I. NATURE OF GOD
Platonism affected Christian theology as it appears in English poetry in a twofold way. It provided a body of intellectual principles which were identified with the persons of the Christian Trinity and it also trained the minds of the poets in conceiving God rather as the object of the mind’s speculative quest than as the dread judge of the sinful soul. Platonism in this form is no longer the body of ethical principles appearing in the Platonic dialogues; but is that metaphysical after-growth of Platonism that has its source in the philosophy of Plotinus. According to this form of speculative mysticism there were three ultimate principles, or hypostases,—The Good, Intellect (υοῦς), and Soul. Owing to the affinity of Platonism for Christian forms of thought, these three hypostases were conceived as the philosophic basis underlying the Christian teaching of the three Persons of the Trinity. Such an interpretation is seen plainly in the work of Henry More and William Drummond; and the speculative attitude of conceiving God and Christ in the light of the hypostases of Plotinus is also discernible in Spenser and Milton.
The boldest attempt to identify the three Plotinian principles with the Christian Trinity is made in Henry More’s “Psychozoia,” the first poem of his “Psychodia Platonica.” This poetical treatise reveals the aim of More’s spiritual life as it was formulated on the basis of Platonic philosophy blended with the teaching of the “Theologia Germanica.” The strain of self-abnegation which More learned in “that Golden little Book,”[[23]] as he names the German treatise, may be easily separated from the Platonism, being confined to the last two books of his poem; it may thus be dismissed. In the first book, however, the current of thought is almost purely Platonic. There, under the figure of the marriage rite, the first principle of Plotinus, the Good, is represented as joining his two children—Intellect and Soul—in holy union; and under the poetic device of a veil with several films or tissues, More describes Soul in minute detail.
In keeping with the teachings of Platonism More defines each person of the Trinity in the terms used by Plotinus. According to this philosopher the highest reality is The One or The Good which is infinite and above all comprehension, not because it is impossible to measure or count it (since it has no magnitude and no multitude), but simply because it is impossible to conceive its power. (“Enneads,” VI. ix. 6.) In the beatific vision, in which The Good is known in the Soul, it is invisible, hidden in its own rays of light. (“Enneads,” VI. vii. 35.) More thus speaks of God, naming him Hattove:
“Th’ Ancient of dayes, sire of Æternitie,
Sprung of himself, or rather nowise sprong.
Father of lights, and everlasting glee
Who puts to silence every daring tongue
And flies mans sight, shrouding himself among
His glorious rayes, good Hattove, from whom came
All good that Penia [i.e. want] spies in thickest throng
Of most desired things, all’s from that same.”
(I. 5.)
“But first of all
Was mighty Hattove, deeply covered o’re
With unseen light. No might Imaginall
May reach that vast profunditie.”
(I. 16.)
The Son is identified with the second hypostasis,—universal intellect. In this all realities are present not as created things in time or space, but embraced as essential forms with no spatial or temporal relation. This character of universal intellect is thus named αἰών, or eternity. (“Enneads,” III. vii. 4.) More thus writes of Christ—
“The youthfull Æon, whose fair face doth shine
While he his Fathers glory doth espy,
Which waters his fine flowring forms with light from high.
“Not that his forms increase, or that they die.
For Æοn Land, which men Idea call,
Is nought but life in full serenitie,
Vigour of life is root, stock, branch, and all;
Nought here increaseth, nought here hath its fall;
For Æons kingdomes alwaies perfect stand,
Birds, beasts, fields, springs, plants, men and minerall,
To perfectnesse nought added be there can.”
(I. 13. 14.)
Psyche, or Uranore, as she is named at times, is the third person of the Trinity. She is the soul of the universe, present in every “atom ball,” in the creatures of earth, sea, air, the divine stars in heaven. (“Enneads,” V. i. 2.) In her true essence she is invisible; but More pictures her as enveloped in a fourfold garment. The outer garment is called Physis, in which all natural objects appear as spots which grow each according to its idea. This robe is stirred with every impulse of life from the central power of God.
“The first of these fair films, we Physis name.
