Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

290 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMa special manner its seat in it. The statue is, as itwere, a mirror reflecting a portion of the divine radiance,which the worshipper thus catches up.Now in all this system of religious philosophy,which was committed to writing CD at Rome betweenthe years 254-270, and which has been arranged forus by Porphyrius, the chief disciple of Plotinus, thereis no mention of the Christian religion. o We haveseen that there was none in the life of Apollonius byPhilostratus. Plotinus presents his system as theresult of ancient Greek thought: the harmony ofPythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle. But the master oflotinus, that Ainrnonius Sakkas on whom he hadsedulously and reverently attended for eleven years,and from whose oral teaching Porphyrius, who worshipshis own master, declares that he drew his inspiration,was a Christian. Moreover, the character of the mindof Plotinus, as well as the time and circumstances ofhis life, leave scarcely a possibility that he was notinformed in Christian doctrine. Nor must we fail toremember that the actual arranger of his writings, hischief disciple Porphyrius, was a man very well acquaintedwith Christianity, who wrote an elaborateattack upon it, an attack which the chief defenders ofthe Church thought worthy of refutation. Into thebearing of the Plotinic philosophy upon Christiandoctrine we shall enter presently. Here it is sufficientto say that it cannot with any show of probability bedoubted that the author of it was acquainted with theChristian belief, as he was beyond question a witnessof a time of unprvralleled suffering undergone by theChurch while he was resident at Rome. The manwho philosophised in the very city and at the verytime when the martyrdom of St. Lawrence thrilled