breathing, and in a manner, moving unto a picture, wch
a more grosse Painter had but rudely delineated.
It was of old held for a truth, Platonicos pa••cis mu∣tatis
fieri posse Christianos: That with the change but
of a very point, the Platonicke Philosophers might
be brought to be Christians; from whence Plato was
called Divine.
Who so shall revolve the monuments of his
workes, shall find that, not without reason, hee hath
beene so styled: for all other sects of Philosophers,
have but like men in Cimmerian darkenesse, groping∣ly
stumbled, now and then, upon the nature of the
true God-head; and every nation in those dayes, had
their severall, and those strangely imaginarie Gods,
distinguished in so many rankes, imployed in so ma∣ny
businesses, appointed to so many different and
sometime base offices; that their number, in fine, be∣came
almost innumerable! In the meane time this
man, soaring above them al, hath more neerly jumped
with our beliefe touching the God-head. In so farre
that Amuleus that great Doctor in Porphyre his
Schooles having read Saint Iohn the Evangelist his
proeme, was strooke with silence and admiration, as
ravished with his words; but at length burst out in
these termes: by Iupiter (saith he) so thinketh a Bar∣barian,
meaning Plato; that in the beginning the word
was with God, that it is this great God by whom all
things were made and created.
Now that this is true, This much I find, in his Par∣menides,
concerning the nature of the God-head.
That there are three things to bee established concer∣ning
the maker of all: which three must be coeternal,
viz.