For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore you ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.
Read Chapter 17
George Leo Haydock
AD 1849
It may be asked, why they had not implicit faith, worshipping the true, though unknown, God? 1st. because the worship of the true God can never exist with the worship of idols; 2nd. because an explicit faith in God is required of all; 3rd. because it is repugnant to implicit faith, to admit any thing contrary to it, as comparing this unknown God with the pagan idols; for God to be at all, must be one. Lucan towards the end of his 2nd book, hath these words:
-Et dedita sacris Incerti Judæa Dei.
What, therefore, you improperly worship, that I preach to you, and instruct you in the true worship, far different from what you pay to your strange gods.
And (Cerinthus alleges) that, after the baptism (of our Lord), Christ in form of a dove came down upon him, from that absolute sovereignty which is above all things. And then, (according to this heretic,) Jesus proceeded to preach the unknown Father,
On which was inscribed, To an Unknown God. The Athenians, namely, as on many occasions they had received gods from foreign parts also— for instance, the temple of Minerva, Pan, and others from different countries— being afraid that there might be some other god not yet known to them, but worshipped elsewhere, for more assurance, forsooth, erected an altar to that god also: and as the god was not known, it was inscribed, To an Unknown God. This God then, he tells them, is Christ; or rather, the God of all. Him declare I unto you. Observe how he shows that they had already received Him, and it is nothing strange, says he, nothing new that I introduce to you. All along, this was what they had been saying: What is this new doctrine spoken of by you? For you bring certain strange matters to our ears. Immediately therefore he removes this surmise of theirs: and then says, God that made the world and all things therein, He being Lord of heaven and earth— for, that they may not imagine Him to ...
