the doctrine of transmigration, which supposes, that human souls, upon their leaving the body, become the souls of such kind of brutes as they most resemble in their manners.

This was the doctrine of Pythagoras and his followers, who held, that the souls of vicious men were imprisoned in the bodies of miserable beasts, there to do penance for several ages, at the expiration whereof they returned again to animate men; but if they had lived virtuously, some happier brute, or even a human creature, was to be their lot. What led Pythagoras into this opinion was the persuasion he had that the soul was not of a perishable nature; whence he concluded, that it must move into some other body upon its abandoning this. Lucan thinks this doctrine was contrived to mitigate the apprehension of death, by persuading men that they only changed their lodgings, and ceased to live only to begin a new life. Reuchlin denies this doctrine, and maintains, that the metempsychosis of Pythagoras implied nothing more than a similitude of manners and desires formerly existing in some person deceased, and now reviving in another alive. Pythagoras is said to have borrowed the notion of a metempsychosis from the Egyptians; others say from the ancient brahmans. It is still retained among the ancient Banians, and other idolaters of India and China, and makes the principal foundation of their religion. Many of the modern Jews are said to espouse this doctrine; and, to support their opinion, quote these words of Job, "Lo all these things worketh God oftentimes with man (in Hebrew, and thrice) to bring back his soul from the pit to be enlightened with the light of the living." It is certain, that at the time of Jesus Christ this opinion was very common among the Jews: this appears in the gospel, when they say, that some thought Jesus Christ to be John the Baptist, others Elias, others Jeremiah, &c.