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monstrous to be more clearly indicated. If, by chance an author has left writings marked by a lofty conception of morality, and breathing the purest and most disinterested love of virtue, this very fact has been sufficient to justify a denial of their Pagan origin, and the assertion that the true source of their inspiration must have been Judæa. Hence the curious struggles of many intelligent men to establish a personal connexion between Paul and Seneca, and to demonstrate that the Ethics of Plutarch are coloured by Christian modes of thought.[1] Other authors of the period who*
- ↑ See "St. Paul and Seneca" (Dissertation ii. in Lightfoot on "Philippians") for a full account of the question from the historical and critical standpoints. The learned and impartial Bishop has no difficulty in proving that the resemblances between Stoicism and Christianity were due to St. Paul's acquaintance with Stoic teaching, and not to Seneca's knowledge of the Christian faith. Theodoret, bishop of Cyrus, in Syria (consecrated A.D. 420), appears to have been the first to assert the operation of Christian influences on Plutarch:—"Plotinus, Plutarch, and Numenius, and the rest of heir tribe, who lived after the Manifestation of our Saviour to the Gentiles, inserted into their own writings many points of Christian Theology." (Theodoretus, Græcarum affectionum curatio—Oratio ii., De Principio.) In another place he makes a still more definite assertion: "Plutarch and Plotinus undoubtedly heard the Divine Gospel." (Oratio x., De Oraculis.) Rualdus, in the ninth chapter of his Vita Plutarchi, given towards the end of the first volume of the Paris edition of 1624, dare not be so emphatic as Theodoret:—"There are, in the writings of Plutarch, numerous thoughts, drawn from I cannot say what hidden source, which, from their truth and importance, could be taken for the utterances of a Christian oracle. I do not hesitate, therefore, to say of him, as Tertullian said of Seneca, that he is 'often our own man." And he even goes so far as to admit that, though Plutarch never attacked the Christian faith, and might have read the New Testament as well as the Old, it is quite impossible to claim him as a believer.—Brucker, in a slight account of Plutarch in his Historia Critica Philosophiæ, takes a more critical view.—"The fact that