Nothing in nature did you ever spy
But there’s pourtraid:
· · · · ·
“And all besprinkeled with centrall spots,
Dark little spots, is this hid inward veil.
· · · · ·
“When they dispread themselves, then gins to swell
Dame Psyches outward vest, as th’ inward wind
Softly gives forth, full softly doth it well
Forth from the centrall spot;
· · · · ·
according to the imprest Art
(That Arts impression’s from Idea Land)
So drives it forth before it every part
According to true symmetry.”
(I. 41–44.)
The second and third folds of Psyche’s vest are very closely identified. They are called Arachnea and Haphe, by which the life of sensation is meant. Haphe, or touch, sits in the finely spun web of Arachnea, and is aware of every manifestation of life resulting from the soul’s contact with the outward world. In this life of sensation Psyche sees as in a mirror all the stirring life within the universe. (I. 48, 49, 50.)
The fourth fold of Psyche’s garment is called Semele, by which imagination is meant. This is the loosest of the four veils, having the fullest play in its movements. It is universal imagination, and from it arises the inspiration of the poet and the prophet. (I. 57.) The individual powers of imagination are conceived as daughters of the one great Semele.
“She is the mother of each Semele:
The daughters be divided one from one;
But she grasps all. How can she then but see
Each Semels shadows by this union?
She sees and swayes imagination
As she thinks good: and it that she think good
She lets it play by ’t self, yet looketh on,
While she keeps in that large strong-beating flood
That gars the Poet write, and rave as he were wood.”
(I. 59.)
These three persons—Ahad, another name given by More to God (I. 34), Æon, and Psyche—form, says More, “the famous Platonicall Triad; which though they that slight the Christian Trinity do take for a figment; yet I think it is no contemptible argument, that the Platonists, the best and divinest of Philosophers, and the Christians, the best of all that do professe religion, do both concur that there is a Trinity. In what they differ, I leave to be found out, according to the safe direction of that infallible Rule of Faith, the holy Word.”[[24]] To signify the union of these persons More represents Ahad joining Æon, his son, in marriage to Psyche, and by holding their hands in his, maintaining a perpetual unity.
“My first born Sonne, and thou my daughter dear,
Look on your aged Sire, the deep abysse,
In which and out of which you first appear;
I Ahad hight, and Ahad onenesse is:
Therefore be one; (his words do never misse)
They one became.
“They straight accord: then he put on the ring,
The ring of lasting gold on Uranure;
Then gan the youthful Lads aloud to sing,
Hymen! O Hymen! O the Virgin pure!
O holy Bride! long may this joy indure.
· · · · ·
(I. 34, 35.)
And all this time he held their hands in one;
Then they with chearfull look one thing desired,
That he nould break this happy union.
I happy union break? quoth he anon:
I Ahad? Father of Community?
Then they: That you nould let your hand be gone
Off from our hands. He grants with smiling glee.”
(I. 38.)
In this way More has expressed his conception of the Christian Trinity. Inasmuch as his purpose in the “Psychozoia” is to relate the experiences of the human soul from the time of its departure from God to its return thither, he has laid especial emphasis upon the third hypostasis of Plotinus,—Soul.
In William Drummond’s “An Hymn of the Fairest Fair” attention is centred upon the first person of the Trinity. Drummond is more of a poet and less of a philosopher than More; but the philosophic conceptions which are woven into his poetical description of the nature, attributes, and works of God are drawn from the same system of metaphysics. In Drummond’s “Hymn” there is a mingling of two conceptions of God. He is described, according to the Hebraic idea, as a mighty king, the creator of the universe, dwelling in heaven, and possessing such attributes of personality as justice, mercy, might. Running in and out of this description is a strain of Platonic speculation, in which the conception of God as an essence is very prominent. Thus by means of a poetic device picturing youth standing before God and pouring immortal nectar into His cup, Drummond expresses the Platonic idea of absolute oneness. And this idea is the attribute of God first set forth.
