CHAP. XXI.
The division, however, of the passive from the impassive, which you adopt, may perhaps be rejected by some one, as not adapted to either of the more excellent genera, through the causes which we have before enumerated; and it also deserves to be subverted, because it is inferred that these genera are passive, from what is performed in religious ceremonies. For what sacred institution, what religious cultivation, which is conformable to sacerdotal laws, is effected through passion, or produces a certain completion of passions? Is not each of these legislatively ordained from the first, conformably to the sacred laws of the Gods, and intellectually? Each also imitates both the intelligible and celestial order of the Gods; and contains the eternal measures of beings, and those admirable signatures which are sent hither from the Demiurgus and father of wholes, by which things of an ineffable nature are unfolded into light through arcane symbols, things formless are vanquished by forms, things more excellent than every image are expressed through images, and all things are accomplished through a divine cause alone, which is in so great a degree separated from passions, that reason is not able to come into contact with it.
This, therefore, is nearly the cause of our aberration to a multitude of conceptions. For men being in reality unable to apprehend the reasons of sacred institutions, but conceiving that they are able, are wholly hurried away by their own human passions, and form a conjecture of divine concerns from things pertaining to themselves. In so doing, however, they err in a twofold respect; because they fall from divine natures; and because, being frustrated of these, they draw them down to human passions. But it is requisite not to apprehend after the same manner, things which are performed both to Gods and men, such as genuflexions, adorations, gifts, and first fruits, but to establish the one apart from the other, conformably to the difference between things more and things less honourable; and to reverence the former, indeed, as divine, but to despise the latter as human, and as performed to men. It is proper, likewise, to consider, that the latter produce passions, both in the performer and those to whom they are performed; for they are human and corporeal-formed; but to honour the energy of the former in a very high degree, as being performed through immutable admiration, and a venerable condition of mind, because they are referred to the Gods.