Exhortation to the Greeks 6.68

I long for the Lord of the winds, the Lord of fire, the creator of the world, the one who gives light to the sun. I seek God, not the works of God. Whom shall I take from you as a helper in my search? For we have not altogether despaired of you. Plato, if you like. How then is God to be tracked down, Plato? “For to find the Father and Maker of this universe is a hard task, and having found him, it is impossible to declare him to all.” Why so, in his name? “For he cannot be expressed in words at all.” Well done, Plato, you have touched the truth. But do not grow weary; join me in the search for the Good. For in all human beings without exception, and especially in those who spend their time on words, a certain divine effluence has been instilled. For this reason, even against their will, they confess that God is one, indestructible and unbegotten, and that he is somewhere above, around the back of heaven, in his own proper place of watch, truly existing forever. “What kind of God, tell me, must we conceive? The one who sees all things and is not himself seen,” says Euripides. Menander seems to me to have gone astray where he says: “O Sun, for you must be worshiped first of the gods, through whom it is possible to see the other gods.” For the sun would never show us the true God; but the sound Word, who is the sun of the soul, can, through whom alone, when he has risen within in the depth of the mind, the soul's eye is lit up. Hence, not without reason, Democritus says that “a few of the learned, stretching out their hands toward what we Greeks now call the air, called it Zeus: for he knows all things, gives all and takes away, and he is king of all.”