Page:The Pamphleteer (Volume 8).djvu/42

38 sentiments, when he beautifully observes, according to Clemens in the same book, "that whatever we see when awake, is death; and when asleep, a dream."

But that the mysteries occultly signified this sublime truth, that the soul by being merged in matter resides among the dead both here and hereafter, though it follows by a necessary consequence from the preceding observations, yet it is indisputably confirmed, by the testimony of the great and truly divine Plotinus, in Ennead 1. lib. 8. p. 80. "When the soul," says he, "has descended into generation she participates of evil, and profoundly rushes into the region of dissimilitude, to be entirely merged in which, is nothing more than to fall into dark mire." And again, soon after; "The soul therefore dies through vice, as much as it is possible for the soul to die: and the death of the soul is, while merged, or baptized, as it were, in the present body, to descend into matter, and be filled with its impurity, and after departing from this body, to lye absorbed in its filth till it returns to a superior condition, and elevates its eye from the overwhelming mire. For to be plunged in matter, is to descend into Hades, and there fall asleep." -