CHAPTER IX

OF THE PHILOSOPHERS, WHO WERE LED INTO ERRORS OF JUDGMENT, AND SOME OF THEM INTO DANGER, BY THEIR DESIRE OF UNIVERSAL KNOWLEDGE—ALSO OF THE DOCTRINES OF PLATO

WE ought, therefore, to aim at objects which are within our power, and exceed not the capacities of our nature. For the persuasive influence of argument has a tendency to draw most of us away from the simplicity of truth, which has happened to many philosophers, who have employed them selves in reasoning, and searching into the secrets of nature, and who, as often as the magnitude of the subject surpasses their powers of investigation, adopt various devices for obscuring the truth. Hence their diversities of judgment, and contentious opposition to each others’ doctrines, and this notwithstanding their pretensions to wisdom. Hence, too, popular commotions have arisen, and severe sentences, passed by those in power, apprehensive of the overthrow of hereditary institutions, have proved destructive to many of the disputants themselves. Socrates, for example, elated by his skill in argumentation, indulging his power of overcoming the stronger by the weaker reason, and playing continually with the subtleties of controversy, fell a victim to the jealousy of his own countrymen and fellow-citizens. Pythagoras, too, who laid special claim to the virtues of silence and self-control, was convicted of falsehood. For he declared to the Italians that the doctrines which he had received during his travels in Egypt, and which had long before been divulged by the priests of that nation, were a personal revelation to himself from God. Lastly, Plato himself, the gentlest and most refined of all, who first essayed to draw men’s thoughts from sensible to intellectual and eternal objects, and taught them to aspire to sublimer speculations, in the first place declared (and indeed with truth), that God is exalted above every essence. To Him he added a second, distinguishing them numerically as two, though both possessing one perfection, and the being of the second Deity proceeding from the first. For He is the author and controller of the universe, and therefore supreme: while the second, as the obedient agent of His commands, refers the origin of all creation to Him as the cause. In accordance, therefore, with the soundest reason, we may say that there is one Being whose care and providence are over all things, even God the Word, who has ordered all things; and the Word Himself, who is God, is also the Son of God. For by what name can we designate Him except by this title of the Son, without falling into the most grievous error? Thus far, then, Plato’s sentiments were sound; but in what follows he appears to have wandered from the truth, in that he introduces a plurality of gods, to each of whom he assigns specific forms. And this has given occasion to still greater error among the unthinking portion of mankind, who pay no regard to the providence of the Supreme God, but worship images of their own devising, made in the likeness of men or other animals. Hence it appears that the transcendent intellect and admirable learning of this philosopher, tinged as they were with such errors as these, were by no means free from impurity and defilement. And yet he seems to me to retract, and correct his own words, when he plainly declares that a rational soul is the breath of God, and divides all things into two classes, intellectual, and sensible: the one simple, the other consisting of bodily structure; the one comprehended by the intellect alone, the other estimated by the judgment and the senses. The former class, therefore, which partakes of the divine spirit, and is uncompounded and immaterial, is eternal, and inherits everlasting life; in which the latter, being entirely resolved into the elements of which it is composed, has no share. He further teaches the admirable doctrine, that those who have passed a life of virtue, that is, the spirits of good and holy men, are enshrined, after their separation from the body, in the fairest mansions of heaven. A doctrine not merely to be admired, but profitable too. For who can believe in such a statement, and aspire to such a happy lot, without desiring to practise righteousness and virtue, and to turn aside from vice? Consistently with this doctrine he represents the spirits of the wicked as tossed on the streams of Acheron and Pyriphlegethon, and borne like the fragments of shattered vessels on their waves.