In
the fragments of Orpheus, collected by Henry Stephens, he is named
Phanes, the discoverer or discloser, who unfolded the ideas of the
supreme intelligence, and exposed them to the perception of inferior
beings in this visible frame of the world; as Macrobius, and Proclus,
and Athenagoras, all agree to interpret the several passages of
Orpheus which they have preserved.
But the Love designed in our text is the one self-existent and
infinite mind; whom if the generality of ancient mythologists have
not introduced or truly described in accounting for the production
of the world and its appearances, yet, to a modern poet, it can be
no objection that he hath ventured to differ from them in this
particular, though in other respects he professeth to imitate their
manner and conform to their opinions; for, in these great points of
natural theology, they differ no less remarkably among themselves,
and are perpetually confounding the philosophical relations of
things with the traditionary circumstances of mythic history; upon
which very account Callimachus, in his hymn to Jupiter, declareth
his dissent from them concerning even an article of the national
creed, adding, that the ancient bards were by no means to be
depended on.
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