that, instead of one God, there are not worshipped as many gods
as there are works of the one author._
And now, to begin to go over those works of the one true God, on
account of which these have made to themselves many and false gods,
whilst they attempt to give an honourable interpretation to their
many most abominable and most infamous mysteries,--we worship
that God who has appointed to the natures created by Him both the
beginnings and the end of their existing and moving; who holds,
knows, and disposes the causes of things; who hath created the virtue
of seeds; who hath given to what creatures He would a rational soul,
which is called mind; who hath bestowed the faculty and use of
speech; who hath imparted the gift of foretelling future things to
whatever spirits it seemed to Him good; who also Himself predicts
future things, through whom He pleases, and through whom He will
removes diseases; who, when the human race is to be corrected and
chastised by wars, regulates also the beginnings, progress, and ends
of these wars; who hath created and governs the most vehement and
most violent fire of this world, in due relation and proportion to
the other elements of immense nature; who is the governor of all the
waters; who hath made the sun brightest of all material lights, and
hath given him suitable power and motion; who hath not withdrawn,
even from the inhabitants of the nether world, His dominion and
power; who hath appointed to mortal natures their suitable seed and
nourishment, dry or liquid; who establishes and makes fruitful the
earth; who bountifully bestows its fruits on animals and on men; who
knows and ordains, not only principal causes, but also subsequent
causes; who hath determined for the moon her motion; who affords
ways in heaven and on earth for passage from one place to another;
who hath granted also to human minds, which He hath created, the
knowledge of the various arts for the help of life and nature; who
hath appointed the union of male and female for the propagation of
offspring; who hath favoured the societies of men with the gift of
terrestrial fire for the simplest and most familiar purposes, to burn
on the hearth and to give light. These are, then, the things which
that most acute and most learned man Varro has laboured to distribute
among the select gods, by I know not what physical interpretation,
which he has got from other sources, and also conjectured for
himself. But these things the one true God makes and does, but as
_the same_ God,--that is, as He who is wholly everywhere, included
in no space, bound by no chains, mutable in no part of His being,
filling heaven and earth with omnipresent power, not with a needy
nature. Therefore He governs all things in such a manner as to
allow them to perform and exercise their own proper movements. For
although they can be nothing without Him, they are not what He is.
He does also many things through angels; but only from Himself does
He beatify angels. So also, though He send angels to men for certain
purposes, He does not for all that beatify men by the good inherent
in the angels, but by Himself, as He does the angels themselves.