Page:The religion of Plutarch, a pagan creed of apostolic times; an essay (IA religionofplutar00oakeiala).pdf/125

 places and forms. In the tract "De Stoicorum Repugnantiis," though chiefly dealing polemically with the inconsistencies and self-contradictions of Chrysippus and other early Stoics, he clearly exhibits his own views in several passages. In one place he asserts that even those who deny the benevolence of God, as the Jews and the Syrians, do not imagine him as other than eternally and immutably existent, and quotes with approval a sentence from Antipater of Tarsus, to the effect that God is universally regarded as uncreate and eternal. A little later in the development of the argument he adopts the Stoic position—which Chrysippus is represented as contradicting—that the idea of God includes the ideas of happiness, blessedness, self-sufficiency, which qualities are elsewhere shown to exist absolutely and independently of all conceivable causes of opposition. "They are wrong who assert that the Divine Nature is eternal because it avoids and repels anything that might tend to its destruction. Immutability and Eternity must necessarily exist in the very nature of the Blessed One, requiring no exertion on his part to preserve and defend them."

The intermingling of the doctrines of various philosophic sects is interestingly conspicuous throughout these discussions on the nature of God; and not less than elsewhere in the noble observations of the Platonist Ammonius, which have been quoted from the "De E apud Delphos." It is equally interesting to