his book, declared, δια των αυτων ονοματων μιας Θεοτητος τα παντα εγενετο, και αυτος εςι τα παντα: That all things were made by one Godhead, in three names, and this God is all things.
Proclus gives us the following as one of the verses of Orpheus:
Ἑν κρατος, ἑις δαιμων γενετο μεγας αρχος απαντων.
Jupiter is the king, Jupiter himself is the original source of all things; there is one power, one god, and one great ruler over all.[1] But we have seen that Jupiter and all the other Gods were but names for the Sun; therefore it follows that the Sun, either as emblem or as God himself, was the object of universal adoration.
The Heathens, even in the later days of their idolatry, were not so gross in their notions, but that they believed there was only one supreme God. They did, indeed, worship a multitude of deities, but they supposed all but one, to be subordinate deities. They always had a notion of one deity superior to all the powers of heaven, and all the other deities were conceived to have different offices or ministrations under him—being appointed to preside over elements, over cities, over countries, and to dispense victory to armies, health, life, and other blessings to their favourites, if permitted by the Supreme Power. Hesiod supposes one God to be the Father of the other deities;
and Homer, in many passages of the Iliad, represents one Supreme Deity as presiding over all the others;[2] and the most celebrated of their philosophers always endeavoured to assert this theology.[3]
5. Dr. Shuckford has shewn that the Egyptians originally worshiped the Supreme God, under the name of Cneph, affirming him to be without beginning or end. Philo Biblius says, that they represented him by the figure of a serpent with the head of a hawk, in the middle of a circle—certainly a very mythological emblem; but then he represents them to have given to this Being all the attributes of the Supreme God the Creator, incorruptible and eternal. Porphyry calls him τον Δημιουργον, the Maker or Creator of the universe.[4]
The opinion entertained by Porphyry may be judged of from the following extract:
“We will sacrifice,” says he, “but in a manner that is proper, bringing choice victims with the choicest of our faculties; burning and offering to God, who, as a wise man observed, is above all—nothing sensual: for nothing is joined to matter, which is not impure; and, therefore, incongruous to a nature free from the contagion belonging to matter; for which reason, neither speech, which is produced by the voice, nor even internal or mental language, if it be infected with any disorder of the mind, is proper to be offered to God; but we worship God with an unspotted silence, and the most pure thoughts of his nature.”[5]
- ↑ Maurice, Ind. Ant. Vol. IV. p. 704.
- ↑ Vide Iliad, vii. ver. 202, viii. vers. 5—28, &c. See also Virgil, Æn., ii. ver. 777.
non hæc sine numine Divûm
Eveniunt: non te huic comitem asportare Creüsam
Fas, aut ille sinit superi regnator Olympi.Jupiter is here supposed to be the numen divûm, and his will to be the fas or fate, which no one might contradict: Fatum est, says Cicero, non id quod superstitiosè sed quod physicè dictum causa æterna rerum. De Divin. L. i. C. xxxv. Deum—interdum necessitatem appellant, quia nihil aliter possit atque ab eo constitutem sit. Id. Academ. Quæst. L. iv. C. xliv.
- ↑ Cic. in lib. de Nat. Deorum, in Acad. Quæst. L. i. C. vii., Ibid. C. xxxiv.; Plato de Legib. L. x. in Phil. in Cratyl. &c.; Aristot. L. de Mundo, C vi.; Plutarch de Placit. Philos. L. i.; Id. in lib. de E. I. apud Delphos, p. 393. See Shuckford, B. ix. Vol. II. p. 394.
- ↑ Plut. de Iside and Osiride, p. 359; and Euseb. Præp. Evan. L. i. C. x.; Shuckford Con. B. v. p. 312.
- ↑ Val. Col. Vol. III. p. 466.
