reathing, had been familiar to
the Eastern devotees, as they are now to the impostors of our own times;
the result is not celestial, but physiological. The pious Hindus were,
however, assured that, as water will not wet the lotus, so, though sin
may touch, it can never defile the soul after a full intuition of God.

[Sidenote: Porphyry--his writings destroyed;]

[Sidenote: resorts to magic and necromancy.]

The opinions of Plotinus were strengthened and diffused by his
celebrated pupil Porphyry, who was born at Tyre A.D. 233. After the
death of Plotinus he established a school in Rome, attaining great
celebrity in astronomy, music, geography, and other sciences. His
treatise against Christianity was answered by Eusebius, St. Jerome, and
others; the Emperor Theodosius the Great, however, silenced it more
effectually by causing all the copies to be burned. Porphyry asserts his
own unworthiness when compared with his master, saying that he had been
united to God but once in eighty-six years, whereas Plotinus had been so
united six times in sixty years. In him is to be seen all the mysticism,
and, it may be added, all the piety of Plotinus. He speaks of daemons
shapeless, and therefore invisible; requiring food, and not immortal;
some of which rule the air, and may be propitiated or restrained by
magic: he admits also the use of necromancy. It is scarcely possible to
determine how much this inclination of the Neo-Platonists to the
unlawful art is to be regarded as a concession to the popular sentiment
of the times, for elsewhere Porphyry does not hesitate to condemn
soothsaying and divination, and to dwell upon the folly of invoking the
gods in making bargains, marriages, and such-like trifles. He
strenuously enjoins a holy life in view of the fact that man has fallen
both from his ancient purity and knowledge. He recommends a worship in
silence and pure thought, the public worship being of very secondary
importance. He also insists on an abstinence from animal food.

[Sidenote: Iamblicus a wonder-worker.]

The cultivation of magic and the necromantic art was fully carried out
in Iamblicus, a Coelo-Syrian, who died in the reign of Constantine the
Great. It is scarcely necessary to relate the miracles and prodigies he
performed, though they received full credence in those superstitious
times; how, by the intensity of his prayers, he raised himself
unsupported nine feet above the ground; how he could make rays of a
blind