Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

LECTUREXVIIITHE STANDING-GROUND OF PHILOSOPHY FROM THEACCESSION OF NERVA TO THAT OF SEVERUSTHE Greek philosophy, whether as seen in the pre-Socratic schools, in the Sophists, or in the Platonic,the Peripatetic, the Epicurean and the Stoic sects,or again in the Eclectics, who made a mixture ofthem all, having acted without a break from thetime of Thales to the preaching of the Gospel inthe reign of Nero as a dissolving agent of polytheism,takes up in the later years of Domitian, and from thetime of Nerva onwards, another position. It putsunder its protection the assaulted fabric of paganbelief and worship. It strives to introduce reasonand order into the Olympian heaven of deities; torestore the shaken supremacy of Jupiter, and to putit on a larger and firmer basis. It aims to defendscientifically that whole system of worship, the objectsof which it had so often exposed to ridicule, withbitter censure of its scandals and exposure of itsendless incongruities. We have seen that it had nottaken up this new position even in the last writingsof Seneca, which reach to the year 64. Indeed,the Stoicism of Seneca, however eclectic and mixed,however tinged with peculiarities not before seen, certainlydid not point to a restoration of the ancientreligion, but to a substitution for it of the god withinus, that is, human reason. It set up a system of160