TO THE READER.

...they elicit; these men place their own body around the supreme God (lest He perhaps consider Himself blessed).

If I read the writings of these men, I immediately recognize them as sworn enemies of superstition; as the phantom progresses, I detect them as the most certain enemies of all Religion. I see many things acutely stated among them; many things subtly devised, many things dangerously, and many things lethally. For these reasons, however, no one—except the common crowd?—will admire them. For how small a part of their books are they themselves! The Greeks once accused Verres of extortion; if the Greeks were to reclaim their old cloak again, those men would be found, after the contest of the lawsuit, both learned and wealthy Philosophers, just as that Sicilian plunderer was found to be a good man, a modest quaestor, and a diligent father of a family.

Who, finally, I ask, is the fruit of these writers? I do not know if ever, since the birth of man, a more abundant harvest of Atheism has existed. You would say that Thoas returned from Orcus a reference to the underworld, implying the return of an impious or savage people with an impious race. The interval between the prisons and the tombs of Kings has always been small; the divine Majesty also began to be believed to be a body, and it became cheap. Naturally, just as it is impossible to honor that which we do not think exists, so the honor of that thing cannot be lasting which you do not consider to be the best of all things.

However, just as the ancient Physicists, partly by the silent consensus of the human race and partly by the disputations of more powerful sects, were overwhelmed and vanished from the memory of men; so anyone might easily predict that the fame of the modern Philosophers (who think little honestly about God along with these men) will be brief and will scarcely survive them; for the light of truth begins to overcome the opposing clouds by its own strength; and learned men have happily moved their own sacred rites against the rampant impiety among many nations.

I, however, in order to add some moment to the heavier scale, have issued this little book of Iamblichus, in which a man who is by no means a Christian—indeed, an enemy of our faith (lest anyone be able to invidiously accuse me of partisanship)—writes about God, Angels, and the Soul in such a way that he ought deservedly to be a teacher of thinking more sanely and purely about divine matters to some who wish to be called Christians.

The Greek exemplar, which I am now publishing for the first time, I received from that most erudite man, Isaac Vossius. When I found that it was not written sufficiently accurately, I obtained from the most learned Carcavius that it could be corrected and amended from written codices...