Erasmus And Other Essays

t no interest in the hints which any Hebrew stranger might have given. That these hints were many, or to ordinary minds very significant, we can scarcely believe; for the example of Herodotus warns us not to attach too much importance to information received through the medium of Egyptian priests. But what might be insignificant to most would mean a great deal to Plato, and a hint or two received from an Egyptian, or rather from a sojourning Jew, may have, and probably did preserve Plato from some errors, and sow in his fertile mind the seeds of truth.1 But of any actual transference of doctrines from the sacred writings of the Jews to the system of Plato we find no trace. Therewas a time when the admirers of Plato would almost have undertaken to draw up out of his writings a confession which a Westminster divine might have signed. There was a time when such a sentence as the following could be penned by one of the most learned men of his day, and received with applause by others :?" This, I say, our Christian Platonist supposes to be much more wonderful, that this so great and abstruse a mystery, of three eternal hypostases in the Deity, should thus by Pagan philosophers, so long before Christianity, have been asserted as the principal and original of the whole world; it being more, indeed, than was acknowledged by the Nicene fathers themselves."l As Mosheim remarks on this passage, " Many, I fear, will consider this as a great injustice done to the Nicene fathers." Br... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.