Minucius Felix — Octavius (Chapter 19. Argument: Moreover, the Poets Have Called Him the Parent of Gods and Men, the Creator of All Things, and Their Mind and Spirit. And, Besides, Even the More Excellent Philosophers Have Come Almost to the Same Conclusion as the Christians About the Unity of God.)

I hear the poets also announcing 'the One Father of gods and men.' and that such is the mind of mortal men as the Parent of all has appointed His day. What says the Mantuan Maro? Is it not even more plain, more apposite, more true? 'In the beginning,' says he, 'the spirit within nourishes, and the mind infused stirs the heaven and the earth,' and the other members 'of the world. Thence arises the race of men and of cattle,' and every other kind of animal.

The same poet in another place calls that mind and spirit God. For these are his words: 'For that God pervades all the lands, and the tracts of the sea, and the profound heaven, from whom are men and cattle; from whom are rain and fire.' What else also is God announced to be by us, but mind, and reason, and spirit? Let us review, if it is agreeable, the teaching of philosophers. Although in varied kinds of discourse, yet in these matters you will find them concur and agree in this one opinion.

I pass over those untrained and ancient ones who deserved to be called wise men for their sayings. Let Thales the Milesian be the first of all, for he first of all disputed about heavenly things. That same Thales the Milesian said that water was the beginning of things, but that God was that mind which from water formed all things. Ah! A higher and nobler account of water and spirit than to have ever been discovered by man.

It was delivered to him by God. You see that the opinion of this original philosopher absolutely agrees with ours. Afterwards Anaximenes, and then Diogenes of Apollonia, decide that the air, infinite and unmeasured, is God. The agreement of these also as to the Divinity is like ours. But the description of Anaxagoras also is, that God is said to be the motion of an infinite mind; and the God of Pythagoras is the soul passing to and fro and intent, throughout the universal nature of things, from whom also the life of all animals is received.

It is a known fact, that Xenophanes delivered that God was all infinity with a mind; and Antisthenes, that there are many gods of the people, but that one God of Nature was the chief of all; that Xeuxippus acknowledged as God a natural animal force whereby all things are governed. What says Democritus? Although the first discoverer of atoms, does not he especially speak of nature, which is the basis of forms, and intelligence, as God?

Strato also himself says that God is nature. Moreover, Epicurus, the man who feigns either otiose gods or none at all, still places above all, Nature. Aristotle varies, but nevertheless assigns a unity of power: for at one time he says that Mind, at another the World, is God; at another time he sets God above the world. Heraclides of Pontus also ascribes, although in various ways, a divine mind to God.