The six books of Proclus, the Platonic successor, on the theology of Plato (vol. 1 of 2) : $b translated from the Greek, to which a seventh book is added, in order to supply the deficiency of another book on this subject, which was written by Proclus, but since lost, also, a translation from the Greek of Proclus' Elements of theology, to which are added a translation of the treatise of Proclus, On providence and fate, a translation of extracts from his treatise, entitled, Ten doubts concerning
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Again, from another principle we may be able to apprehend the
theological demonstrations in the Republic. For these are common to
all the divine orders, similarly extend to all the discussion about
the Gods, and unfold to us truth in uninterrupted connexion with what
has been before said. In the second book of the Republic therefore,
Socrates describes certain theological types for mythological poets,
and exhorts his pupils to purify themselves from those tragic
disciplines, which some do not refuse to introduce to a divine nature,
concealing in these as in veils the arcane mysteries concerning the
Gods. Socrates therefore, as I have said, narrating the types and laws
of divine fables, which afford this apparent meaning, and the inward
concealed scope, which regards as its end the beautiful and the natural
in the fictions about the Gods,--in the first place indeed, thinks
fit to evince, according to our unperverted conception about the Gods
and their goodness, that they are the suppliers of all good, but the
causes of no evil to any being at any time. In the second place, he
says that they are essentially immutable, and that they neither have
various forms, deceiving and fascinating, nor are the authors of the
greatest evil lying, in deeds or in words, or of error and folly. These
therefore being two laws, the former has two conclusions, viz. that
the Gods are not the causes of evils, and that they are the causes
of all good. The second law also in a similar manner has two other
conclusions; and these are, that every divine nature is immutable, and
is established pure from falsehood and artificial variety. All the
things demonstrated therefore, depend on these three common conceptions
about a divine nature, viz. on the conceptions about its goodness,
immutability and truth. For the first and ineffable fountain of good is
with the Gods; together with eternity, which is the cause of a power
that has an invariable sameness of subsistence; and the first intellect
which is beings themselves, and the truth which is in real beings.
CHAPTER XVII.