Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

29 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMtion was taken from them, they maintained exactlythe same principles respecting the supreme God, Hisrelation to the world, and respecting man and hisplace in the world, as Plotinus. They maintainedlikewise the same intense abhorrence of the ChristianFaith. They united devotion to the heathen worshipand defence of its gods, its fables, and its practiceswith such an exoteric belief as that of Plotinus. Tomeet the Christian objection against plurality in thegodhead, they were monotheists in the sense of Plotinus; while on the part, of all those who maintainedthe deity of Jupiter, Juno, and Venus, and the rest,they defended the worship and all the manifold practiceswhich belonged to that worship with such aninterpretation as we have seen above.What has been said of Porphyrius, that he took upphilosophy mainly on its religious and practical side,is yet more applicable to lamblichus. If the formerhad found the help of religion and the assistance ofthe gods necessary to enable philosophy to dischargeits work, much stronger was this feeling in the latter,since he still more distrusted the strength of humannature, and was still more convinced of his own helplessness.How the gods produce what is finite wecannot tell; enough for us the conviction that all isdone by them. The first condition of a true knowledgeof God is the belief that nothing is impossibleto the gods. He who has this belief will betakehimself to a theology which allows him to assumeeverything that is taught about the gods. To aphilosopher who proceeded from these principles nopopular belief could appear absurd, no blending oftenets in a system of mixed philosophy and religion1 Zeller, v. 619.