We may also read the passage of the philosopher Maximus, whom we have already quoted: "What man is so gross and stupid as to doubt that there is a supreme, eternal, and infinite God, who has engendered nothing like Himself, and who is the common father of all things?"
There are a thousand proofs that the ancient sages not only abhorred idolatry, but polytheism.
Epictetus, that model of resignation and patience, that man so great in a humble condition, never speaks of but one God. Read over these maxims: "God has created me; God is within me; I carry Him everywhere. Can I defile Him by obscene thoughts, unjust actions, or infamous desires? My duty is to thank God for all, to praise Him for all; and only to cease blessing Him in ceasing to live." All the ideas of Epictetus turn on this principle. Is this an idolater?
Marcus Aurelius, perhaps as great on the throne of the Roman Empire as Epictetus was in slavery, often speaks, indeed, of the gods, either to conform himself to the received language, or to express intermediate beings between the Supreme Being and men; but in how many places does he show that he recognizes one eternal, infinite God alone? "Our soul," says he, "is an emanation from the divinity. My children, my body, my mind, are derived from God."
The Stoics and Platonics admitted a divine and universal nature; the Epicureans denied it. The pontiffs spoke only of a single God in their mysteries. Where then were the idolaters? All our declaimers exclaim against idolatry like little dogs, that yelp when they hear a great one bark.
As to the rest, it is one of the greatest errors of the "Dictionary" of Moréri to say, that in the time of Theodosius the younger, there remained no idolaters except in the retired countries of Asia and Africa. Even in the seventh century there were many people still heathen in Italy. The north of Germany, from the Weser, was not Christian in the time of Charlemagne. Poland and all the south remained a long time after him in what was called idolatry; the half of Africa, all the kingdoms beyond the Ganges, Japan, the populace of China, and a hundred hordes of Tartars, have preserved their ancient religion. In Europe there are only a few Laplanders, Samoyedes, and Tartars, who have persevered in the religion of their ancestors.