[Footnote 340:  But the notion that the deepest mysteries should not be entrusted to writing is found in Clement and Origen; cf.  Origen, Against Celsus, vi. 26:  [Greek:  ouk akindynon ten ton toiouton sapheneian pisteusai graphe].  And Clement says:  [Greek:  ta aporreta, kathaper ho theos, logo pisteuetai ou grammati].  The curious legend of an oral tradition also appears in Clement (Hypolyp.  Fragm. in Eusebius, H.E. ii.  I. 4):  [Greek:  Iakobo to dikaio kai Ioane kai Petro meta ten anastasin paredoke ten gnosin ho kyrios, outoi tois loipois apostolois paredokan, oi de loipoi apostoloi tois hebdomekonta, on eis en kai Barnabas.] Origen, too, speaks of “things spoken in private to the disciples.”]

[Footnote 341:  The following extract from Pico’s Apology may be interesting, as illustrating the close connexion between magic and science at this period:  “One of the chief charges against me is that I am a magician.  Have I not myself distinguished two kinds of magic?  One, which the Greeks call [Greek:  goeteia], depends entirely on alliance with evil spirits, and deserves to be regarded with horror, and to be punished; the other is magic in the proper sense of the word.  The former subjects man to the evil spirits, the latter makes them serve him.  The former is neither an art nor a science; the latter embraces the deepest mysteries, and the knowledge of the whole of Nature with her powers.  While it connects and combines the forces scattered by God through the whole world, it does not so much work miracles as come to the help of working nature.  Its researches into the sympathies of things enable it to bring to light hidden marvels from the secret treasure-houses of the world, just as if it created them itself.  As the countryman trains the vine upon the elm, so the magician marries the earthly objects to heavenly bodies.  His art is beneficial and Godlike, for it brings men to wonder at the works of God, than which nothing conduces more to true religion.”]

[Footnote 342:  This was a very old theory.  Cf.  Lecky, Rationalism in Europe, vol. i. p. 264.  “The Clavis of St. Melito, who was bishop of Sardis, it is said, in the beginning of the second century, consists of a catalogue of many hundreds of birds, beasts, plants, and minerals that were symbolical of Christian virtues, doctrines, and personages.”]

[Footnote 343:  The analogy between allegorism in religion and the hieroglyphic writing is drawn out by Clement, Strom. v. 4 and 7.]

[Footnote 344:  The distinction, however, would be unintelligible to the savage mind.  To primitive man a name is a symbol in the strictest sense.  Hence, “the knowledge, invocation, and vain repetition of a deity’s name constitutes in itself an actual, if mystic, union with the deity named” (Jevons, Introduction to the History of Religion, p. 245).  This was one of the chief reasons for making a secret of the cultus, and even of the name of a patron-deity.  To reveal it was to admit strangers into the tutelage of the national god.]