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7. For when the one supreme God of gods is thought of, even by
those who believe that there are other gods, and who call them by that
name, and worship them as gods, their thought takes the form of an
endeavor to reach the conception of a nature, than which nothing more
excellent or more exalted exists. And since men are moved by different
kinds of pleasures, partly by those which pertain to the bodily
senses, partly by those which pertain to the intellect and soul, those
of them who are in bondage to sense think that either the heavens, or
what appears to be most brilliant in the heavens, or the universe
itself, is God of gods: or if they try to get beyond the universe,
they picture to themselves something of dazzling brightness, and think
of it vaguely as infinite, or of the most beautiful form conceivable;
or they represent it in the form of the human body, if they think that
superior to all others. Or if they think that there is no one God
supreme above the rest, but that there are many or even innumerable
gods of equal rank, still these too they conceive as possessed of shape
and form, according to what each man thinks the pattern of excellence.
Those, on the other hand, who endeavor by an effort of the
intelligence to reach a conception of God, place Him above all
visible and bodily natures, and even above all intelligent and
spiritual natures that are subject to change. All, however, strive
emulously to exalt the excellence of God: nor could any one be found
to believe that any being to whom there exists a superior is God. And
so all concur in believing that God is that which excels in dignity all
other objects.
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