This is exactly the Logos of John. It becomes a man, "is made flesh;" appears as an incarnation; in order that the God whom "no man has seen at any time," may be manifested.
The worship of God in the form of a Trinity was to be found among the ancient Greeks. When the priests were about to offer up a sacrifice to the gods, the altar was three times sprinkled by dipping a laurel branch in holy water, and the people assembled around it were three times sprinkled also. Frankincense was taken from the censer with three fingers, and strewed upon the altar three times. This was done because an oracle had declared that all sacred things ought to be in threes, therefore, that number was scrupulously observed in most religious ceremonies.[374:6]
Orpheus[374:7] wrote that:
"All things were made by One godhead in three names, and that this god is all things."[375:1]
This Trinitarian view of the Deity he is said to have brought from Egypt, and the Christian Fathers of the third and fourth centuries claimed that Pythagoras, Heraclitus, and Plato—who taught the doctrine of the Trinity—had drawn their theological philosophy from the writings of Orpheus.[375:2]
The works of Plato were extensively studied by the Church Fathers, one of whom joyfully recognizes in the great teacher, the schoolmaster who, in the fullness of time, was destined to educate the heathen for Christ, as Moses did the Jews.[375:3]
The celebrated passage: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,"[375:4] is a fragment of some Pagan treatise on the Platonic philosophy, evidently written by Irenæus.[375:5] It is quoted by Amelius, a Pagan philosopher, as strictly applicable to the Logos, or Mercury, the Word, apparently as an honorable testimony borne to the Pagan deity by a barbarian—for such is what he calls the writer of John i. 1. His words are:
"This plainly was the Word, by whom all things were made, he being himself eternal, as Heraclitus also would say; and by Jove, the same whom the barbarian affirms to have been in the place and dignity of a principal, and to be with God, and to be God, by whom all things were made, and in whom everything that was made has its life and being."[375:6]
The Christian Father, Justin Martyr, apologizing for the Christian religion, tells the Emperor Antoninus Pius, that the Pagans need not taunt the Christians for worshiping the Logos, which "was with God, and was God," as they were also guilty of the same act.