Another theory was angelic mediation. God might have communicated with the Greeks by inferior angels;[[69]] or those angels who fell into pleasure might have told their human wives what they knew of divine secrets, "and so the doctrine of Providence got about."[[70]] Or else by happy guess or accident the Greeks found parts of the truth for themselves—or in virtue of some naturally implanted notion (énnoia) or common mind, and then "we know who is the author of nature."[[71]]
Whatever the explanation, in any case the hand of God was to be traced in it—Providence foreknew all, and so designed that the wickedness of fallen angels and men should promote righteousness and truth.[[72]] So much for those who quote the text "All that ever came before me were thieves and robbers,"[[73]] or who say that the devil is the author of Philosophy[[74]] (though we may admit Epicureanism to have been sown by the sower of tares).[[75]] We might look far for a more vivid illustration of the contrast between sound instinct and absurd theory.
The Protrepticus
Thus he vindicates the right of the Christian to claim Philosophy as the manifestation of the Divine Logos, and as a fore-runner of the Gospel, and in his Protrepticus he shows how the Christian thus re-inforced can deal with paganism. If the Stromateis weary even the sympathetic reader with their want of plan, their diffuseness and repetition, and their interminable and fanciful digressions—faults inherent in all works of the kind—the Protrepticus makes a different impression. It is written by the same hand and shows the same tendencies, but they are under better control. Allegories, analogies and allusions still hinder the development of his thought—like Atalanta he can never let a golden apple run past him. He is not properly a philosopher in spite of all his love of Philosophy, and he thinks in colours, like a poet. Yet he is not essentially a man of letters or a poet; he is too indolent; his style is not inevitable or compulsive. It is too true a confession when he says that he does not aim at beauty of language. His sentence will begin well, and then grow intricate and involved—in breaks an allusion, not always very relevant, and brings with it a quotation that has captured his fancy and paralyses his grammar—several perhaps—some accommodation is made, and the sentence straggles on, and will end somehow—with a pile of long words, for which others have been patiently waiting since before the quotation, in pendent genitives, accusatives and so forth. But in the Protrepticus—in the better parts of it—something has happened to his style, for (to speak after his own manner)
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
He is no longer arguing; he surrenders to a tide of emotion, and is borne along singing, and as he sings, he seems to gather up all the music of the ancient world; we catch notes that come from Greek and Hebrew song, and the whole is woven together into a hymn to "the Saviour," "my Singer," "our new Orpheus," that for sheer beauty, for gladness and purity of feeling is unmatched in early Christian literature. One comes back to it after years and the old charm is there still. That it can survive in a few translated fragments is hardly to be expected.
He begins with the famous singers of Greek myth—Amphion, Arion, and Eunomus with the grass-hopper... You will believe empty myths, he says, but "Truth's bright face seems to you to be false and falls under eyes of unbelief." But Cithæron and Helicon are old. "Let us bring Truth and shining Wisdom from heaven above to the holy mount of God and the holy choir of the prophets. Let her, beaming with light that spreads afar, illumine all about her them that lie in darkness, and save men from error." "My Eunomus sings not Terpander's strain, nor Capion's, not the Phrygian, the Lydian or the Dorian, but the eternal strain of the new harmony, the strain that bears the name of God, the new song, the song of the Levite, with
A drug infused antidote to the pains
Of grief and anger, a most potent charm
For ills of every name,[[76]]
a sweet and true cure of sorrow." Orpheus sang to enslave men to idols, to foolish rites, to shadows. "Not such is my singer; he has come, soon to end cruel slavery to tyrannic dæmons; he transfers us to the gentle and kindly yoke of piety, and calls to heaven them that were fallen to earth."[[77]]
It was this new song that first made the whole cosmos a harmony, and it is still the stay and harmony of all things. It was this Logos of God who framed "the little cosmos, man," setting soul and body together by the holy spirit, and who sings to God upon this organ of many tones—man. The Logos himself is an organ for God, of all the harmonies, tuneful and holy.[[78]] What does this organ, this new song, tell us?