These doctrines, with some modifications, were adopted by the Kabalists and afterward by the Gnostics.
Apollonius of Tyana says: "We shall render the most appropriate worship of the Deity, when to that God whom we call the First, who is One, and separate from all, and after whom we recognize the others, we present no offerings whatever, kindle to Him no fire, dedicate to Him no sensible thing; for he needs nothing, even of all that natuers more exalted than ours could give. The earth produces no plant, the air nourishes no animal, there is in short nothing, which would not be impure in his sight. In addressing ourselves to Him, we must use only the higher word, that, I mean, which is not expressed by the mouth- the silent inner word of the spirit.... From the most Glorius of all Beings, we must seek for blessings, by that which is most gloriousin ourselves; and that is the spirit, which needs no organ."
Strabo says: "This one Supreme Essence is that which embrasses us all, the water and the land, that which we call the Heavens, the World, the Nature of things. This Highest Being should be worshipped, without any visible image, in sacred groves. In such retreats the devout should lay themselves down to sleep, and expect signs from God in dreams."
Aristotle says: "It has been handed down in a mythical form, from the earliest times to posterity, that there are Gods, and that The Devine compasses entire nature. All besides this has been added, after they mythical style, for the purpose of persuading the multitude, and for the interest of the laws and the advantage of the State. Thus men have given to the Gods human forms, and have even represented them under the figure of other beings, in the train of which fictions followed many more of the same sort. But if, from all this, we seperate the original principle, and consider it alone, namely, that the first Essences are Gods, we shall find that this has been divinely said; and since it is probable that philosophy and the arts have been several times, so far as that is possible, found and lost, such doctrines may have been preserved to our times as the remins of ancient wisdom."
Porphyry says: "By images addressed to sense, the ancients represented God and his powers- by the visible they typified the invisible for those who had learned to read, in these types, as in a book, a treatise on the Gods. We need not wonder if the ignorant consider the images to be nothing more than wood or stone; for just so, they who are ignorant of writing see nothing in monuments but stone, nothing in tablets but wood, and in books but a tissue of papyrus."
