For these men do not in any respect differ from those who conceive the sails, the cables, and the anchor of a ship, to be the pilot, the yarn and the web to be the weaver, and the bowl, or the mead, or the ptisan, to be the physician. But they also produce dire and atheistical opinions, by giving the names of Gods to natures and things deprived of sense and soul, and that are necessarily destroyed by men, who are in want of and use them. For it is not possible to conceive that these things are Gods; since, neither can any thing be a God to men, which is deprived of soul, or is subject to human power. From these things however, we are led to conceive those beings to be Gods, who both use them and impart them to us, and supply them perpetually and without ceasing. Nor do we conceive that the Gods who bestow these, are different in different countries, nor that some of them are peculiar to the Barbarians, but others to the Grecians, nor that some are southern, and others northern; but as the sun and moon, the heavens, the land, and the sea, are common to all men, yet are differently denominated by different nations; to the one reason that adorns these things, and the one providence that administers them, and the ministrant powers that preside over all nations, have different appellations and honours assigned them according to law by different countries. Of those also that have been consecrated to their service, some employ obscure, but others clearer symbols, not without danger thus conducting our intellectual conceptions to the apprehension of divine natures. For some, deviating from the true meaning of these symbols, have entirely slipt into superstition; and others again flying from superstition as a quagmire, have unaware fallen upon atheism as on a precipice. Hence, in order to avoid these dangers, it is especially necessary that resuming the reasoning of Philosophy as our guide to mystic knowledge, we should conceive piously of every thing that is said or done in religion; lest that, as Theodorus said, while he extended his arguments with his right hand, some of his auditors received them with their left, so we should fall into dangerous errors, by receiving what the laws have well instituted about sacrifices and festivals in a manner different from their original intention.”
The Emperor Julian, as well as Plutarch appears to have been perfectly aware of this confusion in the religion of the Heathens arising from the deification of men, and in the fragments of his treatise against the Christians, preserved by Cyril, he speaks of it as follows: “If any one wishes to consider the truth respecting you [Christians,] he will find that your impiety is composed of the Judaic audacity, and the indolence and confusion of the Heathens. For deriving from both, not that which is most beautiful, but the worst, you have fabricated a web of evils. With the Hebrews indeed, there are accurate and venerable laws pertaining to religion, and innumerable precepts which require a most holy life and deliberate choice. But when the Jewish legislator forbids the serving all the Gods, and enjoins the worship of one alone, whose portion is Jacob, and
