NOTICES IN THE FATHERS. 147 



highest good is to be sought by him in the highest place, 

 and mindful of his condition in which God made him 

 illustrious, looks towards his Maker. And Trismegistus 

 most rightly called this looking, a contemplation of God 

 which has no existence in the dumb animals." l 



Ibid. ch. 13. 



" Hermes describing the nature of Man, that he might 

 show how he was made by God, introduced this statement: 

 ' And the same out of two natures, the immortal and the 

 mortal, made one Nature, that of Man ; making the same 

 partly immortal and partly mortal, and bringing this He 

 placed it in the midst between that nature which was 

 Divine and immortal, and that which was mortal and 

 changeable, that seeing all things he may admire all 

 things." 2 



Ibid., Divin. Instit., Lib. vii. ch. 18. 



" This Hermes did not conceal ; for in that book which is 

 entitled ' The Perfect Discourse,' after an enumeration of 

 the evils concerning which we have spoken, he added 

 these things : ' But when these things thus come to pass, 

 then He who is Lord and Father and God and the Creator 

 of the First and One God, looking upon what is done, and 

 opposing to the disorder His own will, that is Goodness, 

 and recalling the wandering, and cleansing wickedness, 

 partly inundating it with much water and partly burning 

 it with most rapid fire, and sometimes pressing it with 

 wars and pestilences, He brought His World to its 

 ancient state and restored it.' " 3 



1 Poerriandres, ch. xii., xiii., xiv. passim; Parthey, 106, 111, et seq. 



2 Poemandres, ch. iv. 2, substantially. It is found also in the 

 " Perfect Discourse," Asclepius, ch. iv. 



3 This passage is cited in the original Greek by Lactantius, which 

 otherwise we do not possess. In the Latin translation ascribed to 

 Apuleius, it varies much. It is found in the Epitome of Lactantius, 

 ch. viii.; also in Asclepius, ch. ix., nearly verbatim, apparently copied 

 from some former work of Hermes. As before stated, this last was 



