Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH 3 I Iorder, should bear sway, and Pythagoras is praisedby lamblichus as the discoverer of all political education.In this work the Neopythagorean conception offriendship appears as the exact counterpart of theChristian charity. The one is based upon the naturalcognation of the soul with the deity, as the other isfounded on supernatural union with Christ by HisSpirit. An instance where both the language issimilar and the thought is parallel may be seen in^the words of lamblichus. " All that is commandedto be done or left undone aims at intercourse with thedeity ; and this is the principle.Moreover the wholelife is ordered so as to be an imitation of God: thisis the function of philosophy." Here philosophy correspondsto religion, and friendship to charity.As the Neopythagorean good was the carrying outorder, that is, the Kosmos, through the whole bodythe universe including man, so to its thought thefirst germ of sin lay in the connection of the soul withthe material body. By this connection alone man wasin his birth impure, besides the guilt of a previous lifewhich lay upon him.Thus, in this system, the conception of good wasthe acting of the soul according to its divine nature;the conception of evil was physical, as resulting fromthe imprisonment of mind in matter. The conceptionof the revolt of the soul itself from God was entirelywanting. A disorder was indeed recognised, and itwas sometimes called " sin," or "a fall of the soul," or" guilt," but the root of it was placed in the union ofthe soul, with a body, not in the destruction of theunion of the soul with God. The notion of moral perversityin the soul itself, as the intellectual principle of