Chapter 17.—Whether, If the
Highest Power Belongs to Jove, Victoria Also Ought to Be
Worshipped.
Or do they say, perhaps, that
Jupiter sends the goddess Victoria, and that she, as it were acting
in obedience to the king of the gods, comes to those to whom he may
have despatched her, and takes up her quarters on their side?
This is truly said, not of Jove, whom they, according to their own
imagination, feign to be king of the gods, but of Him who is the
true eternal King, because he sends, not Victory, who is no person,
but His angel, and causes whom He pleases to conquer; whose counsel
may be hidden, but cannot be unjust. For if Victory is a goddess,
why is not Triumph also a god, and joined to Victory either as
husband, or brother, or son? Indeed, they have imagined such
things concerning the gods, that if the poets had feigned the like,
and they should have been discussed by us, they would have replied
that they were laughable figments of the poets not to be attributed
to true deities. And yet they themselves did not laugh when they
were, not reading in the poets, but worshipping in the temples such
doating follies. Therefore they should entreat Jove alone for all
things, and supplicate him only. For if Victory is a goddess, and
is under him as her king, wherever he might have sent her, she
could not dare to resist and do her own will rather than
his.