Erasmus, and Other Essays

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: suppose that of set purpose he forbore to inquire into a religion that was known to be so peculiar as that of the Hebrews. We do not suppose that he had a rabbi to instruct him in all the learning of the exclusive people; but it would be hard to believe that the most philosophic spirit of ancient or modern...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: suppose that of set purpose he forbore to inquire into a religion that was known to be so peculiar as that of the Hebrews. We do not suppose that he had a rabbi to instruct him in all the learning of the exclusive people; but it would be hard to believe that the most philosophic spirit of ancient or modern times felt 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...