knows and judges of God and all things as they must be known and judged
of; and fulfils the commandments of God. This presupposes a revelation
of God through the Logos. A revelation of God, complete in itself and
mediated by the Logos, is found in the cosmos and in the constitution of
man, he being created in his Maker's image.[444] But experience has
shown that this revelation is insufficient to enable men to retain clear
knowledge. They yielded to the seduction of evil demons, who, by God's
sufferance, took possession of the world, and availed themselves of
man's sensuous side to draw him away from the contemplation of the
divine and lead him to the earthly.[445] The results of this temptation
appeared in the facts that humanity as a whole fell a prey to error, was
subjected to the bonds of the sensuous and of the demons, and therefore
became doomed to death, which is at once a punishment and the natural
consequence of want of knowledge of God.[446] Hence it required fresh
efforts of the Logos to free men from a state which is indeed in no
instance an unavoidable necessity, though a sad fact in the case of
almost all. For very few are now able to recognise the one true God from
the order of the universe and from the moral law implanted in
themselves; nor can they withstand the power of the demons ruling in the
world and use their freedom to imitate the virtues of God. Therefore the
Almighty in his goodness employed new means through the Logos to call
men back from the error of their ways, to overthrow the sovereignty of
the demons upon earth, and to correct the disturbed course of the world
before the end has yet come. From the earliest times the Logos (the
Spirit) has descended on such men as preserved their souls pure, and
bestowed on them, through inspiration, knowledge of the truth (with
reference to God, freedom, virtue, the demons, the origin of polytheism,
the judgment) to be imparted by them to others. These are his
"prophets." Such men are rare among the Greeks (and according to some
not found at all), but numerous among the barbarians, i.e., among the
Jewish people. Taught by God, they announced the truth about him, and
under the promptings of the Logos they also committed the revelations to
writings, which therefore, as being inspired, are an authentic record of
the whole truth.[447] To some of the most virtuous among them he himself
even appeared in human form and gave directions. He then is a Christian,
w