. I am almost dizzy from roaming about. I could have ranged farther still, but I am an infant, unable to dive into these profundities or sound these depths; unable to understand, much less discuss them. I leave the contemplation of these matters to stronger minds, with greater ability and more fortunate leisure to wade into such philosophical mysteries. For even supposing I were as able as I am willing, what can one man do?