Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

304 THI-; FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMin which cause linked to cause generates from itselfthe real. That is everlasting truth flowing out ofthe abyss of eternity. According to this nothing hastaken place which would not have taken place; andin like manner nothing will take place of which naturedoes not contain within her the exactly efficientcauses. By which we may understand that fate isnot a superstitious but a physical expression, theeternal cause of things, why all that is past has takeneffect, all \\hich is instant is taking effect, all whichfollows shall take effect/' 2No words could more exactly express the processionall things from the Absolute Unity as conceivedby Plotinus. And as herein he exactly followed hisStoic predecessors, so as he anticipated his modernsuccessors; for this is the very kernel of Pantheism.This procession was the deity of "Plotinus, and isthe only deity which his modern successors admit." God, through the activity of thought determiningHis originally undetermined being, produces things.The meaning of which is, that He generates thingsaccording to their proper and real being out of Hiown essence, and that accordingly this, His essence, isin things under manifold forms; a metamorphosis ofthe Absolute which Hegel could not characterise moresharply than by naming God the eternal procession »3And in this respect Plotinus and Hegel are exactlyone.We have, then, now before us the Neoplatonicconception of God and of His relation to the world,in whiclTit is clear that He has neither unity nor per-1 " Ea est ex omni aeternitate fluens veritas sempiterna."2 Alexander, De Fato, p. 70, and Cicero, De Divinatwue. i. 55.Referred to by Zeller, iv. 149.8 Kleutgen. Phihsoj hie der Vorzdt, i. 48.