Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH 267were in closest intercourse with him looked up to himwith veneration. His disciple Porphyrius, in his Life,attributes to him a gift of working miracles and ofprophecy, such as that assigned to Apollonius byPhilostratus. The great ladies of Rome hung uponhis lips. His extant treatises were composed at Romefrom his fiftieth to his sixty-fifth year, A.D. 254-269.The next year he died of a sickness in Campania.Philostratus had given, in the form of a pretendedbiography, the principles of the Neopythagorean philosophyas they had been more or less prevalent fromthe time of Plutarch. The system of Plotinus proceedsfrom the same principles, but is drawn out withgreater philosophic accuracy, with a more defined purpose,with clearer knowledge P of the ultimate issues.If the character of Apollonius was fictitious, the realPlotinus appears to have been as devoted to his workof teaching as the philosopher imagined by Philostratus.His whole life, from the time that he gavehimself up to study in the school of Arnmonius to hisdeath in Campania, was noble and blameless upon theheathen model. He is described as searching fortruth through all the systems of philosophy; and afterhis attendance of eleven years upon Ammonius, heendeavours to visit the Persian and the Indian wisemen, exactly after the manner and with the motivewhich Pbilostratus attributes to Apollonius. It cannotbe pretended that a man so devoted to inquiry inreligious systems was ignorant of Christianity. Notonly was his master Ammonius originally a Christian,whether or not he afterwards became a heathen, asPorphyrius, the traducer of Christians, maintains, andEusebius, the Church historian, denies, but in thetwenty-five years which Plotinus spent at Rome, he