'We hope,' continued Probus, nothing daunted by the scornful jeers of the philosopher, 'that we are sincerely desirous of your welfare, and so pray that in the lapse of years all may, as some have done, take at our hands the good we proffer them; for, sure we are, that would all so receive it, Rome would tower upwards with a glory and a beauty that should make her a thousand-fold more honored and beloved than now, and her roots would strike down, and so fasten themselves in the very centre of the earth, that well might she then be called the Eternal City. Yet, O Emperor, though such is our aim and purpose; though we would propagate a religion from God, and, in doing so, are willing to labor our lives long, and, if need be, die in the sacred cause, yet are we charged as atheists. The name by which we are known, as much as by that of Christian, is atheist--' 'Such, I have surely believed you,' said Porphyrius, again breaking in, 'and, at this moment, do.' 'But it is a name, Aurelian, fixed upon us ignorantly or slanderously; ignorantly, I am willing to believe. We believe in a God, O Emperor; it is to him we live, and to him we die. The charge of atheism I thus publicly deny, as do all Christians who are here, as would all throughout the world with one acclaim, were they also here, and would all seal their testimony, if need were, with their blood. We believe in God; not in many gods, some greater and some lesser, as with you, and whose forms are known and can be set forth in images and statues--but in one, one God, the sole monarch of the universe; whom no man, be he never so cunning, can represent in wood, or brass, or stone; whom, so to represent in any imaginary shape, our faith denounces as unlawful and impious. Hence it is, O Emperor, because the vulgar, when they enter our churches or our houses, see there no image of god or goddess, that they imagine we are without a God, and without his worship. And such conclusion may in them be excused. For, till they are instructed, it may not be easy for them to conceive of one God, filling Heaven and earth with his presence. But in others it is hard to see how they think us atheists on the same ground, since nothing can be plainer than that among you, the intelligent, and the philosophers especially, believe as we do in a great pervading invisible spirit of the universe. Plato worshipped not nor believed in these stone or wooden gods; nor in any of the fables of the Greek religion; yet who ever has charged him with atheism? So was it with the great Longinus. I see before me those who are now famed for their science in such things, who are the teachers of Rome in them, yet not one, I may venture to declare, believes other than as Plato and Longinus did in this regard. It is an error or a calumny that has ever prevailed concerning us; but in former times some have had the candor, when the error has been removed, to confess publicly that they had been subject to it.