True to culture as their main preoccupation, the Italian thinkers sought to philosophise faith by bringing Christianity into harmony with antique speculation, and forming for themselves a theism that should embrace the systems of the Platonists and Stoics, the Hebrew Cabbala and the Sermon on the Mount. There is much that strikes us as both crude and pedantic, at the same time infantine and pompous, in the systems elaborated by those pioneers of modern eclecticism. They lack the vigorous simplicity that gave its force to Luther's intuition, the sublime unity of Spinoza's deductions. The dross of erudition mingles with the pure gold of personal conviction; while Pagan phrases, ill suited to express Christian notions, lend an air of unreality to the sincerest efforts after rational theology. The Platonic Academy of Florence was the centre of this search after the faith of culture, whereof the real merit was originality, and the true force lay in the conviction that humanity is one and indivisible. Its apostles were Pico della Mirandola and Ficino. It found lyrical expression in verses like the following, translated by me from the Greek hexameters of Poliziano:-- O Father, Lord enthroned on gold, that dwellest in high heaven, O King of all things, deathless God, Thou Pan supreme, celestial! That seest all, and movest all, and all with might sustainest, Older than oldest time, of all first, last, and without ending! The firmament of blessed souls, of stars the heavenly splendour, The giant sun himself, the moon that in her circle shineth, And streams and fountains, earth and sea, are things of Thy creating, Thou givest life to all; all these Thou with Thy Spirit fillest. The powers of earth, and powers of heaven, and they in pain infernal Who pine below the roots of earth, all these obey Thy bidding. Behold, I call upon Thee now, Thy creature on earth dwelling, Poor, short of life, O God, of clay a mean unworthy mortal, Repenting sorely of my sins, and tears of sorrow shedding. O God, immortal Father, hear! I cry to Thee; be gracious, And from my breast of this vain world the soul-enslaving passion, The demon's wiles, the wilful lust, that damns the impious, banish! Wash throughly all my heart with Thy pure Spirit's rain abundant, That I may love Thee, Lord, alone, Thee, King of kings, for ever. This is but a poor substitute for the Lord's Prayer. Hell and purgatory are out of place in its theism. [Greek: Chrysothronos] and [Greek: aitheri naiôn] are tawdry epithets for 'Our Father which art in heaven.' Yet it is precisely in these contradictions and confusions that we trace the sincerity of the Renaissance spirit, seeking to fuse together the vitality of the old faith and the forms of novel culture, worshipping a Deity created in the image of its own mind, composite and incoherent.