solved every question by an article of faith, and condemned
the infidel or sceptic to eternal flames. In many a volume of laborious
controversy, they exposed the weakness of the understanding and
the corruption of the heart, insulted human nature in the sages of
antiquity, and proscribed the spirit of philosophical inquiry, so
repugnant to the doctrine, or at least to the temper, of an humble
believer. The surviving sects of the Platonists, whom Plato would have
blushed to acknowledge, extravagantly mingled a sublime theory with the
practice of superstition and magic; and as they remained alone in the
midst of a Christian world, they indulged a secret rancor against the
government of the church and state, whose severity was still suspended
over their heads. About a century after the reign of Julian, Proclus was
permitted to teach in the philosophic chair of the academy; and such
was his industry, that he frequently, in the same day, pronounced five
lessons, and composed seven hundred lines. His sagacious mind explored
the deepest questions of morals and metaphysics, and he ventured to urge
eighteen arguments against the Christian doctrine of the creation of
the world. But in the intervals of study, he _personally_ conversed
with Pan, AEsculapius, and Minerva, in whose mysteries he was secretly
initiated, and whose prostrate statues he adored; in the devout
persuasion that the philosopher, who is a citizen of the universe,
should be the priest of its various deities. An eclipse of the sun
announced his approaching end; and his life, with that of his scholar
Isidore, compiled by two of their most learned disciples, exhibits a
deplorable picture of the second childhood of human reason. Yet the
golden chain, as it was fondly styled, of the Platonic succession,
continued forty-four years from the death of Proclus to the edict of
Justinian, which imposed a perpetual silence on the schools of Athens,
and excited the grief and indignation of the few remaining votaries
of Grecian science and superstition. Seven friends and philosophers,
Diogenes and Hermias, Eulalius and Priscian, Damascius, Isidore, and
Simplicius, who dissented from the religion of their sovereign, embraced
the resolution of seeking in a foreign land the freedom which was denied
in their native country. They had heard, and they credulously believed,
that the republic of Plato was realized in the despotic government
of Persia, and that a patriot king reigned ever