Now that there can be but one infinite and absolutely perfect Being--one supreme, uncreated, eternal God--is self-evident; therefore a multiplicity of such gods is a contradiction and an impossibility. The early philosophers knew this as well as the modern. The Deity, in order to be Deity, must be one and not many: must be perfect or nothing. If, therefore, we would do justice to these old Greeks, we must inquire what explanations they have offered in regard to "the many gods" of which they speak. We must ascertain whether they regarded these "gods" as created or uncreated beings, dependent or independent, temporal or eternal We must inquire in what sense the term "god" is applied to these lesser divinities,--whether it is not applied in an accommodated and therefore allowable sense, as in the sacred Scriptures it is applied to kings and magistrates, and those who are appointed by God as the teachers and rulers of men. "_They are called gods_ to whom the word of God came."[184] And if it shall be found that all the gods of which they speak, save _one_, are "generated deities"--dependent beings--creatures and subjects of the one eternal King and Father, and that the name of "god" is applied to them in an accommodated sense, then we have vindicated for the old Greek philosophers a consistent and rational Theism. In what relation, then, do the philosophers place "_the gods_" to the one Supreme Being? _Thales_, one of the most ancient of the Greek philosophers, taught the existence of a plurality of gods, as is evident from that saying of his, preserved by Diogenes Laertius, "The world has life, and is full of gods."[185] At the same time he asserts his belief in one supreme, uncreated Deity; "God is the oldest of all things, because he is unmade, or ungenerated."[186] All the other gods must therefore have been "generated deities," since there is but one unmade God, one only that had "no beginning."[187] [Footnote 184: See John x. 35.] [Footnote 185: "Lives," bk. i.; see also Aristotle's "De Anima," bk. i. ch. viii. πάντα θιῶν πληρη.] [Footnote 186: "Lives," bk. i.] [Footnote 187: "Lives," bk. i.] _Xenophanes_ was also an assertor of many gods, and one God; but his one God is unquestionably supreme. "There is one God, the greatest amongst gods and men;" or, "God is one, the greatest amongst gods and men."[188]