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sible and corporeal nature, it is not likely that he should now deny his oracles to them, to whom himself is the cause of generation and nourishment, of life and understanding.

Moreover, Urania Aphrodite, the heavenly Venus or Love, was a universal Numen also, or another name of God, according to his more general notion, as comprehending the whole world; it being the same with that "Eows, or Love, which Orpheus, and others in Aristotle, made to be the first original of all things: for it is certain, that the ancients distinguished concerning a double Venus and Love. Thus Pausanias in Plato's Symposium: Ἡ μέν γέ που πρεσβυτέρα καὶ P. 108. ἀμήτωρ Οὐρανοῦ θυγάτηρ, ἣν δὴ καὶ οὐρανίαν ἐπονομάζομεν· ἡ δὲ νεωτέρα, Διὸς καὶ Διώνης, ἣν δὴ πάνδη μον καλούμεν· ἀναγκαῖον δὴ καὶ Ἔρωτα, τὸν μὲν τῇ ἑτέρᾳ συνεργὸν, πάνδημον ὀρθῶς καλεῖσθαι, τὸν δὲ, οὐράνιον" There are two Venuses, and therefore two Loves ; one the older and without a mother, the daughter of Uranus or heaven, which we call the heavenly Venus; another younger, begotten from Jupiter and Dione, which we call the vulgar Venus: and accordingly are there of necessity two Loves, answering to these two Venuses, the one vulgar and the other heavenly. The elder of these two Venuses is in Plato said to be senior to Japhet and Saturn, and by Orpheus the oldest of all things, and TowTos yevέTwp, the first begetter of all. Upon which account, perhaps, it was called by the oriental nations Mylitta or Genitrix, as being the fruitful mother of all. This was also the same with Plato's To Towτоv Kaλov, the first fair;— the cause of all pulchritude, order and harmony, * In Hymno in Venerem, p. 151.oper.

a

a

in the world. And Pausanias the writer tells us that there were temples severally erected to each of these Venuses or Loves, the heavenly and the vulgar; and that Urania, or the heavenly Venus, was so called, ἐπὶ ἔρωτι καθαρῷ καὶ ἀπηλαμένῳ πόθου σωuárov, because the love belonging to it was pure, and free from all corporeal affection:-which, as it is in men, is but a participation of that first Urania, or heavenly Venus and Love, God himself. And thus is Venus described by Euripides in Stobaeus, as the supreme Numen:

b

Τὴν ̓Αφροδίτην οὐχ ὁρᾷς ὅση θεός,

̓Αλλ ̓ οὐδ ̓ ἂν εἴσσοις, οὐδὲ μετρήσειας ἂν,
Ὅση πέφυκε καὶ ἐφ ̓ ὅσον διέρχεται·

Αὕτη τρέφει δὲ κἀμὲ καὶ πάντας βροτοὺς, &c.

Thus also by
Eschylus, 'Ega
μὴν ἁγνὸς οὐρα
νὸς, &c. Ερως δὲ
γαῖαν λαμβά-
VEI, &C.-Tav
δ ̓ ἐγὼ παραί-

To this sense: Do you not see how great. Grot. Exa god this Venus is? But you are never cerp. p.45. able to declare her greatness, nor to measure the vast extent thereof. For this is she, which nourisheth both thee and me, and all mortals, and which makes heaven and earth friendly to conspire together, &c.-But by Ovid this is more fully expressed, in his Fastorum:

Illa quidem totum dignissima temperat orbem,
Illa tenet nullo regna minora Deo:
Juraque dat coelo, terræ, natalibus undis;
Perque suos initus continet omne genus.
Illa deos omnes (longum enumerare) creavit;
Illa satis causas arboribusque dedit.

Where all the gods are said to have been created or made by Venus, that is, by the one supreme Deity. But, lastly, this is best of all performed by Severinus Boetius, a Christian philosopher De Cons. 1. ii. and poet, in this manner :

a In Boeotic. lib. ix. cap. xvi. Eclog. Phys. lib. i. cap. xvii. p. 97.

P. 742.

Met. 8.

Lib iv. ver. 91.

Quod mundus stabili fide
Concordes variat vices,
Quod pugnantia semina
Foedus perpetuum tenent;
Quod Phoebus roseum diem
Curru provehit aureo; &c.
Hanc rerum seriem ligat,
Terras ac pelagus regens,
Et coelo imperitans, AMOR, &c.
Hic si froena remiserit,
Quicquid nunc amat invicem,
Bellum continuo geret.
Hic sancto populos quoque
Junctos foedere continet;
Hic et conjugii sacrum
Castis nectit amoribus, &c.
O felix hominum genus,
Si vestros animos AMOR,
Quo cœlum regitur, regat.

