Minucius Felix — Octavius 18

It is long to go through each point. Nothing among human members lacks both necessity and beauty, and what is more wonderful, the same figure belongs to all, yet certain lines are bent for each: so we all seem alike and yet are found unlike one another. What of the account of birth? What of the desire to beget — is it not given by God, and that breasts fill with milk as birth matures, and that the tender infant grows by the richness of milky dew? God cares not only for the whole but also for the parts. Britain lacks the sun, yet is refreshed by the warmth of the surrounding sea; the Nile river usually temper Egypt’s dryness; the Euphrates pays Mesopotamia in place of rains; the Indus is said both to sow and to water the East. If you entered a house and saw everything cultivated, arranged, adorned, you would surely believe a master stood over it and was far better than those good things: so in this house of the world, when you perceive providence, order, and law in heaven and earth, believe there is a Lord of the universe and a Parent more beautiful than the stars themselves and than the parts of the whole world.

Unless perhaps, since there is no doubt about providence, you think one must ask whether the heavenly kingdom is governed by one command or by the judgment of many — which itself is not much labor to open for one thinking of earthly empires, whose examples are certainly from heaven. When did a partnership of kingship ever begin with fidelity or end without blood? I pass over Persians auguring rule from horses’ neighing, and the Theban pair, a dead tale. The most famous memory is of the twins’ kingdom for shepherds and a hut. Wars of son-in-law and father-in-law were spread through the whole world, and fortune did not hold two for so great an empire. See the rest: one king for bees, one leader in flocks, one guide in herds. Would you believe the highest power in heaven is divided and the whole majesty of that true and divine empire split, when it is plain that God the parent of all has neither beginning nor end, who grants birth to all and perpetuity to himself, who before the world was was himself a world for himself: who commands all things whatever by word, dispenses by reason, completes by power? He cannot be seen: he is brighter than sight; nor grasped: he is purer than touch; nor estimated: he is greater than the senses — infinite, immense, and known only to himself as great as he is. Our breast is too narrow for understanding, and so we worthily estimate him when we say he is inestimable. I will speak as I feel: whoever thinks he knows God’s greatness diminishes it; whoever will not diminish it does not know it. Nor seek a name for God: God is the name. Vocables are needed there where a multitude must be sorted by proper badges of titles; for God, who alone is, the name of God is the whole. If I call him Father, you may think him fleshly; if King, you may suspect him earthly; if Lord, you will understand him mortal. Take away the add-ons of names and you will see his brightness. What of this — that I have the consent of all about him? I hear the crowd: when they stretch hands to heaven they say nothing else than “God” and “God is great” and “God is true” and “if God grants.” Is that the crowd’s natural speech or a Christian confessor’s prayer? And those who want Jupiter as chief are mistaken in the name, but agree about one power.