Such then is the ascent to the highest God, according to the theology of Plato, venerably preserving his ineffable exemption from all things, and his transcendency, which cannot be circumscribed by any gnostic energy, and at the same time, unfolding the paths which lead upwards to him, and enkindling that luminous summit of the soul, by which she is conjoined with the incomprehensible one.
From this truly ineffable principle, exempt from all essence, power, and energy, a multitude of divine natures, according to Plato, immediately proceeds. That this must necessarily be the case, will be admitted by the reader who understands what has been already discussed, and is fully demonstrated by Plato in the Parmenides, as will be evident to the intelligent from the notes on that Dialogue. In addition therefore to what I have staid on this subject, I shall further observe at present that this doctrine, which is founded in the sublimest and most scientific conceptions of the human mind, may be clearly shown to be a legitimate dogma of Plato from what is asserted by him in the sixth book of his Republic. For he there affirms, in the most clear and unequivocal terms, that the good, or the ineffable principle of things is superessential, and shows by the analogy of the sun to the good, that what light and sight are in the visible, that truth and intelligence are in the intelligible world. As light therefore, immediately proceeds from the sun, and wholly subsists according to a solar idiom or property, so truth or the immediate progeny of the good, must subsist according to a superessential idiom. And as the good, according to Plato, is the same with the one, as is evident from the Parmenides, the immediate progeny of the one will be the same as that of the good. But, the immediate offspring of the one cannot be any thing else than unities. And, hence we necessarily infer that according to Plato, the immediate offspring of the ineffable principle of things are superessential unities. They differ however from their immense principle in this, that he is superessential and ineffable, without any addition; but this divine multitude is participated by the several orders of being, which are suspended from and produced by it. Hence, in consequence of being connected with multitude through this participation, they are necessarily subordinate to the one.