en see God, the source of life, the principle of
being, the first cause of all good, the root of the soul. In that moment
it enjoys the highest and indescribable blessedness; it is itself, as it
were, swallowed up by the deity and bathed in the light of eternity.

Plotinus, as Porphyry relates, attained to this ecstatic union with God
four times during the six years he was with him. To Plotinus this
religious philosophy was sufficient; he did not require the popular
religion and worship. But yet he sought their support. The Deity is
indeed in the last resort only the Original Essence, but it manifests
itself in a fulness of emanations and phenomena. The [Greek: Nous] is,
as it were, the second God; the [Greek: logoi], which are included in
it, are gods; the stars are gods, etc. A strict monotheism appeared to
Plotinus a poor thing. The myths of the popular religion were
interpreted by him in a particular sense, and he could justify even
magic, soothsaying and prayer. He brought forward reasons for the
worship of images, which the Christian worshippers of images
subsequently adopted. Yet, in comparison with the later Neoplatonists,
he was free from gross superstition and wild fanaticism. He cannot, in
the remotest sense, be reckoned among the "deceivers who were themselves
deceived," and the restoration of the ancient worships of the Gods was
not his chief aim.

Among his disciples the most important were Amelius and Porphyry.
Amelius changed the doctrine of Plotinus in some points, and even made
use of the prologue of the Gospel of John. Porphyry has the merit of
having systematized and spread the teaching of his master, Plotinus. He
was born at Tyre, in the year 233; whether he was for some time a
Christian is uncertain; from 263-268 he was a pupil of Plotinus at Rome;
before that he wrote the work [Greek: peri tes ek logion philosophias],
which shews that he wished to base philosophy on revelation; he lived a
few years in Sicily (about 270) where he wrote his "fifteen books
against the Christians"; he then returned to Rome where he laboured as a
teacher, edited the works of Plotinus, wrote himself a series of
treatises, married, in his old age, the Roman Lady Marcella, and died
about the year 303. Porphyry was not an original, productive thinker,
but a diligent and thorough investigator, characterized by great
learning, by the gift of an acute faculty for philological and
historical criticism, and by an earnest desir