“If so we may well say (and what we say,
Here wrapt in flesh, led by dim reason’s ray,
To show by earthly beauties which we see,
That spiritual excellence that shines in thee,
Good Lord, forgive), not far from thy right side,
With curled locks Youth ever doth abide;
Rose-cheeked Youth, who, garlanded with flowers
Still blooming, ceaselessly unto thee pours
Immortal nectar in a cup of gold,
That by no darts of ages thou grow old,
And, as ends and beginnings thee not claim,
Successionless that thou be still the same.”
(ll. 31–42.)
After a description of God’s might, Drummond passes on to consider His truth, conceived as the Platonists conceived intellect, embracing all reality as essential form. This attribute is pictured as a mirror in which God beholds all things.
“With locks in waves of gold that ebb and flow
On ivory neck, in robes more white than snow,
Truth steadfastly before thee holds a glass,
Indent with gems, where shineth all that was,
That is, or shall be. Here, ere aught was wrought,
Thou knew all that thy pow’r with time forth brought,
And more, things numberless which thou couldst make,
That actually shall never being take:
Here, thou behold’st thyself, and, strange, dost prove
At once the beauty, lover, and the love.”
(ll. 56–66.)
Platonic metaphysics are also present in Drummond’s account of the essential unity persisting throughout the triplicity of Persons. Plotinus had held that The One caused the mind or intellect, and that in turn caused universal soul. The order, however, is not one of time sequence, but merely a logical order of causation. In this series of causation there is no idea of a production as an act going out of itself and forming another; each producing cause remains in its own centre; throughout the series runs one cause or manifestation of life. His favorite figures by which he explains this idea are, first, that of an overflowing spring which gives rise to a second and this to a third; and, second, that of a sun with a central source of light with its spreading rays. (“Enneads,” V. ii. 1, 2.) Thus intellect is an irradiation of The One and soul is an irradiation of intellect. (“Enneads,” V. i. 6.) Drummond, holding to the idea of the self-sufficiency of God as expressed in Plotinus, a state in which God is alone by Himself and not in want of the things that proceed from Him (“Enneads,” VI. vii. 40), is thus able to unfold the mystery of the One in Three:
“Ineffable, all-powrfull God, all free,
Thou only liv’st, and each thing lives by thee;
No joy, no, nor perfection to thee came
By the contriving of this world’s great frame;
· · · · ·
world nought to thee supplied,
All in thyself thyself thou satisfied.
Of good no slender shadow doth appear,
No age-worn track, in thee which shin’d not clear;
Perfections sum, prime cause of every cause,
Midst, end, beginning, where all good doth pause.
Hence of thy substance, differing in nought,
Thou in eternity, thy Son forth brought,
The only birth of thy unchanging mind,
Thine image, pattern-like that ever shin’d,
Light out of light, begotton not by will,
But nature, all and that same essence still
Which thou thyself....
· · · · ·
Of this light,
Eternal, double, kindled was thy spright
Eternally, who is with thee the same,
All-holy gift, ambassador, knot, flame.
Most sacred Triad! O most holy One!
Unprocreate Father, ever procreate Son,
Ghost breath’d from both, you were, are, aye shall be,
Most blessed, three in one, and one in three,
Incomprehensible by reachless height,
And unperceived by excessive light.
· · · · ·
So, though unlike, the planet of the days,
So soon as he was made, begat his rays,
Which are his offspring, and from both was hurl’d
The rosy light which comfort doth the world,
And none forewent another; so the spring
The well-head, and the stream which they forth bring,
Are but one selfsame essence, nor in aught
Do differ, save in order, and our thought
No chime of time discerns in them to fall,
But three distinctly bide one essence all.”
(ll. 99–142.)
From this point on to the close, the “Hymn” celebrates the glory of God in his works. Drummond possessed an imagination that delighted as Milton’s did in the contemplation of the universe as a vast mechanical scheme of sun and planets. (ll. 180–232.) His philosophic mind, however, led him to conceive of nature in the manner of the Platonists. God, or true being, according to Plotinus is a unity, everywhere present (“Enneads,” VI. v. 4); and matter, the other extreme of his philosophy, is an empty show, a shadow in a mirror. (“Enneads,” III. vi. 7.) In closing the account of the works of God, Drummond thus writes:
“Whole and entire, all in thyself thou art,
All-where diffus’d, yet of this All no part;
For infinite, in making this fair frame,
Great without quantity, in all thou came,
And filling all, how can thy state admit
Or place or substance to be said of it?
