Note (return) — Chapter IV

Besides the direct evidence, which is furnished by the poets and mythologists, of the presence of this universal faith in "the heavenly Father," there is also a large amount of collateral testimony that this idea of one Supreme God was generally entertained by the Greek pagans, whether learned or unlearned. 182 Dio Chrysostomus says that "all the poets call the first and greatest God the Father, universally, of all rational kind, as also the King thereof. Agreeably with which doctrine of the poets do mankind erect altars to Jupiter-King (Διὸς ßασιλέως) and hesitate not to call him Father in their devotions" (Orat. xxxvi.). And Maximus Tyrius declares that both the learned and the unlearned throughout the pagan world universally agree in this; that there is one Supreme God, the Father of gods and men. "If," says he, "there were a meeting called of all the several trades and professions,... and all were required to declare their sense concerning God, do you think that the painter would say one thing, the sculptor another, the poet another, and the philosopher another? No; nor the Scythian neither, nor the Greek, nor the hyperborean. In regard to other things, we find men speaking discordantly one to another, all men, as it were, differing from all men... Nevertheless, on this subject, you may find universally throughout the world one agreeing law and opinion; that there is one God, the King and Father of all, and many gods, the sons of God, co-reigners together with God"(Diss. i. p. 450).