Asclepius

pleasing to divine piety, with prayers to be wished for by the offspring, so that, corrected and stripped of worldly custody, with mortal ties absolved, he may restore himself to the path of the higher part, that is, the divine children. ASCLEPIUS You speak justly and truly, O Trismegistus. TRISMEGISTUS This is indeed truly pious, living diligently under God with those who live. You know, indeed, that to those who have lived impiously, the return into heaven is denied, and they are constituted into other incorporeal things unworthy of a holy soul, and it is a foul migration, as this sermon of yours has proceeded, O Trismegistus. You are even revealing the future in the hope that prevails in human life. But to others it may seem incredible, to others fabulous, and to others perhaps to be mocked. For this is without doubt in this bodily life, that which is seized from possessions ends, and it detains the soul in an abject neck, as they say, so that it adheres to the part of itself which is of death, and does not allow it to recognize the part of divinity; malignity envies the immortal. I will tell you what we have predicted, that after us no one will have a sincere choice of what is philosophy, which alone is frequent in knowing divinity, and holy religion; for many confuse it in a manifold way. How, therefore, do many assert an incomprehensible philosophy, or in what way do they confuse it in a manifold way? TRISMEGISTUS Asclepius, in this way: into various disciplines, and incomprehensible ones, they mix it with cunning conversation—arithmetic, music, geometry—while pure philosophy, and that which should depend only on divine religion, must be tended into the rest, so that having admired the state of the stars and the defined reasons, and having seen the courses of the change of the world consist in established order, you may marvel at earthly dimensions,