Note 22 — Chapter IX · MARTYRS.

We have only to open Virgil to be convinced that the Romans acknowledged one Supreme Being, the lord and master of all other heavenly beings. O! quis res hominumque deumque Æternis regis imperiis, & fulmine terres, O pater, o hominum divumque æterna potestas, &c. And Horace expresses himself still more strongly: Unde nil majus generatur ipso, Nec viget quidquam simile, aut secundum. In those mysteries into which almost all the Roman youths were initiated, nothing else was sung but the unity of God. See the noble hymn of Orpheus, and the letter of Maximus of Modarum to St. Augustine, in which he says that “None but fools can possibly deny a Supreme Being.” Longinus, who was a heathen, writes also to St. Augustine that “God is one, in­comp­re­hens­ible, in­ef­fable.” Even Lac­tant­ius, who certainly cannot be charged with being too indulgent, acknowledges in his fifth book that “The Romans subjected all the other deities to the one supreme God;” illos subjecit & mancipat Deo. Tertullian also in his Apology confesses that “The whole empire acknowledged one God, ruler of the world, and infinite in power and majesty:” Principem mundi perfectæ potentiæ & majestatis. Again, if we look into Plato, who taught Cicero his philosophy, we shall there find him thus express himself: “There is but one God, whom we all ought to love and adore, and labor to resemble Him in integrity and holiness.” Epictetus in a dungeon, and Mark Antoninus on a throne, tell us the same in a hundred different passages of their writings.