Lactantius, Divine Institutes 8

The sheer number and authority of the witnesses confirm that the world is governed by the power and providence of one God. Plato declares in the *Timaeus* that this God's power and majesty are so vast that no one can grasp them with the mind or express them in words, because his power is excessive and beyond estimate. Should anyone still doubt whether anything is difficult or impossible for God, consider who he is: by providence he devised the world, by virtue he established it, by reason he perfected it, and now he sustains it by his Spirit, governs it by his power, and remains incomprehensible, ineffable, and known fully to no one but himself. Reflecting often on such majesty, I find that those who worship gods sometimes appear blind, thoughtless, foolish — hardly different from mute animals. They believe that beings born from the union of male and female can possess divine majesty and virtue, even though the Erythraean Sibyl says: "God cannot be formed from the thighs of a man and the womb of a woman." Since that is true, it follows that Hercules, Apollo, Liber, Mercury, and Jupiter himself — along with the rest — were merely human, because they were born of two sexes. What could be more alien to God than the very act he gave mortals for propagating offspring, an act that cannot exist without bodily substance? If the gods are immortal and eternal, what need have they for the other sex — namely, to generate? What need for progeny, since they lack nothing and will always exist? In humans and all other living creatures, the difference of sexes, intercourse, and birth serve no other purpose than to preserve each kind through mutual succession, because mortality condemns them to perish. But for God, who is eternal, neither a second sex nor succession is necessary. Someone may object that God needs a female sex in order to have ministers or subjects to rule. But if God is omnipotent, as he is called, he can beget sons without any use or work of a woman. He granted certain tiny creatures the power to be born from leaves and sweet herbs and to gather them with their mouths; why should anyone think God himself cannot generate except by the mixture of the other sex? Therefore, no one is so thoughtless as to miss the point: those whom the ignorant and foolish call and worship as gods were mortals. "How then," one asks, "did they come to be believed as gods?" Because they were the greatest and most powerful kings. On account of the merits of their virtues, their benefactions, or the arts they discovered, they were dear to those they ruled, and so they were consecrated to memory. If anyone doubts this, let him examine their deeds and actions, which both ancient poets and historians have handed down.