cta temporibus, eaque et
populi Romani et omnium gentium firmata consensu, versari quandem inter
homines divinationem."--Cicero, "De Divin." bk. i. ch. i.]

[Footnote 389: Cicero.]

These ancient poems, then, were the public documents of the religion of
Greece--the repositories of the national faith. And it is deserving of
especial note that the philosopher was just as anxious to sustain his
speculations by quoting the high traditional authority of the ancient
theologian, as the propounder of modern novelties is to sustain his
notions by the authority of the Sacred Scriptures. Numerous examples of
this solicitude will recur at once to the remembrance of the student of
Plato. All encroachments of philosophy upon the domains of religion were
watched as jealously in Athens in the sixth century before Christ, as
the encroachments of science upon the fields of theology were watched in
Rome in the seventeenth century after Christ. The court of the Areopagus
was as earnest, though not as fanatical and cruel, in the defense of the
ancient faith, as the court of the Inquisition was in the defense of the
dogmas of the Romish Church. The people, also, as "the sacred wars" of
Greece attest, were ready quickly to repel every assault upon the
majesty of their religion. And so philosophy even had its martyrs. The
tears of Pericles were needed to save Aspasia, because she was suspected
of philosophy. But neither his eloquence nor his tears could save his
friend Anaxagoras, and he was ostracized. Aristotle had the greatest
difficulty to save his life. And Plato was twice imprisoned, and once
sold into slavery.[390]

[Footnote 390: Cousin's "Lectures on the History of Philosophy," vol. i.
p. 305.]

It is unnecessary that we should, in this place, again attempt the
delineation of the theological opinions of the earlier periods of
Grecian civilization. That the ancient Greeks believed in _one Supreme
God_ has been conclusively proved by Cudworth. The argument of his
fourth chapter is incontrovertible.[391] However great the number of
"generated gods" who crowded the Olympus, and composed the ghostly array
of Greek mythology, they were all subordinate agents, "demiurges,"
employed in the framing of the world and all material things, or else
the ministers of the moral and providential government of the eis Theos
agentos--the one uncreated God. Beneath, or beyond the whole system of
pagan polytheism, we recognize a faith in an _Uncreated