De docta ignorantia

The pagans likewise named God by various respects of creatures: Jupiter indeed on account of wondrous piety; for Julius Firmicus says that Jupiter is so prosperous a star that if Jupiter alone had reigned in heaven, men would be immortal. So Saturn on account of depth of thoughts and inventions in things necessary for life, Mars on account of warlike victories, Mercury on account of counselling prudence, Venus on account of the conserving love of nature, the Sun on account of the vigor of natural motions, the Moon on account of humoral conservation, in which life consists, Cupid on account of the unity of the double sex, on account of which they also called nature itself, since through the double sex it conserves the species of things. Hermes says all things, both animals and non-animals, are of double sex; therefore he said the cause of all, namely God, enfolds in himself masculine and feminine sex, of which he believed Cupid and Venus the unfolding. Valerius the Roman also, affirming the same, sang of omnipotent Jupiter, god begetter and bearer, whence he called Cupid, inasmuch as one thing desires another, the daughter of Venus, that is of natural beauty itself. But Venus they called the daughter of omnipotent Jupiter, from whom nature and all things accompanying it. Temples also of peace namely and of eternity and concord, of all gods, in which was the altar of the Infinite Term, whose terminus is not in the middle under the open sky, and like things teach us that the pagans named God variously according to respect to creatures, which indeed all names are unfoldings explicating the enfolding of the one ineffable name, and according as the proper name is infinite, so such infinite names enfold particular perfections. Hence both the explicatings can be many and never so many and great but that there could be more, each of which stands to the proper and ineffable as the finite to the infinite. The ancient pagans derided the Jews, who adored the one infinite God, whom they knew not, whom yet they themselves venerated in the unfoldings, venerating him namely there where they beheld his divine works. And this was then the difference among all men, that all believed in one greatest God, than which a greater could not be, whom some, as the Jews and Sissennii, worshipped in his most simple unity, as he is the enfolding of all things; but others worshipped him in those things where they found the unfolding of divinity, receiving the sensibly known as a leading-by-hand to the cause and principle. And in this last way the simple populace were seduced, who used the unfolding not as image but as truth, from which thing idolatry was introduced among the vulgar, the wise for the most part believing rightly concerning the unity of God, as these things are known and can be to him who has diligently examined Cicero on the nature of the gods, the ancient philosophers. We do not deny, however, that some of the pagans did not understand God, since he is the beingness of things, otherwise than by abstraction to be outside things, just as prime matter exists outside things only as abstractly understood, and such ones adored God in creatures, who also established idolatry. Some also thought God invocable by song, of whom some invoked him in angels, as the Sissennii; but the Gentiles invoked him in trees, as is read of the tree of the sun and moon; and some in air, water or temples with certain songs invoked him — all of whom how they were seduced and were far from the truth what precedes shows.