· · · · ·
Were but one hour this world disjoin’d from thee,
It in one hour to nought reduc’d should be,
For it thy shadow is; and can they last,
If sever’d from the substances them cast?”
(ll. 285–298.)
Drummond’s “Hymn” is the work of a mind in which poetical sensuousness and philosophic abstraction are well-nigh equally balanced. In More the philosopher had outweighed the poet. In Milton the poet asserts his full power. To him the Plotinian scheme of the hypostases is valuable only as they enable his love of beauty to be satisfied in conformity with his intellectual apprehension of the relation between God and the Son in the Trinal Godhead. Plotinus had outlined the relation between The Good and Intellect as that of a principle of beauty by which the intellect is invested and possesses beauty and light. (“Enneads,” VI. vii. 31.) The Good itself is the principle of beauty, hidden in its own rays of light. In Milton the conception of God as hidden in inaccessible light, and of the Son as the express image of the invisible beauty of God, is explained in conformity with the Platonic scheme, and also with those Scriptural texts, one of which mentions God as a King of kings, who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto (1 Tim. vi. 16); and the other proclaims that in Christ “dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Col. ii. 9). Thus in heaven the angels hymn their praises:
“Thee, Father, first they sung, Omnipotent,
Immutable, Immortal, Infinite,
Eternal King; thee, Author of all being,
Fountain of light, thyself invisible
Amidst the glorious brightness where thou sitt’st
Throned inaccessible, but when thou shad’st
The full blaze of thy beams, and through a cloud
Drawn round about thee like a radiant shrine
Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appear,
Yet dazzle Heaven, that brightest Seraphim
Approach not, but with both wings veil their eyes.
Thee next they sang, of all creation first,
Begotten Son, Divine Similitude,
In whose conspicuous countenance, without cloud
Made visible, the Almighty Father shines,
Whom else no creature can behold: on thee
Impressed the effulgence of his glory abides.
Transfused on thee his ample Spirit rests.”
(P. L., III. 372–389.)
And the Almighty addresses the Son:
“‘Effulgence of my glory, Son beloved,
Son in whose face invisible is beheld
Visibly, what by Deity I am.’”
(VI. 680–682.)
This relation of Christ to God which in the Scripture was indicated only as in an outline sketch has been filled in with the substance of the Plotinian æsthetics, in which The One and The Good is beauty itself (καλλονή) and intellect is the beautiful (τὸ καλόν). (“Enneads,” I. vi. 6.)
The attraction which this philosophical explanation had for those whose work reveals its presence is twofold. To the religious mind in which the metaphysical cast of thought was prominent, the idea of the transcendent immanence of God in all things as their life, yet apart from all things as objects in time and space came home with its wealth of suggestion of the nearness of God to man. In Henry More this feeling is uppermost in his “Psychozoia.” In the midst of his description of Psyche’s robe he breaks out into a passage on the constant care which God shows toward the world. In Psyche’s mirror of Arachnea and Haphe God is aware of all on earth that falls under sense. The roaring of the hungry lion, the burning thirst of the weary traveller and every movement of the little sparrow are all known to him.
“Do not I see? I slumber not nor sleep,
Do not I heare? each noise by shady night
My miroir represents: when mortals steep
Their languid limbs in Morpheus dull delight,
I hear such sounds as Adams brood would fright.
The dolefull echoes from the hollow hill
Mock houling wolves: the woods with black bedight.
Answer rough Pan, his pipe and eke his skill,
And all the Satyr-routs rude whoops and shoutings shrill.”
(I. 54.)
In his second canto, where he repeats the idea of the universal life of Psyche, he dwells on the fact of God’s immanence in the world. He is the inmost centre of creation, from whom as rays from the sun the individual souls are born.
“Dependence of this All hence doth appear
And severall degrees subordinate.
