ed offices of the English Established Church in the
time of Queen Anne, or of George I.

Christian theology in the first age even was considerably indebted
to the Platonic doctrines as taught in the Alexandrian school; and
demonology in the third century received considerable accessions
from the speculations of Neo-Platonism, the reconciling medium
between Greek and Oriental philosophy. Philo-Judaeus (whose
reconciling theories, displayed in his attempt to prove the
derivation of Greek religious or philosophical ideas from those
of Moses, have been ingeniously imitated by a crowd of modern
followers) had been the first to undertake to adapt the Jewish
theology to Greek philosophy. Plotinus and Porphyrius, the
founders of the new school of Platonism, introduced a large number
of angels or demons to the acquaintance of their Christian
fellow-subjects in the third century.[38] It has been remarked that
'such was the mild spirit of antiquity that the nations were less
attentive to the difference than to the resemblance of their
religious worship. The Greek, the Roman, and the barbarian, as
they met before their respective altars, easily persuaded themselves
that, under various names and with various ceremonies, they adored
the same deities.'[39] Magianism and Judaism, however, were little
imbued with the spirit of toleration; and the purer the form of
religious worship, the fiercer, too often, seems to be the
persecution of differing creeds. Christianity, with something of
the spirit of Judaism from which it sprung, was forced to believe
that the older religions must have sprung from a diabolic origin.
The whole pagan world was inspired and dominated by wicked
spirits. 'The pagans _deified_, the Christians _diabolised_,
Nature.'[40] It is in this fact that the entirely opposite
spirit of antique and mediaeval thought, evident in the life,
literature, in the common ideas of ancient and mediaeval Europe,
is discoverable.

[38] 'The knowledge that is suited to our situation and
powers, the whole compass of moral, natural, and
mathematical science, was neglected by the new Platonists;
whilst they exhausted their strength in the verbal disputes
of metaphysics, they attempted to explore the secrets of the
invisible world, and studied to reconcile Aristotle with
Plato on subjects of which both these philosophers were as
ignorant as the rest of mankind. Consuming their reason in
those deep but unsubstantial