by Xenophon, the divine power and providence for which he contends are represented as residing in and exercised by the gods; though there are expressions which imply that he had some presentiment of the one God. To these expressions there is, I think, nothing corresponding in the language of Xenophon himself throughout his works. Plato; on the other hand, with little reasoning on the subject, and without any definite and connected explanation of his meaning, has imaginations concerning the Deity, which excite our surprise and admiration, when we compare them with the common notions of other Grecian philosophers before Christianity. In his writings, in those of Cicero, and in the half-poetical conceptions of a few other men of a high order of intellect; we here and there discover, amid the general darkness of those times, glorious, but very partial and obscure glimpses of God.

But what is particularly to be remarked, as analogous to the views of the Gnostics, is, that the partial recognition of the Divinity in the mind of a heathen philosopher did not lead to such conceptions of his universal and immediate agency, as Christianity has taught us to entertain. It was connected with the supposition, that the world was under the government of

inferior gods. Plato was one of the most enlightened of heathen theists, the great theological philosopher of antiquity. But the Gnostic doctrine respecting the formation and government of the world by inferior agents may be traced back to his speculations. We find its germ in the cosmogony which he has left us in his "Timæus."

In this work, Plato represents the Supreme Ruler of All as giving birth to gods inferior to himself, celestial, animating the heavenly bodies and informing them with intelligence. Together with these, he speaks of the earth as the first and most ancient of the gods comprehended within the universe; and afterwards mentions the gods of the popular mythology, without clearly explaining his own opinion concerning them, but teaching that they are to be received as divine. He then describes the Supreme Being as thus addressing the newly-formed gods. "Now learn what I shall teach you. Three kinds of mortal animals are yet unproduced.* Without the existence of these, the universe will be incomplete; for it will not contain every kind of living being; as it should

The three kinds, as enumerated before by Plato (Timæus, pp. 39, 40), are those which fly, those which dwell in the water, and those which walk the earth.

do in order to be perfect. But if these beings were formed and endued with life by me, they would equal the gods. To the end, therefore, that mortal beings may exist, and that the universe may be a complete whole, do you, according to your nature, take upon yourselves the creation of animals, imitating my power exercised in your production. And as to that part in those animals [the intellectual part], which it is fit should be of like name with the immortals, being called divine, and which will rule those among them who are willing to be obedient to justice and to you, I will furnish this seed and make a beginning. For the rest, do you weave together the mortal with the immortal part, and fashion and give birth to animals, providing them with food for their increase, and receiving them again when they perish."

Plato, then, conformably to his doctrine of preëxistence, represents the Deity as forming at once all human souls, and committing them to the care of the inferior gods. They were distributed in equal portions to the stars, or, as he afterward says, some to the earth, some to the moon, and some to the other measurers of time, to be embodied in proper season. "He gave," says Plato, "to the newly-created gods. the office of forming mortal bodies, and what

was further necessary to be conjoined with the human soul, of furnishing whatever is connected with these inferior parts of man, and of ruling and directing the mortal animal in the best manner, except so far as he may cause evil to himself."*

Plato, it appears, believed that the Supreme Being exercised no immediate government over the concerns of men. The Gnostics believed the same. Plato taught that man, as he exists on earth, and the lower animals, with all the provision made for their wants, were the work of inferior powers. With this the doctrine of the Gnostics coincided.

He supposed the immortal part of man to have been furnished by the Supreme Being; and the theosophic Gnostics, in like manner, taught that the spiritual principle in man, which alone was by nature immortal, was derived from the Pleroma.

It is unnecessary here to explain the vague, undetermined, dazzling conceptions of the Supreme Being which floated in misty light before the mind of Plato. As regards our present purpose, the point to be attended to is the impassable distance to which he removes him from the beings of this earth, and the interposition

Timæus, pp. 39-42. Conf. p. 69.

of inferior gods, as the immediate makers and governors of men, and the proper objects of their religious worship. He does not remark, that to Him no temples were raised, no prayers addressed, no devotion of the heart offered up. He was that Unknown God, whom St. Paul, three centuries after the death of the philosopher, first announced to the Athenians, as the only God, who alone "made the world and all that it contains, and gave to all life and breath and all things."

In the tenth book of his "Laws," Plato defends earnestly the doctrine of a divine providence, nor has he written any thing of a more religious character. Here, as elsewhere in his writings, one benevolent being, the author of all good, sometimes breaks through the cloud; * but the whole tenor of the discourse is to defend the existence, the providence, and the worship of the gods. In another part of the same work, after saying, that the only way to obtain the friendship of God (to translate verbally), or (to express or (to express what I suppose the true meaning) the friendship of Divinity, of what is Divine, is to become like God, he says, that hence "follows a principle, the best and

* I refer particularly to what is said p. 896, seqq. and pp. 903, 904.