Socratic morality with calm good sense, purges the old mythology, and preaches a purer monotheism than any of his contemporaries.
The last of the Neo-Platonists of whom we have any record was Boethius, who lectured at Athens; and shortly after his time the Emperor Justinian gave the death-blow to Greek philosophy by interdicting all instruction in the Platonic school.
It has been said that "Mysticism finds in Plato all its texts," and certainly most of Christian Mysticism may be traced back to the Neo-Platonists. From their time to our own we find this tendency towards a theologia mystica appearing in one form or another,—whether it be in the secret traditions of the Jewish Cabala—in the preaching of Eckhart in the fourteenth century—in the revival of Neo-Platonism at Florence in the days of Cosmo de Medici—in the science of sympathies taught by Agrippa and Paracelsus—in Jacob Behmen's celestial visions—or in Saint Teresa's "four degrees" of prayer necessary to reach a perfect "quietism."
Plato was regarded by the early Fathers of the Church in the light of another apostle to the Gentiles. Justin Martyr, Jerome, and Lactantius, all speak of him as the wisest and greatest of philosophers. Augustine calls him his converter, and thanks God that he became acquainted with Plato first and with the Gospel afterwards: and Eusebius declared that "he alone of all the Greeks had attained the Porch of Truth." It is easy to understand the grounds of this feeling. Passages from his Dialogues might be multiplied to prove the
