-improvement by meditation, consideration,
examination, prayer, and the like. These are things antecedent and
prerequisite." John Smith, in a fine passage too long to quote in
full, says: "Reason in man being _lumen de lumine_, a light flowing
from the Fountain and Father of lights ... was to enable man to work
out of himself all those notions of God which are the true groundwork
of love and obedience to God, and conformity to Him.... But since
man's fall from God, the inward virtue and vigour of reason is much
abated, the soul having suffered a [Greek: pterorryesis], as Plato
speaks, a _defluvium pennarum_.... And therefore, besides the truth of
natural inscription, God hath provided the truth of Divine
revelation.... But besides this outward revelation, there is also an
inward impression of it ... which is in a more special manner
attributed to God.... God only can so shine upon our glassy
understandings, as to beget in them a picture of Himself, and turn the
soul like wax or clay to the seal of His own light and love. He that
made our souls in His own image and likeness can easily find a way
into them. The Word that God speaks, having found a way into the soul,
imprints itself there as with the point of a diamond.... It is God
alone that acquaints the soul with the truths of revelation, and also
strengthens and raises the soul to better apprehensions even of
natural truth, God being that in the intellectual world which the sun
is in the sensible, as some of the ancient Fathers love to speak, and
the ancient philosophers too, who meant God by their _Intellectus
Agens_[361] whose proper work they supposed to be not so much to
enlighten the object as the faculty."

The Platonists thus lay great stress on the inner light, and identify
it with the purified reason. The best exposition of their teaching on
this head is in Smith's beautiful sermon on "The True Way or Method of
attaining to Divine Knowledge." "Divinity," he says, "is a Divine life
rather than a Divine science, to be understood rather by a spiritual
sensation than by any verbal description. A good life is the
_prolepsis_ of Divine science--the fear of the Lord is the beginning
of wisdom. Divinity is a true efflux from the eternal light, which,
like the sunbeams, does not only enlighten, but also heat and enliven;
and therefore our Saviour hath in His beatitudes connext purity of
heart to the beatific vision." "Systems and models furnish but a poor
wan light,"