God was called I (the _Je_ in Jehovah)
or _One_, and afterwards _El_,--the strong,--an epithet given to many
gods. Whichever reading we adopt, the meaning and the inference from
it are the same.
[243] Inferno, IV.
[244] Dante's "Limbo," of course, is the older "Limbus Patrum."
[245] De Monarchia, Lib. II. sec. 8.
[246] Faith, Hope, and Charity. (Purgatorio, XXIX. 121.) Mr.
Longfellow has translated the last verse literally. The meaning is,
"More than a thousand years ere baptism was."
[247] In which the _celestial Athens_ is mentioned.
[248] Purgatorio, XXVII. 139-142.
[249] "I conceived myself to be now," says Milton, "not as mine own
person, but as a member incorporate into that truth whereof I was
persuaded."
[250]
"But now was turning my desire and will,
Even as a wheel that equally is moved,
The Love that moves the sun and other stars."
Paradiso, XXXIII., closing verses of the Divina Commedia.
[251] Dante seems to allude directly to this article of the Catholic
faith when he says, on entering the Celestial Paradise, "to signify
transhumanizing by words could not be done," and questions whether he
was there in the renewed spirit only or in the flesh also:--
"If I was merely _what of me thou newly
Createdst_, Love who governest the heavens,
Thou knowest who didst lift me with thy light.
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