On the Mysteries (Thomas Taylor trans.)

alone be found; and the theology theology: here referring to the "Theology of the Ancients" or the metaphysical study of the gods as defined by Greek philosophers. of the ancients has been attacked with all the insane fury of ecclesiastical zeal ecclesiastical zeal: the author is describing the aggressive religious intolerance or fervor shown by the Church towards non-Christian philosophical systems., and all the imbecile flashes of mistaken wit, by men whose conceptions on the subject, like those of a man between sleeping and waking, have been turbid and wild, phantastic and confused, preposterous and vain.

Indeed, that after the great incomprehensible cause of all, a divine multitude divine multitude: refers to the various levels of gods, angels, or "daemons" that Neoplatonists believed existed between the ultimate source (the One) and the physical world. subsists, cooperating with this cause in the production and government of the universe, has always been, and is still, admitted by all nations and all religions, however much they may differ in their opinions respecting the nature of the subordinate deities, and the veneration which is to be paid to them by man; and however barbarous the conceptions of some nations on this subject may be, when compared with those of others. Hence, says the elegant Maximus Tyrius Maximus of Tyre was a 2nd-century Greek philosopher and rhetorician whose essays attempted to bridge the gap between various religious and philosophical beliefs.,

"You will see one according law and assertion in all the earth, that there is one God, the king and father of all things, and many Gods, sons of God, ruling together with him. This the Greek says, and" The author is quoting from Maximus Tyrius's "Dissertations," specifically emphasizing that even polytheistic traditions acknowledge a single supreme "king and father."