85 [It is unnecessary to point out in detail the vicious elements in Augustine's allegorizing and typologizing. It should be said that his exegetical fancies were not original, but were derived from Philo, Origen, and their followers.-A. H. N.]
1 [On the Sibylline books, see article by G. H. Schodde in the Schaff-Hertzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, and the works there referred to. The Christian writers of the first three centuries seem not to have suspected the real character of these pseudo-prophetical writings, and to have regarded them as remarkable testimonies from the heathen world to the Truth of the Christian religion.-A. H. N.]
2 ["The Mercurius or Hermes Trismegistus of legend was a personage, an Egyptian sage or succession of sages, who, since the time of Plato, has been identified with the Thoth (the name of the month September), of that people.... He was considered to be the impersonation of the religion, art, learning and sacerdotal discipline of the Egyptian priesthood. He was by several of the Fathers, and, in modern times, by three of his earliest editors, supposed to have existed before the time of Moses, and to have obtained the appellation of `Thrice greatest0', from his threefold learning and rank of Philosopher, Priest and King, and that of `Hermes,0' or Mercurius, as messenger and authoritative interpreter of divine things." The author of the books that go under the name of Hermes Trismegistus is thought to have lived about the beginning of the second century, and was a Christian Neo-Platonist. See J. C. Chambers: The Theological and Philosophical Works of Hermes Trismegistus, translated from the original Greek, with Preface, Notes and Index, Edinburh, 1882.-A. H. N.]