We give offense by proclaiming that there is one God, to whom the name of God alone belongs, from whom all things come, and who is Lord of the whole universe. Bear you testimony, if you know this to be the truth; for openly and with a perfect liberty, such as we do not possess, we hear you both in private and in public exclaim, “Which may God grant,” and, “If God so will.” By expressions such as these you declare that there is one who is distinctively God, and you confess that all power belongs to him to whose will, as Sovereign, you look.
At the same time, too, you deny any others to be truly gods, in calling them by their own names of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Minerva; for you affirm Him to be God alone to whom you give no other name than God; and though you sometimes call these others gods, you plainly use the designation as one which does not really belong to them, but is, so to speak, a borrowed one. Nor is the nature of the God we declare unknown to you: “God is good, God does good,” you are wont to say; plainly suggesting further, “But man is evil.”
In asserting an antithetic proposition, you, in a sort of indirect and figurative way, reproachest man with his wickedness in departing from a God so good. So, again, as among us, as belonging to the God of benignity and goodness, “Blessing” is a most sacred act in our religion and our life, you too sayest as readily as a Christian needs, “God bless you;” and when you turn the blessing of God into a curse, in like manner your very words confess with us that His power over us is absolute and entire.
There are some who, though they do not deny the existence of God, hold withal that He is neither Searcher, nor Ruler, nor Judge; treating with special disdain those of us who go over to Christ out of fear of a coming judgment, as they think, honouring God in freeing Him from the cares of keeping watch, and the trouble of taking note—not even regarding Him as capable of anger. For if God, they say, gets angry, then He is susceptible of corruption and passion; but that of which passion and corruption can be affirmed may also perish, which God cannot do.
But these very persons elsewhere, confessing that the soul is divine, and bestowed on us by God, stumble against a testimony of the soul itself, which affords an answer to these views. For if either divine or God-given, it doubtless knows its giver; and if it knows Him, it undoubtedly fears Him too, and especially as having been by Him endowed so amply. Has it no fear of Him whose favour it is so desirous to possess, and whose anger it is so anxious to avoid? Whence, then, the soul's natural fear of God, if God cannot be angry?
How is there any dread of Him whom nothing offends? What is feared but anger? Whence comes anger, but from observing what is done? What leads to watchful oversight, but judgment in prospect? Whence is judgment, but from power? To whom does supreme authority and power belong, but to God alone? So you are always ready, O soul, from your own knowledge, nobody casting scorn upon you, and no one preventing, to exclaim, “God sees all,” and “I commend you to God,” and “May God repay,” and “God shall judge between us.”
How happens this, since you are not Christian? How is it that, even with the garland of Ceres on the brow, wrapped in the purple cloak of Saturn, wearing the white robe of the goddess Isis, you invoke God as judge? Standing under the statue of Æsculapius, adorning the brazen image of Juno, arraying the helmet of Minerva with dusky figures, you never think of appealing to any of these deities. In your own forum you appeal to a God who is elsewhere; you permit honour to be rendered in your temples to a foreign god. Oh, striking testimony to truth, which in the very midst of demons obtains a witness for us Christians!
Source: The Soul's Testimony (New Advent)