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| Argument: Moreover, the Poets Have Called Him the Parent of Gods and Men, the Creator of All Things, and Their Mind and Spirit. And, Besides, Even the More Excellent Philosophers Have Come Almost to the Same Conclusion as the Christians About the Unity of God.
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Chapter XIX.—Argument: Moreover, the Poets Have Called
Him the Parent of Gods and Men, the Creator of All Things, and Their
Mind and Spirit. And, Besides, Even the More Excellent
Philosophers Have Come Almost to the Same Conclusion as the Christians
About the Unity of God.
“I hear the poets also announcing ‘the
One Father of gods and men;’ and that such is the mind of mortal
men as the Parent of all has appointed His day.1771
| 1771 Homer,
Odyss., xviii. 136, 137. | What says the Mantuan Maro? Is
it not even more plain, more apposite, more true? ‘In the
beginning,’ says he, ‘the spirit within nourishes, and the
mind infused stirs the heaven and the earth,’ and the other
members ‘of the world. Thence arises the race of men and of
cattle,’1772
| 1772 Virgil,
Æneid, vi. 724. | and every other
kind of animal. The same poet in another place calls that mind
and spirit God. For these are his words:1773
| 1773 Some read, “For
these things are true.” | ‘For that God pervades all the
lands, and the tracts of the sea, and the profound heaven, from whom
are men and cattle; from whom are rain and fire.’1774
| 1774 Virgil,
Georgics, iv. 221; Æneid, i. 743. | What else also is God announced to be
by us, but mind, and reason, and spirit? Let us review, if it is
agreeable, the teaching of philosophers. Although in varied kinds
of discourse, yet in these matters you will find them concur and agree
in this one opinion. I pass over those untrained and ancient ones
who deserved to be called wise men for their sayings. Let Thales
the Milesian be the first of all, for he first of all disputed about
heavenly things. That same Thales the Milesian said that water
was the beginning of things, but that God was that mind which from
water formed all things. Ah! a higher and nobler account of water
and spirit than to have ever been discovered by man. It was
delivered to him by God. You see that the opinion of this
original philosopher absolutely agrees with ours. Afterwards
Anaximenes, and then Diogenes of Apollonia, decide that the air,
infinite and unmeasured, is God. The agreement of these also as
to the Divinity is like ours. But the description of Anaxagoras
also is, that God is said to be the motion of an infinite mind; and the
God of Pythagoras is the soul passing to and fro and intent, throughout
the universal nature of things, from whom also the life of all animals is
received. It is a known fact, that Xenophanes delivered that God
was all infinity with a mind; and Antisthenes, that there are many gods
of the people, but that one God of Nature was the chief of all; that
Xeuxippus1775
| 1775 Otherwise,
“Speusippus.” | acknowledged as God
a natural animal force whereby all things are governed. What says
Democritus? Although the first discoverer of atoms, does not he
especially speak of nature, which is the basis of forms, and
intelligence, as God? Strato also himself says that God is
nature. Moreover, Epicurus, the man who feigns either otiose gods
or none at all, still places above all, Nature. Aristotle varies,
but nevertheless assigns a unity of power: for at one time he
says that Mind, at another the World, is God; at another time he sets
God above the world.1776
| 1776 The ms. here inserts, “Aristoteles of Pontus varies, at
one time attributing the supremacy to the world, at another to the
divine mind.” Some think that this is an interpolation,
others transfer the words to Theophrastus below. | Heraclides of
Pontus also ascribes, although in various ways, a divine mind to
God. Theophrastus, and Zeno, and Chrysippus, and Cleanthes are
indeed themselves of many forms of opinion but they are all brought
back to the one fact of the unity of providence. For Cleanthes
discoursed of God as of a mind, now of a soul, now of air, but for the
most part of reason. Zeno, his master, will have the law of
nature and of God, and sometimes the air, and sometimes reason, to be
the beginning of all things. Moreover, by interpreting Juno to be
the air, Jupiter the heaven, Neptune the sea, Vulcan to be fire, and in
like manner by showing the other gods of the common people to be
elements, he forcibly denounces and overcomes the public error.
Chrysippus says almost the same. He believes that a divine force,
a rational nature, and sometimes the world, and a fatal necessity, is
God; and he follows the example of Zeno in his physiological
interpretation of the poems of Hesiod, of Homer, and of Orpheus.
Moreover, the teaching of Diogenes of Babylon is that of expounding and
arguing that the birth of Jupiter, and the origin of Minerva, and this
kind, are names for other things, not for gods. For Xenophon the
Socratic says that the form of the true God cannot be seen, and
therefore ought not to be inquired after. Aristo the
Stoic1777
| 1777 Otherwise,
“Aristo the Chian.” | says that He cannot at all be
comprehended. And both of them were sensible of the majesty of
God, while they despaired of understanding Him. Plato has a
clearer discourse about God, both in the matters themselves and in the
names by which he expresses them; and his discourse would be altogether
heavenly, if it were not occasionally fouled by a mixture of merely
civil belief. Therefore in his Timæus Plato’s
God is by His very name the parent of the world, the artificer of the
soul, the fabricator of heavenly and earthly things, whom both to
discover he declares is difficult, on account of His excessive and
incredible power; and when you have discovered Him, impossible to speak
of in public. The same almost are the opinions also which are
ours. For we both know and speak of a God who is parent of all,
and never speak of Him in public unless we are interrogated.1778
| 1778 [See note on Plato,
chap. xxvi.] | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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