But phansie’s so unfit such things to clear,
That oft it makes them seem more intricate;
And now Gods work it doth disterminate
Too far from his own reach: But he withall
More inward is, and far more intimate
Then things are with themselves. His ideall
And centrall presence is in every atom-ball.”
(II. 10.)
In those minds less metaphysical in nature, the high speculations of Platonic philosophy opened a way by which they could conceive God as a principle grasped by the mind rather than as a personal judge and punisher of sin. In Drummond this contrast in the two conceptions of God—one feeding itself on philosophy, and the other on the imagery of the Scripture—is strikingly brought out by a comparison of the opening and the ending of “An Hymn of the Fairest Fair” with those of “A Prayer for Mankind.” The “Hymn” begins with a confession of the elevating power of his subject:
“I feel my bosom glow with wontless fires
Rais’d from the vulgar press my mind aspires,
Wing’d with high thoughts, unto his praise to climb,
From deep eternity who called forth time;
That essence which not mov’d makes each thing move,
Uncreate beauty, all creating love:
But by so great an object, radiant light,
My heart appall’d, enfeebled rests my sight,
Thick clouds benight my labouring engine,
And at my high attempts my wits repine.
If thou in me this sacred rapture wrought,
My knowledge sharpen, sarcels [i.e. pinions] lend my thought;
Grant me, time’s Father, world-containing King
A pow’r, of thee in pow’rful lays to sing,
That as thy beauty in earth lives, heaven shines,
So it may dawn or shadow in my lines.”
(ll. 1–16.)
At the close he prays:
“What wit cannot conceive, words say of thee,
Here, where, as in a mirror, we but see
Shadows of shadows, atoms of thy might,
Still owly-eyed when staring on thy light,
Grant that, released from this earthly jail,
And freed of clouds which here our knowledge veil,
In heaven’s high temples, where thy praises ring,
I may in sweeter notes hear angels sing.”
(ll. 329–335.)
“A Prayer for Mankind,” however, opens with the note of humble adoration and a sense of sin.
“Great God, whom we with humble thoughts adore,
Eternal, infinite, almighty King,
· · · · ·
At whose command clouds dreadful thunders sound!
Ah! spare us worms; weigh not how we, alas
Evil to ourselves, against thy laws rebel;
Wash off those spots which still in mind’s clear glass,
Though we be loath to look, we see too well;
Deserv’d revenge O do not, do not take!”
(ll. 1–13.)
It closes similarly:
“Grant, when at last our souls these bodies leave,
Their loathsome shops of sin, and mansions blind,
And doom before thy royal seat receive,
They may a Saviour, not a judge thee find.”
(ll. 65–68.)
In Spenser’s “Hymne of Heavenly Beautie” in the first portion of which he sings the ascent of the mind through ever rising stages of perfection to
“that Highest farre beyond all telling,”
the mingling of these two ways of approach to God is very apparent. Spenser is first a Platonist and then a Christian. How, he asks, if God’s glory is such that the sun is dimmed by comparison, can we behold Him?
“The meanes therefore which unto us is lent,
Him to behold, is on his workes to looke,
Which he hath made in beauty excellent,
And in the same, as in a brasen booke,
To reade enregistred in every nooke
His goodnesse, which his beautie doth declare,
For all thats good, is beautifull and faire.
“Thence gathering plumes of perfect speculation,
To impe the wings of thy high flying mynd,
Mount up aloft through heavenly contemplation,
From this darke world, whose damps the soule do blynd,
And like the native brood of Eagles kynd,
On that bright Sunne of glorie fixe thine eyes,
Clear’d from grosse mists of fraile infirmities.”
Then comes in the sense of sin, and he approaches God in a different spirit. He continues:
“Humbled with feare and awful reverence,
Before the footestoole of his Maiestie,
Throw thy selfe downe with trembling innocence,
Ne dare looke up with corruptible eye,
On the dred face of that great Deity,
For feare, lest if he chaunce to looke on thee,
Thou turne to nought, and quite confounded be.
“But lowly fall before his mercie seate,
Close covered with the Lambes integrity,
From the just wrath of his avengefull threate,
That sits upon the righteous throne on hy.”
(ll. 130–152.)