Any one who puts together his numerous remarks on Christianity, dogma, and morality, although he may deem some of his views peculiar, cannot reproach him with constructing a Christianity of his own. Though he found such an agreement between Moses and Plato that he saw in the latter only a Moses writing in the Attic tongue, and though he compared the life of Socrates with the life of Jesus, yet he acknowledged in the Socratic doctrines only a confirmation of the Christian, and guarded himself against seeing in the Greek philosopher a shadow of the Saviour, and from interpreting the Christian mysteries by Platonic writings. Strange was the position of the thinkers of that time, placed as they were between Christianity and the strongly-reviving influences of heathen antiquity, and we should do them great injustice did we not consider the spirit which governed the whole of that period. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola believed he had found in the Cabala the foundation of the faith and the explanation of the Christian mysteries; both he and Marsilio held confidential evening discussions with learned Jewish doctors on the divine inspiration of the Prophecies, and plunged deep into both ancient and mediæval Hebrew lore. By a gradual enlightenment of his mind, filled with the fantastic images of the later Platonism and the half rationalistic mysticism founded on it, Pico came back to the pure Christian faith, which finds in Holy Scripture a living heavenly force whose wonderful power raises man to the height of divine love. Marsilio Ficino’s mysticism, increased by his strong tendency to astrology, assumed in more than one of his writings a colouring which made his friends uneasy. In 1489 he was even accused of magic before Pope Innocent VIII., but was cleared of the charge partly by his own apology, partly by his friends, Francesco Soderini, Ermolao Barbaro, and the archbishop Rinaldo Orsini, who was then at Rome.