NEW TESTAMENT REFERENCES.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Plotinus and Guthrie, Kenneth Sylvan
Plotinos says that it would be a poor artist who would conceive of an animal as all covered with eyes. There is hardly such a reference outside of Revelations,531 to which we must also look for a new heaven and a new earth.532 Then we have practically a quotation of the Johannine prologue "In the beginning was the Logos," and by him were all things made.533 Light was in the beginning.534 We are told not to leave the world, but not to be of it.535 The divinity prepares mansions in heaven for good souls.536
Pauline references seem to be that sin exists because of the law.537 God is above all height or depth.538 The vulgar who attend mystery-banquets only to gorge are condemned.539 There are several heavens.540 The beggarly principles and elements towards which some turn, are mentioned.541 The genealogies of the Gnostics are held up to ridicule.542 General references are numerous. Diseases are caused by evil spirits.543 We must cut off any offending member.544 Thus we are saved.545 In him we breathe and move and have our being.546 The higher divinity begets a Son, one among many brethren.547 As the father of intelligence, God is the father of lights.548
However, the most interesting incident is that scriptural text which, to the reflecting, is always so much of a puzzle: "If the light that is in them be darkness," etc.549 This is explained by the Platonic theory550 that we see because of a special light that is within the eye.