These arguments, however, will be more remote from that divine triad, and are referred to it from ultimate images. But perhaps omitting these, we may abound with greater conceptions, and more conducive to the investigation of the thing proposed, and speculating together with Plato the divine genera, we may discover how he also celebrates this order of Gods, and constitutes them together with the three kings that are now discussed, just as by other theologists also, we are mystically instructed in the truth concerning them. In the fable therefore of Protagoras, Plato indicating to us the exempt watch-tower of Jupiter, and the transcendency of his essence which is unmingled with all secondary natures, through which he is inaccessible and unrevealed to the partible genera of Gods, refers the cause of this to his[291] immutable guard, and the defensive order by which he[292] is surrounded. For on account of this, all the demiurgic powers indeed are firmly established in themselves. But all the forms [that are in him] are according to supreme transcendency exempt from secondary natures. And in short, the demiurgic intellect [through this order] abides after its accustomed manner. For the fable says that the guards of Jupiter are terrible to all things. And on this account such [partible] genera of Gods (one of which also Prometheus is) cannot be immediately conjoined with the undefiled and Olympian powers of the demiurgus. If, therefore, Socrates himself in the form of a fable clearly delivers to us the guard about the demiurgus, is it not through these things evident that the guardian genus is consubsistent with the intellectual Gods? For as the Oracles say, that the demiurgic order is surrounded with a burning guard, thus also Plato says that guards stand round it, and defend inflexibly the summit of it exempt from all secondary natures.

But in the Cratylus, Socrates unfolding through the truth which is expressed in names, who Saturn is, demonstrates indeed his[293] peculiar hyparxis, according to which he subsists as the leader of the total intellectual orders. He likewise unfolds to us the monad of the unpolluted order, which is united with Saturn. For Saturn, as he says in that dialogue, is a pure intellect. For, he adds, the koron (το κορον) of him, does not signify his being a boy, but the purity, and incorruptible nature of intellect. After an admirable manner therefore, the fabricator of these divine names, has at one and the same time conjoined the Saturnian peculiarity, and the first monad of the unpolluted triad. For the union of the first father with the first of the unpolluted Gods, is transcendent, and hence this inflexible God is called silent by the Gods, is said to accord with intellect, and to be known by souls according to intellect alone; because he subsists in the first intellect according to one union with it. Saturn therefore, as being the first intellect, is defined according to its proper order, but as a pure and incorruptible intellect, he has the undefiled conjoined in himself. And on this account, he is the king of all the intellectual Gods. For as intellect he gives subsistence to all the intellectual Gods, and as a pure intellect, he guards the total orders of them. The two fathers therefore, [Saturn and Jupiter] are shown by the words of Plato to be co-arranged with the immutable Gods, according to union indeed, the first, but according to separation the third.

If you are willing however, to survey the one inflexible guard of them with respect to each other, according to which the third father is stably in the first, as being the intellect of him, and energizing about him, again direct your attention to the bonds in the Cratylus, of which indeed, partible lives, and the lives deprived of intellect, and which are stupidly astonished about matter, are unable to participate. But a divine intellect itself, and the souls which are conjoined to it, participate of these bonds according to an order adapted to them. For the Saturnian bonds, appear indeed to bind the mighty Saturn himself, but in reality, they connect about him in an undefiled manner the natures that throw the bonds around him. For a bond is the symbol of the connective order of the Gods, since every thing which is bound is connected by a bond. Again therefore from these things, the guardian good which extends from the connective Gods to the intellectual kings is apparent, since it unites, and collects them into one. For a bond guards that which is connected by it. But the immutable Gods inflexibly preserve their own appropriate orders. For the guardianship of these Gods is twofold; the one indeed, being primary and uniform, and suspended from the triad of the connective Gods; but the other being co-existent with the intellectual kings, and defending them from a tendency to all secondary natures. For all the intellectual fathers ride on the unpolluted Gods, and are established above wholes, through their inflexible, undeviating, and immutable power.

If however, it be not only necessary that these two fathers should participate of this guardian order, but that the middle vivific deity of them should be allotted a monad of the immutable Gods coordinate to herself, it is indeed necessary that the first [guardianship] of the unpolluted leaders in the intellectual fathers, should be triadic, and should have the same perfect number with the three intellectual Gods. It is likewise necessary that the first of these leaders should be stably united to the first [of the intellectual kings]; but that the second should in a certain respect be separated from the second of these kings, together with a union with him. And that the third should now be entirely separated from the third king. And thus the unpolluted proceeds conformably to the paternal order, and is after the same manner with it triadically divided. The first of the unpolluted Gods likewise guards the occult nature of Saturn, and the first-effective monad which transcends wholes, and establishes perfectly in him the causes that proceed from, and again return to him. But the second, preserves the generative power of the queen Rhea, pure from matter, and undefiled, and sustains from the incursions of secondary natures her progression to all things, on which she pours the rivers of life. And the third preserves the whole fabrication of things established above the fabrications, and firmly abiding in itself. It likewise guards it so as to be inflexible, one, and all-perfect with respect to the subjects of its providential case, and expanded above all partial production.