Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 2 / In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four Periods

by Plotinus

PLOTINOS ADDRESSES HIMSELF TO THOSE OF HIS FRIENDS WHO WERE FORMERLY GNOSTIC, NOT TO THE LATTER WHO ARE HOPELESS.

10. On examining many other assertions (of the Gnostics), or rather, all of their assertions, we find more than enough to come to some conclusion concerning the details of their doctrines. We cannot, indeed, help blushing when we see some of our friends, who had imbued themselves with (Gnostic) doctrines before becoming friends of ours, somehow or another persevere therein, working zealously to try to prove that they deserved full confidence, or speaking as if they were still convinced that they were based on good grounds.[385] We are here addressing our friends, not the partisans (of the Gnostics). Vainly indeed would we try to persuade the latter not to let themselves be deceived by men who furnish no proofs—what proofs indeed could they furnish?—but who only impose on others by their boastfulness.[359]