6. There is but one being, who is, as God is often said to be, the best and the greatest; therefore, if there were more Gods than one, either one must be supposed to be more excellent than another, or both equally excellent. If we suppose the former of these, then he, who is not the most excellent, is not God; and if the latter, that their excellencies are equal, then infinite perfection would be divided, which is contrary to the idea thereof, as was before hinted; as well as to what is expressly said by God, _To whom will ye liken me, or shall I be equal? saith the Holy One_, Isa. xl. 25. From these, and several other arguments to the same purpose, which might have been taken from every one of the divine attributes, and from all essential and relative glory which belongs to him, the unity of the divine essence appears, even to a demonstration. And indeed to assert that there are more Gods than one is, in effect, to say that there is no God; so the apostle deems it, when he tells the church at Ephesus, that, before their conversion, when they worshipped other gods, _they were without God in the world_, which implies as much as that they were atheists therein, as the words αθεοι ἐν τω κόσμω may, with equal propriety, be rendered.[66] Having considered the unity of the Godhead, not only as evinced from scripture, but as it may be demonstrated by the light of nature, it will be necessary that we obviate an objection that may be brought against this latter method of proving it, _viz._ _Object._ If the unity of the Godhead might be known by the dictates of nature, or demonstrated by other arguments, besides those which are matter of pure revelation, how comes it to pass that the heathen owned, and worshipped, a plurality of gods? and as it was not one particular sect among them that did so, but this abominable practice universally obtained, where revealed religion was not known, therefore, though this be an undoubted truth, yet it is not founded in the light of nature. _Answ._ That they did so is beyond dispute, especially after idolatry had continued a few ages in the world, and so had extinguished those principles of revealed religion, which mankind, before this, were favoured with; yet it must be considered, that though the ignorant and unthinking multitude, among them, believed every thing to be a God, which the custom of the countries where they lived had induced them to pay divine adoration to, yet the wiser sort of them, however guilty of idolatry, by paying a lower kind of worship to them, have, notwithstanding, maintained the unity of the Godhead, or that there is one God superior to them all, whom they often call the father of gods and men; to whom probably the Athenians erected that altar, as the apostle Paul observes, with this inscription, To THE UNKNOWN GOD; because he says, in the words immediately following, _Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you_, Acts xvii. 23.