If any one asks what tales are to be allowed, we will answer that we are legislators and not book-makers; we only lay down the principles according to which books are to be written; to write them is the duty of others.
And our first principle is, that God must be represented as he is; not as the author of all things, but of good only.

We will not suffer the poets to say that he is the steward of good and evil, or that he has two casks full of destinies;--or that Athene and Zeus incited Pandarus to break the treaty; or that God caused the sufferings of Niobe, or of Pelops, or the Trojan war; or that he makes men sin when he wishes to destroy them.

Either these were not the actions of the gods, or God was just, and men were the better for being punished.

But that the deed was evil, and God the author, is a wicked, suicidal fiction which we will allow no one, old or young, to utter.

This is our first and great principle--God is the author of good only.
And the second principle is like unto it:--With God is no variableness or change of form.