[9] The sages of Greece and Rome, who had elevated their minds to the contemplation of the existence and attributes of the First Cause, were induced by reason or by vanity to reserve for themselves and their chosen disciples the privilege of this philosophical devotion.

[10] They were far from admitting the prejudices of mankind as the standard of truth, but they considered them as flowing from the original disposition of human nature; and they supposed that any popular mode of faith and worship which presumed to disclaim the assistance of the senses, would, in proportion as it receded from superstition, find itself incapable of restraining the wanderings of the fancy, and the visions of fanaticism.

The careless glance which men of wit and learning condescended to cast on the Christian revelation, served only to confirm their hasty opinion, and to persuade them that the principle, which they might have revered, of the Divine Unity, was defaced by the wild enthusiasm, and annihilated by the airy speculations, of the new sectaries.

The author of a celebrated dialogue, which has been attributed to Lucian, whilst he affects to treat the mysterious subject of the Trinity in a style of ridicule and contempt, betrays his own ignorance of the weakness of human reason, and of the inscrutable nature of the divine perfections.

[11] [Footnote 9: Cur nullas aras habent?
templa nulla?
nulla nota simulacra!--Unde autem, vel quis ille, aut ubi, Deus unicus, solitarius, desti tutus?
Minucius Felix, c.10.The Pagan interlocutor goes on to make a distinction in favor of the Jews, who had once a temple, altars, victims, &c.] [Footnote 10: It is difficult (says Plato) to attain, and dangerous to publish, the knowledge of the true God.