Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

120 TUB FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMa God, to whose presence conscience would bear witnessin the secret heart of every man, both wouldunite to enjoin that prayer be made and sacrificeoffered to such an one alone: that from him alonesitting in the midst of the earth as a fatherly councillorin his oracles instruction and advice should besought; from him alone purification and healing ofthe will be asked for in mysteries. For he, in Plato'swords, " according to the ancient tradition holdingthe beginning, the end, and the middle of all thingsby his own nature while lie encompasses them, directsthem aright, and upon him follows justice, the avengerof those who desert the divine law." lHere then is ample proof that reason and conscience,not to speak of that ancient tradition towhich riato appeals, were strong enough both tosee the truth as to the one God, and condemn theerror which had divided His worship and corruptedit in the division. But now what we have to noteis that such had not been the prevailing course ofphilosophy up to the first preaching of the Christianfaith. It had been hostile indeed in the main to theestablished religion, and had discredited its rites, towhich yet every philosopher in his time had accommodatedhimself, for one and all, like their masterSocrates, sacrifice a cock to Esculapius. These nobleconclusions of Xenophanes, Anaxagoras, and Platohad not purified that religion, and brought out thebasis on which it rested, a belief in the divineprovidence, the witness of prayer, in man's need ofexpiation, the witness of sacrifice, in the ignorance ofhis mind looking for continual instruction from above,in the perversion of his will, demanding union with1 Plato, Laws, iv. 354.