TO THE READER.

SINCE in almost every branch of the sciences many things are accustomed to be disputed on both sides, especially in the contemplation of divine matters, great variety and dissension of minds have always been contested by learned men. Theodorus of Asine, a philosopher not obscure among the Platonists, held that the human soul is homoousion of the same substance with God himself; Dicaearchus of Messana, a follower of Aristotle, thought this same soul was nothing, and considered that name to be entirely empty. The ancient physicists clothed God with a body; but the Pythagoreans placed Him above the body, above the mind, above essence, and beyond all that to which our intelligence, however purified, could ever reach.

Such discrepancy of opinions among men seeking the truth could not have originated from elsewhere than the weakness of the human mind and the excessive excellence of divine things. But since the immovable and fixed nature of supreme things cannot descend to our epinoia conception or thought unless through some voluntary and kindly synkatabasis condescension; yet men can, and as is too evident, are accustomed daily to be alienated from the knowledge of God; while they obstruct with great industry the eye of the mind, which is not very strong by its own nature: it cannot be but that in every age many deliriums of the ancient philosophers are reborn, and many things also hitherto unknown monsters break forth. For error is both manifold and fertile.

Indeed, this age of ours has seen almost all the opinions of all the ancients, whether absurd in natural philosophy or monstrous in theology, brought back from the shadows with great pomp. The entire doctrine of the physicists has long since lain abandoned and forsaken. No Strato, no Chrysippus, no Epicurus has arisen who, for so many centuries, wished to take up the empty possession of that illustrious family. Behold, now at last, not so many years ago, there have arisen confident men, desiring glory, philosophical Thrasos a braggart soldier character from comedy, who are eager to restore that ancient and dead fable. They build new worlds; they evoke souls from bodies, like magicians from tombs,