For such men as Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Apollonius, and even Simon Magus, to be accused of having formed a pact with the Devil, whether the latter personage exist or not, is so absurd as to need but little refutation. If Simon Magus--the most problematical of all in an historical sense--ever existed otherwise than in the overheated fancy of Peter and the other apostles, he was evidently no worse than any of his adversaries. A difference in religious views, however great, is insufficient _per se_ to send one person to heaven and the other to hell. Such uncharitable and peremptory doctrines might have been taught in the middle ages; but it is too late now for even the Church to put forward this traditional scarecrow. Research begins to suggest that which, if ever verified, will bring eternal disgrace on the Church of the Apostle Peter, whose very imposition of herself upon that disciple must be regarded as the most unverified and unverifiable of the assumptions of the Catholic clergy. The erudite author of _Supernatural Religion_ assiduously endeavors to prove that by _Simon Magus_ we must understand the apostle Paul, whose Epistles were secretly as well as openly calumniated by Peter, and charged with containing “_dysnoëtic_ learning.” The Apostle of the Gentiles was brave, outspoken, sincere, and very learned; the Apostle of Circumcision, cowardly, cautious, _insincere_, and very ignorant. That Paul had been, partially, at least, if not completely, initiated into the theurgic mysteries, admits of little doubt. His language, the phraseology so peculiar to the Greek philosophers, certain expressions used but by the initiates, are so many sure ear-marks to that supposition. Our suspicion has been strengthened by an able article in one of the New York periodicals, entitled _Paul and Plato_,[130] in which the author puts forward one remarkable and, for us, very precious observation. In his _Epistles to the Corinthians_ he shows Paul abounding with “expressions suggested by the initiations of Sabazius and Eleusis, and the lectures of the (Greek) philosophers. He (Paul) designates himself an _idiotes_--a person unskilful in the Word, but not in the _gnosis_ or philosophical learning. ‘We speak wisdom among the perfect or initiated,’ he writes; ‘not the wisdom of this world, nor of the archons of this world, but divine wisdom in a mystery, secret--which _none of the Archons of this world knew_.’”[131]