SECTION II.

I am ever apprehensive of being mistaken; but all monuments give me sufficient evidence that the polished nations of antiquity acknowledged a supreme god. There is not a book, not a medal, not a bas-relief, not an inscription, in which Juno, Minerva, Neptune, Mars, or any of the other deities, is spoken of as a forming being, the sovereign of all nature. On the contrary, the most ancient profane books that we have--those of Hesiod and Homer--represent their Zeus as the only thunderer, the only master of gods and men; he even punishes the other gods; he ties Juno with a chain, and drives Apollo out of heaven.

The ancient religion of the Brahmins--the first that admitted celestial creatures--the first which spoke of their rebellion--explains itself in sublime manner concerning the unity and power of God; as we have seen in the article on "Angel."

The Chinese, ancient as they are, come after the Indians. They have acknowledged one only god from time immemorial; they have no subordinate gods, no t mediating demons or genii between God and man; no oracles, no abstract dogmas, no theological disputes among the lettered; their emperor was always the first pontiff; their religion was always august and simple; thus it is that this vast empire, though twice subjugated, has constantly preserved its integrity, has made its conquerors receive its laws, and notwithstanding the crimes and miseries inseparable from the human race, is still the most flourishing state upon earth.

The Magi of Chaldæa, the Sabeans, acknowledged but one supreme god, whom they adored in the stars, which are his work. The Persians adored him in the sun. The sphere placed on the frontispiece of the temple of Memphis was the emblem of one only and perfect god, called "Knef" by the Egyptians.

The title of "Deus Optimus Maximus" was never given by the Romans to any but "Jupiter, hominum sator atque deorum." This great truth, which we have elsewhere pointed out, cannot be too often repeated.

This adoration of a Supreme God, from Romulus down to the total destruction of the empire and of its religion, is confirmed. In spite of all the follies of the people, who venerated secondary and ridiculous gods, and in spite of the Epicureans, who in reality acknowledged none, it is verified that, in all times, the magistrates and the wise adored one sovereign God.

From the great number of testimonies left us to this truth, I will select first that of Maximus of Tyre, who flourished under the Antonines--those models of true piety, since they were models of humanity. These are his words, in his discourse entitled "Of God," according to Plato. The reader who would instruct himself is requested to weigh them well:

"Men have been so weak as to give to God a human figure, because they had seen nothing superior to man; but it is ridiculous to imagine, with Homer, that Jupiter or the Supreme Divinity has black eyebrows and golden hair, which he cannot shake without making the heavens tremble.

"When men are questioned concerning the nature of the Divinity, their answers are all different. Yet, notwithstanding this prodigious variety of opinions, you will find one and the same feeling throughout the earth--viz., that there is but one God, who is the father of all...."

After this formal avowal, after the immortal discourses of Cicero, of Antonine, of Epictetus, what becomes of the declamations which so many ignorant pedants are still repeating? What avail those eternal reproachings of base polytheism and puerile idolatry, but to convince us that the reproachers have not the slightest acquaintance with sterling antiquity? They have taken the reveries of Homer for the doctrines of the wise.

Is it necessary to have stronger or more expressive testimony? You will find it in the letter from Maximus of Madaura to St. Augustine; both were philosophers and orators; at least, they prided themselves on being so; they wrote to each other freely; they were even friends as much as a man of the old religion and one of the new could be friends. Read Maximus of Madaura's letter, and the bishop of Hippo's answer:

Letter from Maximus of Madaura.

"Now, that there is a sovereign God, who is without beginning, and, who, without having begotten anything like unto himself, is nevertheless the father and the former of all things, what man can be gross and stupid enough to doubt? He it is of whom, under different names, we adore the eternal power extending through every part of the world--thus honoring separately, by different sorts of worship, what may be called his several members, we adore him entirely.... May those subordinate gods preserve you, under whose names, and by whom all we mortals upon earth adore the common father of gods and men, by different sorts of worship, it is true, but all according in their variety, and all tending to the same end."

By whom was this letter written? By a Numidian--one of the country of the Algerines!

Augustine's Answer.

"In your public square there are two statues of Mars, the one naked, the other armed; and close by, the figure of a man who, with three fingers advanced towards Mars, holds in check that divinity, so dangerous to the whole town. With regard to what you say of such gods, being portions of the only true God, I take the liberty you give me, to warn you not to fall into such a sacrilege; for that only God, of whom you speak, is doubtless He who is acknowledged by the whole world, and concerning whom, as some of the ancients have said, the ignorant agree with the learned. Now, will you say that he whose strength, if not his cruelty, is represented by an inanimate man, is a portion of that God? I could easily push you hard on this subject; for you will clearly see how much might be said upon it; but I refrain, lest you should say that I employ against you the weapons of rhetoric rather than those of virtue."

We know not what was signified by these two statues, of which no vestige is left us; but not all the statues with which Rome was filled--not the Pantheon and all the temples consecrated to the inferior gods, nor even those of the twelve greater gods prevented "Deus Optimus Maximus"--"God, most good, most great"--from being acknowledged throughout the empire.

The misfortune of the Romans, then, was their ignorance of the Mosaic law, and afterwards, of the law of the disciples of our Saviour Jesus Christ--their want of the faith--their mixing with the worship of a supreme God the worship of Mars, of Venus, of Minerva, of Apollo, who did not exist, and their preserving that religion until the time of the Theodosii. Happily, the Goths, the Huns, the Vandals, the Heruli, the Lombards, the Franks, who destroyed that empire, submitted to the truth, and enjoyed a blessing denied to Scipio, to Cato, to Metellus, to Emilius, to Cicero, to Varro, to Virgil, and to Horace.

None of these great men knew Jesus Christ, whom they could not know; yet they did not worship the devil, as so many pedants are every day repeating. How should they worship the devil, of whom they had never heard?

A Calumny on Cicero by Warburton, on the Subject of a Supreme God.

Warburton, like his contemporaries, has calumniated Cicero and ancient Rome. He boldly supposes that Cicero pronounced these words, in his "Oration for Flaccus":

"It is unworthy of the majesty of the empire to adore only one God"--"_Majestatem imperii non decuit ut unus tantum Deus colatur."

It will, perhaps, hardly be believed that there is not a word of this in the "Oration for Flaccus," nor in any of Cicero's works. Flaccus, who had exercised the prætorship in Asia Minor, is charged with exercising some vexations. He was secretly persecuted by the Jews, who then inundated Rome; for, by their money, they had obtained privileges in Rome at the very time when Pompey, after Crassus, had taken Jerusalem, and hanged their petty king, Alexander, son of Aristobolus. Flaccus had forbidden the conveying of gold and silver specie to Jerusalem, because the money came back altered, and commerce was thereby injured; and he had seized the gold which was clandestinely carried. This gold, said Cicero, is still in the treasury. Flaccus has acted as disinterestedly as Pompey.

Cicero, then, with his wonted irony, pronounces these words: "Each country has its religion; we have ours. While Jerusalem was yet free, while the Jews were yet at peace, even then they held in abhorrence the splendor of this empire, the dignity of the Roman name, the institutions of our ancestors. Now that nation has shown more than ever, by the strength of its arms, what it should think of the Roman Empire. It has shown us, by its valor, how dear it is to the immortal gods; it has proved it to us, by its being vanquished, expatriated, and tributary."--"Stantibus Hierosolymis, pacatisque Judais, tamen istorum religio sacrorum, a splendore hujus imperii, gravitate nominis nostri, ma jorum institutis, abhorrebat; nunc vero hoc magis quid ilia gens, quid de imperio nostro sentiret, ostendit armis; quam cara diis immortalibus esset, docuit, quod est victa, quod elocata, quod servata."

It is then quite false that Cicero, or any other Roman, ever said that it did not become the majesty of the empire to acknowledge a supreme God. Their Jupiter, the Zeus of the Greeks, the Jehovah of the Phœnicians, was always considered as the master of the secondary gods. This great truth cannot be too forcibly inculcated.

Did the Romans Take Their Gods from the Greeks?

Had not the Romans served gods for whom they were not indebted to the Greeks? For instance, they could not be guilty of plagiarism in adoring Coelum, while the Greeks adored Ouranon; or in addressing themselves to Saturnus and Tellus, while the Greeks addressed themselves to Ge and Chronos. They called Ceres, her whom the Greeks named Deo and Demiter.

Their Neptune was Poseidon, their Venus was Aphrodite; their Juno was called, in Greek, Era; their Proserpine, Core; and their favorites, Mars and Bellona, were Ares and Enio. In none of these instances do the names resemble.

Did the inventive spirits of Rome and of Greece assemble? or did the one take from the other the thing, while they disguised the name? It is very natural that the Romans, without consulting the Greeks, should make to themselves gods of the heavens, of time; beings presiding over war, over generation, over harvests, without going to Greece to ask for gods, as they afterwards went there to ask for laws. When you find a name that resembles nothing else, it is but fair to believe it a native of that particular country.

But is not Jupiter, the master of all the gods, a word belonging to every nation, from the Euphrates to the Tiber? Among the first Romans, it was Jov, Jovis; among the Greeks, Zeus; among the Phœnicians, the Syrians, and the Egyptians, Jehovah.

Does not this resemblance serve to confirm the supposition that every people had the knowledge of the Supreme Being?--a knowledge confused, it is true; but what man can have it distinct?