76. Inasmuch then, you say, as you serve the Almighty God, and trust that He cares for your safety and salvation, why does He suffer you to be exposed to such storms of persecution, and to undergo all kinds of punishments and tortures? Let us, too, ask in reply, why, seeing that you worship so great and so innumerable gods, and build temples to them, fashion images of gold, sacrifice herds of animals, and all heap up 3912 boxfuls of incense on the already loaded altars, why you live subject to so many dangers and storms of calamity , with which many fatal misfortunes vex you every day? Why, I say, do your gods neglect to avert from you so many kinds of disease and sickness, shipwrecks, downfalls, conflagrations, pestilences, barrenness, loss of children, and confiscation of goods, discords, wars, enmities, captures of cities, and the slavery of those who are robbed of their rights of free birth? 3913 But, my opponent says , in such mischances we, too, are in no wise helped by God. The cause is plain and manifest. For no hope has been held out to us with respect to this life, nor has any help been promised or 3914 aid decreed us for what belongs to the husk of this flesh,—nay, more, we have been taught to esteem and value lightly all the threats of fortune, whatever they be; and if ever any very grievous calamity has assailed us , to count as pleasant in that misfortune 3915 the end which must follow, and not to fear or flee from it, that we may be the more easily released from the bonds of the body, and escape from our darkness and 3916 blindness. 3912     Lit., “provide,” conficiatis , which, however, some would understand “consume.” 3913     Lit., “slaveries, their free births being taken away.” 3914     Lit., “and.” 3915     So the ms. first five edd., Hild. and Oehler, reading adscribere infortunio voluptatem , which is omitted in the other edd. as a gloss which may have crept in from the margin. 3916     Lit., “our dark.”