are we charged as
atheists. The name by which we are known, as much as by that of
Christian, is atheist--'

'Such, I have surely believed you,' said Porphyrius, again breaking in,
'and, at this moment, do.'

'But it is a name, Aurelian, fixed upon us ignorantly or slanderously;
ignorantly, I am willing to believe. We believe in a God, O Emperor; it
is to him we live, and to him we die. The charge of atheism I thus
publicly deny, as do all Christians who are here, as would all
throughout the world with one acclaim, were they also here, and would
all seal their testimony, if need were, with their blood. We believe in
God; not in many gods, some greater and some lesser, as with you, and
whose forms are known and can be set forth in images and statues--but in
one, one God, the sole monarch of the universe; whom no man, be he never
so cunning, can represent in wood, or brass, or stone; whom, so to
represent in any imaginary shape, our faith denounces as unlawful and
impious. Hence it is, O Emperor, because the vulgar, when they enter our
churches or our houses, see there no image of god or goddess, that they
imagine we are without a God, and without his worship. And such
conclusion may in them be excused. For, till they are instructed, it may
not be easy for them to conceive of one God, filling Heaven and earth
with his presence. But in others it is hard to see how they think us
atheists on the same ground, since nothing can be plainer than that
among you, the intelligent, and the philosophers especially, believe as
we do in a great pervading invisible spirit of the universe. Plato
worshipped not nor believed in these stone or wooden gods; nor in any of
the fables of the Greek religion; yet who ever has charged him with
atheism? So was it with the great Longinus. I see before me those who
are now famed for their science in such things, who are the teachers of
Rome in them, yet not one, I may venture to declare, believes other than
as Plato and Longinus did in this regard. It is an error or a calumny
that has ever prevailed concerning us; but in former times some have had
the candor, when the error has been removed, to confess publicly that
they had been subject to it. The Emperor Marcus Aurelius, to name no
other, when, in the straits into which he was fallen at Cotinus, he
charged his disasters upon the Christian soldiers, and, they praying
prostrate upon the earth for him and his army and empire, he forthwith
gained the