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Tiresias: The Ancient Mediterranean Religions Source Database



9694
Porphyry, Letter To Marcella, 17


nanThe man who practises wisdom practises the knowledge of God; and he shows his piety not by continued prayers and sacrifices but by his actions. No one could become well-pleasing to God by the opinions of men or the vain talk of the Sophists. But he makes himself well-pleasing and consecrate to God by assimilating his own disposition to the blessed and incorruptible nature. It is he too who makes himself impious and displeasing to God, for God does not injure him (since the divine nature can only work good), but he injures himself, chiefly through his wrong opinion concerning God. He who disregards the images of the gods is less impious |41 than the man who holds the opinions of the multitude concerning God. But do thou entertain no thought unworthy of Him or of His blessedness and immortality.


Intertexts (texts cited often on the same page as the searched text):

5 results
1. Plato, Republic, None (5th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE)

2. Nag Hammadi, The Sentences of Sextus, 156 (3rd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE)

3. Porphyry, Letter To Marcella, 23-24, 11 (3rd cent. CE - 4th cent. CE)

11. Reason tells us that the Divine is present everywhere and in all men, but that only the mind of the wise man is sanctified as its temple, and God is best honoured by him who knows Him best. And this must naturally be the wise man alone, who in wisdom must honour the Divine, and in wisdom adorn for it a temple in his thought, honouring it with a living statue, the mind moulded in His image.....Now God is not in need of any one, and the wise man is in need of God alone. For no one could become good and noble, unless he knew the goodness and beauty which proceed from the Deity. Nor is any man unhappy, unless he has fitted up his soul as a dwelling-place for evil spirits. To a wise man God gives the authority of a god. And a man is purified by the knowledge of God, and issuing from God, he follows after righteousness. |37
4. Proclus, Theologia Platonica ( ), 1.25, 4.9 (5th cent. CE - 5th cent. CE)

5. Anon., Chaldean Oracles, 46-47, 45



Subjects of this text:

subject book bibliographic info
contemplation Pevarello, The Sentences of Sextus and the Origins of Christian Ascetiscism (2013) 194
curiosity / curiositas DeMarco,, Augustine and Porphyry: A Commentary on De ciuitate Dei 10 (2021) 53
detachment Pevarello, The Sentences of Sextus and the Origins of Christian Ascetiscism (2013) 194
greek DeMarco,, Augustine and Porphyry: A Commentary on De ciuitate Dei 10 (2021) 53
hypocrisy DeMarco,, Augustine and Porphyry: A Commentary on De ciuitate Dei 10 (2021) 53
love DeMarco,, Augustine and Porphyry: A Commentary on De ciuitate Dei 10 (2021) 53
magic / magia DeMarco,, Augustine and Porphyry: A Commentary on De ciuitate Dei 10 (2021) 53
neoplatonism Pevarello, The Sentences of Sextus and the Origins of Christian Ascetiscism (2013) 194
philosophy / philosophers DeMarco,, Augustine and Porphyry: A Commentary on De ciuitate Dei 10 (2021) 53
plato Pevarello, The Sentences of Sextus and the Origins of Christian Ascetiscism (2013) 194
platonism Pevarello, The Sentences of Sextus and the Origins of Christian Ascetiscism (2013) 194
platonist / platonism DeMarco,, Augustine and Porphyry: A Commentary on De ciuitate Dei 10 (2021) 53
porphyry Pevarello, The Sentences of Sextus and the Origins of Christian Ascetiscism (2013) 194
proclus Pevarello, The Sentences of Sextus and the Origins of Christian Ascetiscism (2013) 194
pythagoreans Pevarello, The Sentences of Sextus and the Origins of Christian Ascetiscism (2013) 194
religion DeMarco,, Augustine and Porphyry: A Commentary on De ciuitate Dei 10 (2021) 53
renunciation' Pevarello, The Sentences of Sextus and the Origins of Christian Ascetiscism (2013) 194
sack / invasion of rome DeMarco,, Augustine and Porphyry: A Commentary on De ciuitate Dei 10 (2021) 53
vero DeMarco,, Augustine and Porphyry: A Commentary on De ciuitate Dei 10 (2021) 53
wisdom DeMarco,, Augustine and Porphyry: A Commentary on De ciuitate Dei 10 (2021) 53