The Church Fathers · written c. 253–270
The Enneads
Plotinus · c. 204 – 270
What it is
Fifty-four treatises arranged by Porphyry into six sets of nine, on the One beyond being, the Intellect that contemplates it, the Soul that orders the world, and the return of the soul by stripping away — including a treatise written specifically against the gnostics in his own lecture room.
Why it lasted
The philosophy Augustine read in Latin translation before he read Paul, and by his own account the thing that made Christianity intelligible to him. Almost all Christian mystical theology afterwards is written in its vocabulary.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
Read next