284 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book IV. 



be well fuppofed in favour of fo extraordinary a man and a philofo- 

 pher, fuch as Ariftides was. 



It may be objected, that, if we give credit to the Dreams of Ar- 

 riftides, we muft believe in the heathen religion, and in the ex- 

 iftence of fwch Deities as ^fculapius, Apollo, and Minerva, But to this 

 I anfwer, that, as we are to fuppofe that Ariftides was a believer in 

 the religion of his country, it was proper that the Spirits, that ap- 

 peared to him, fhould afllime fuch fhapes as would give them credit 

 with him, and difpofe him to follow their counfels. 



But if, after all, the reader fhould be inclined to rejedl the autho- 

 rity of Ariftides, as a Heathen and favouring the Heathen reli- 

 gion, I fhould defire to know what objection he has to the credibi- 

 lity of the Chiiftian Bifhop Synefius. He fays that, in his Dreams^ 

 he was forewarned of dangers that threatened him, which, by that 

 means, he efcaped * : By the fame means, he fucceeded in the bu- 

 flnefs in which he was engaged ; particularly in his embaffy to Arca- 

 dius the Emperor, from Cyrene and other Greek cities f : He philofo- 

 phifed too, he fays, in his Sleep, and difcovered things which he couli 

 not find out while awake : He compofed, likewife, in his Dreams ; 

 and, of what he had compofed before, while he was awake, he 

 fmoothed the ftyle, taking it down, and making it lefs turgidlf. This 

 very work upon Dreams he was directed to compofe by a Dream : 

 And he wrote the whole of it that very night §. And, from the ac- 

 count he gives of the efFed: it had, both upon himfelf and others, 

 when it was read over, it is plain that he thought he was infpired 

 when he wrote it. And it is probably to this ftory that Nicepho- 

 rus, his commentator, alludes, when he lays that he wrote like one 

 infpired ||. Even in hunting, by which, he fays, and by his books 



he 



* Page 123. 124. t Page 124. 



t Page 123. From what he fays in this paflage, it appears that the obfcurlty of 

 his ftyle arofe chiefly from his imitation of the antient Attic, and his ufing new^ 

 and ftrange words, which he made himfelf to exprefs his conceptions- 



§ Epift. 153. towards the end, page 293. edit. Petavii. 



K See page 253. of this Vol. in the Note, 



