Last and highest, come the _spiritual_, comprising all the truths,
acts, and duties that have an especial reference to the Timeless, the
Permanent, the Eternal: to the sincere love of the True, _as_ truth;
of the Good, _as_ good: and of God as both in one. It comprehends the
whole ascent from uprightness (morality, virtue, inward rectitude) to
_godlikeness_, with all the acts, exercises, and disciplines of mind,
will, and affection, that are requisite or conducive to the great
design of our Redemption from the form of the evil one, and of our
second creation or birth in the divine image.[34]
[34] It is worthy of observation, and may furnish a fruitful subject
for future reflection, how nearly this scriptural division coincides
with the Platonic, which, _commencing_ with the prudential, or the
habit of act and purpose proceeding from enlightened self-interest,
[_qui animi imperio, corporis servitio, rerum auxilio, in proprium sui
commodum et sibi providus utitur, hunc esse prudentem statuimus_]
_ascends_ to the moral, that is, to the _purifying_ and _remedial_
virtues; and seeks its _summit_ in the imitation of the Divine nature.
In this last division, answering to that which we have called the
Spiritual, Plato includes all those inward acts and aspirations,
waitings, and watchings, which have a growth in godlikeness for their
immediate purpose, and the union of the human soul with the Supreme
Good as their ultimate object. Nor was it altogether without grounds
that several of the Fathers ventured to believe that Plato had some
dim conception of the necessity of a Divine Mediator, whether through
some indistinct echo of the patriarchal faith, or some rays of light
refracted from the Hebrew prophets through a Phoenician medium, (to
which he may possibly have referred in his phrase, θεοπαραδοτος
σοφια, the wisdom delivered from God), or by his own sense of the
mysterious contradiction in human nature between the will and the
reason, the natural appetences and the not less innate law of
conscience (_Romans_ ii. 14, 15.), we shall in vain attempt to
determine. It is not impossible that all three may have co-operated in
partially unveiling these awful truths to this plank from the wreck of
paradise thrown on the shores of idolatrous Greece, to this Divine
Philosopher,
Che 'n quella schiera andó più presso al segno
Al qual aggiunge, a chi dal cielo è dato.
_Petrarch: Del Trionfo della Fama, Cap. III. 5, 6._