1. They claimed to worship them _only_ as inferior beings, and that therefore they were not guilty of giving them that honor which belonged to the Supreme. They claimed to worship the supreme God incomparably above all. 2. That this honor which is bestowed upon the inferior divinities does ultimately redound to the supreme God, and aggrandize his state and majesty, they being all his ministers and attendants. 3. That as demons are mediators between the celestial gods and men, so those celestial gods are also mediators between men and the supreme God, and, as it were, convenient steps by which we ought with reverence to approach him. 4. That demons or angels being appointed to preside over kingdoms, cities, and persons, and being many ways benefactors to us, thanks ought to be returned to them by sacrifice. 5. Lastly, that it can not be thought that the Supreme Being will envy those inferior beings that worship or honor which is bestowed upon them; nor suspect that any of these inferior deities will factiously go about to set up themselves against the Supreme God. The Pagans, furthermore, apologized for worshipping God in images, statues, and symbols, on the ground that these were only schetically worshipped by them, the honor passing from them to the prototype. And since we live in bodies, and can scarcely, conceive of any thing without having some image or phantasm, we may therefore be indulged in this infirmity of human nature (at least in the vulgar) to worship God under a corporeal image, as a means of preventing men from falling into Atheism. To the Christian conscience the above reasons assigned furnish no real justification of Polytheism and Idolatry; but they are certainly a tacit confession of their belief in the one Supreme God, and their conviction that, notwithstanding their idolatry, He only ought to be worshipped. The heathen polytheists are therefore justly condemned in Scripture, and pronounced to be "_inexcusable_." They had the knowledge of the true God--" they _knew God_" and yet "they glorified him not as God." "They changed the glory of the incorruptible God into a likeness of corruptible man." And, finally, they ended in "worshipping and serving the creature _more_ than the Creator."[204] [Footnote 204: Romans i. 21, 25.]