trouble to eternal happiness.... On his way through the dark valley, the martyr believed that there was an invisible hand that would lead him.... For Bruno there was no such support. The philosophical opinions, for the sake of which he surrendered his life, could give him no consolation.”[181] But Professor Draper seems to have a very superficial knowledge of the true belief of the philosophers. We can leave Spinoza out of the question, and even allow him to remain in the eyes of his critics an utter atheist and materialist; for the cautious reserve which he placed upon himself in his writings makes it extremely difficult for one who does not read him between the lines, and is not thoroughly acquainted with the hidden meaning of the Pythagorean metaphysics, to ascertain what his real sentiments were. But as for Giordano Bruno, if he adhered to the doctrines of Pythagoras he must have believed in another life, hence, he could not have been an atheist whose philosophy offered him no such “consolation.” His accusation and subsequent confession, as given by Professor Domenico Berti, in his _Life of Bruno_, and compiled from original documents recently published, prove beyond doubt what were his _real_ philosophy, creed and doctrines. In common with the Alexandrian Platonists, and the later Kabalists, he held that Jesus was a magician in the sense given to this appellation by Porphyry and Cicero, who call it the _divina sapientia_ (divine knowledge), and by Philo Judæus, who described the Magi as the most wonderful inquirers into the hidden mysteries of nature, not in the degrading sense given to the word magic in our century. In his noble conception, _the Magi were holy men, who, setting themselves apart from everything else on this earth, contemplated the divine virtues and understood the divine nature of the gods and spirits, the more clearly; and so, initiated {95} others into the same mysteries, which consist in one holding an uninterrupted intercourse with these invisible beings during life_. But we will show Bruno’s inmost philosophical convictions better by quoting fragments from the _accusation_ and his _own confession_. The charges in the denunciation of Mocenigo, his accuser, are expressed in the following terms: