Library Eusebius of Caesarea Preparation for the Gospel

Book 11, Chapter 20

[PLATO] [103] 'I must explain it to you then in riddles, that if the tablet suffer any harm in the remote parts of sea or land, the reader may learn nothing. For the matter is thus: Around the King of the Universe are all things, and all are for His sake, and that is the cause of all things beautiful: and around the Second are the secondary things, and around the Third the tertiary. The soul of man therefore strains after them to learn what sort of things they are, looking upon the things akin to its own nature.'

These statements are referred, by those who attempt to explain Plato, to the First God, and to the Second Cause, and thirdly to the Soul of the Universe, defining it also as a third God. But the sacred Scriptures regard the Holy and Blessed Trinity o'f Father and Son and Holy Ghost as the beginning, according to the passages already set forth.

English translation by E. H. Gifford, Eusebii Pamphili Evangelicae Praeparationis Libri XV (Oxford, 1903). Public domain. Digital text via Roger Pearse / tertullian.org.