"

And to this Urania, or heavenly Venus, was near of kin also that third Venus in Pausanias called 'ATоorρopía, and by the Latins Venus verticordia, pure and chaste Love-expulsive of all unclean lusts, to which the Romans consecrated a statue, as Valerius M. tells us, (l. viii. c. xv.) quo facilius virginum mulierumque mentes a libidine ad pudicitiam converterentur;" to this end, that the minds of the female sex might then the better be converted from lust and wantonness to chastity.We conclude, therefore, that Urania, or the heavenly Venus, was sometimes amongst the Pagans a name for the supreme Deity, as that which is the most amiable being, and first pulchritude, the most benign and fecund begetter of all things, and the constant harmonizer of the whole world.

Again, though Vulcan, according to the most common and vulgar notion of him, be to be reckoned amongst the particular gods, yet had he also another more universal consideration.

a

For Zeno in Laertius tells us, that the supreme God was called Ήφαιστος, οι Vulcan, κατὰ τὴν εἰς τὸ τεχνικὸν πῦρ διάτασιν τοῦ ἡγεμονικοῦ αὐτοῦ, as his hegemonic acted in the artificial fire.-Now Plutarch and Stobaeus testify, that the Stoics did not only call nature, but also the supreme Deity itself (the Architect of the whole world), TEXvkov Tup, an artificial fire-they conceiving him to be corporeal. And Jamblichus making Phtha to be the same supreme God, amongst the Egyptians, with Osiris and Hammon, or rather, more properly, all of them alike the soul of the world, tells us, that Hephæstus, in the Greekish theology, was the same with this Egyptian Phtha; Ἕλληνες εἰς Ἥφαιστον μεταλαμβάνουσι τὸν Φθά, τῷ τεχ νικῷ μόνον προσβάλλοντες, amongst the Greeks Hephæstus (or Vulcan) answers to the Egyptian Phtha. Wherefore as the Egyptians by Phtha, so the Greeks by Hephæstus, sometimes understood no other than the supreme God, or at least the soul of the world, as artificially framing all things.

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Furthermore, Seneca gives us yet De Ben. 1. iv, other names of the supreme Deity, ac- c. viii. cording to the sense of the Stoics ; "Hunc et liberum patrem, et Herculem, ac Mercurium nostri putant, Liberum Patrem, quia omnium parens, &c. Herculem, quod vis ejus invicta sit; Mercurium, quia ratio penes illum est, numerusque, et ordo, et scientia." Furthermore, our phi-losophers take this auctor of all things to be Liber Pater, Hercules, and Mercury; the first, be

* Lib. vii. segm. 147. p. 458.

b De Placit. Philos. lib. i. cap. vii. p. 881. oper,

C

Eclog. Phys. lib. i. cap. ii. p. 17.

De Myster. Ægyptior. sect. 8. cap. iii. p. 159.

cause he is parent of all things, &c. the second, because his force and power are unconquerable, &c. and the third, because there is in and from him reason, number, order, and knowledge.--And now we see already, that the supreme God was sufficiently polyonymous amongst the Pagans; and that all these, Jupiter, Pan, Janus, Genius, Saturn, Cœlus, Minerva, Apollo, Aphrodite Urania, Hephaestus, Liber Pater, Hercules, and Mercury, were not so many really distinct and substantial gods, much less self-existent and independent ones; but only several names of that one supreme, universal, and all-comprehending Numen, according to several notions and considerations of him.

But, besides these, there were many other Pagan gods called by Servius dii speciales, special or particular gods;-which cannot be thought neither to have been so many really distinct and substantial beings (that is, natural gods), much less selfexistent and independent, but only so many several names or notions of one and the same supreme Deity, according to certain particular powers and manifestations of it. It is true, that some late Christian writers against the Polytheism and idolatry of the Pagans, have charged them with at least a trinity of independent gods, viz. Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto, as sharing the government of the whole world amongst these three, and consequently acknowledging no one universal Numen. Notwithstanding which, it is certain, that, according to the more arcane doctrine and cabala of the Pagans, concerning the natural true theology, these three considered as distinct and independent gods, were accounted but dii poetici

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