Taylor - Eleusianian and Bacchic Mysteries.pdf - Platonic Philosophy

"TheBacchic Mysteries. 67understood.* Indeed, the true cause whythe two first of these characters are in Hades,can only be ascertained from the fact of a priorstate of existence, in surveying which, thelatent justice of punishmentfestly revealed ;will be manithe apparent inconsistenciesin the administration of Providence fullyreconciled; and the doubts concerning thewisdom of its proceedings entirely dissolved.And as to the last of these, or suicides, sincethe reason of their punishment, and why anaction of this kind is in general highlyatrocious, is extremely mystical and obscure,the following solution of this difficulty will,no doubt, be gratefully received by the Platonic reader, as the whole of it is no whereelse to be found but in manuscript.Olymorpossibly from "ins, peter, an interpreter. See //. Corinthians,xii. 6-8. A. W.*Plicedo, 16.instruction in the doctrine givenin theMysteries, that we human beings are in a kind of prison, andthat we ought not to free ourselves from it or seek to escape,appears to me difficult to be understood, and not easy to apprehend. The gods take care of us, and we are theirs."Plotinus, it will be remembered, perceived bythe interiorfaculty that Porphyry contemplated suicide, and admonishedhim accordingly. A. W.