Christianity and Greek Philosophy: or, the relation between spontaneous and reflective thought in Greece and the positive teaching of Christ and His ApostlesCocker, B. F. (Benjamin Franklin)
Religion
Christianity and Greek Philosophy: or, the relation between spontaneous and reflective thought in Greece and the positive teaching of Christ and His Apostles
Cocker, B. F. (Benjamin Franklin)
Christianity; Church history -- Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600; Philosophy, Ancient
2. Some are _invisible powers_, having peculiar offices and functions
and presiding over special places provinces and departments of the
universe;--one ruling in the heavens (Zeus), another in the air (Juno),
another in the sea (Neptune), another in the subterranean regions
(Pluto); one god presiding over learning and wisdom (Minerva), another
over poetry, music, and religion (Apollo), another over justice and
political order (Themis), another over war (Mars), another over corn
(Ceres), and another the vine (Bacchus).
3. Others, again, are _ethereal_ and _aërial_ beings, who have the
guardianship of individual persons and things, and are called _demons,
genii_, and _lares_; superior indeed to men, but inferior to the gods
above named.
"Wherefore, since there were no other gods among the Pagans besides
those above enumerated, unless their images, statues, and symbols should
be accounted such (because they were also sometimes abusively called
'gods'), which could not be supposed by them to have been unmade or
without beginning, they being the workmanship of their own hands, we
conclude, universally, that all that multiplicity of Pagan gods which
make so great a show and noise was really either nothing but several
names and notions of one supreme Deity, according to his different
manifestations, gifts, and effects upon the world personated, or else
many inferior understanding beings, generated or created by one supreme:
so that one unmade, self-existent Deity, and no more, was acknowledged
by the more intelligent Pagans, and, consequently, the Pagan Polytheism
(or idolatry) consisted not in worshipping a multiplicity of unmade
minds, deities, and creators, self-existent from eternity, and
independent upon one Supreme, but in mingling and blending some way or
other, unduly, creature-worship with the worship of the Creator."[203]
[Footnote 203: Cudworth, "Intellectual System," vol. i. p. 311.]
That the heathen regard the one Supreme Being as the first and chief
object of worship is evident from the apologies which they offered for
worshipping, besides Him, many inferior divinities.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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