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 (Dios Basileos) 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).

[Footnote 182: Cudworth, vol. i. pp. 593, 594.]

From the poets we now pass to the philosophers. The former we have
regarded as reflecting the traditional beliefs of the unreasoning
multitude. The philosophers unquestionably represent the reflective
spirit, the speculative thought, of the educated classes of Greek
society. Turning to the writings of the philosophers, we may therefore
reasonably expect that, instead of the dim, undefined, and nebulous form
in which the religious sentiment revealed itself amongst the
unreflecting portions of the Greek populations, we shall find their
theological ideas distinctly and articulately expressed, and that we
shall consequently be able to determine their religious opinions with
considerable accuracy.

Now that Thales, Pythagoras, Xenophanes, Anaxagoras, Empedocles,
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were all believers in the existence of
one supreme, uncreated, eternal God, has been, we think, clearly shown
by Cudworth.[183]

[Footnote 183: Vol. i. pp. 491-554.]

In subsequent chapters on "_the Philosophers of Athens_," we shall enter
more fully into the discussion of this question. Meantime we assume
that, with few exceptions, the Greek philosophers were "genuine
Theists.