Teachings, but that he also mentions Pythagoras and his
school, and also the other Mysteries of Greece, showing his acquaintance
with them, and his comparison of them with the Christian Mysteries,
which latter he would not have been likely to have done were their
teachings repugnant to, and at utter variance with, those of his own
church. In the same writing Origen says: "But on these subjects much,
and that of a mystical kind, might be said, in keeping with which is the
following: 'It is good to keep close to the secret of a king,' in order
that the entrance of souls into bodies may not be thrown before the
common understanding." Scores of like quotations might be cited.

The writings of the Early Fathers of the Christian Church are filled
with many allusions to the current inner doctrine of the pre-existence
and rebirth of souls. Origen in particular has written at great length
regarding these things. John the Baptist was generally accepted as the
reincarnation of Elias, even by the populace, who regarded it as a
miraculous occurrence, while the elect regarded it as merely another
instance of rebirth under the law. The Gnostics, a mystic order and
school in the early church, taught Reincarnation plainly and openly,
bringing upon themselves much persecution at the hands of the more
conservative. Others held to some form of the teaching, the disputes
among them being principally regarding points of doctrine and detail,
the main teachings being admitted. Origen taught that souls had fallen
from a high estate and were working their way back toward their lost
estate and glory, by means of repeated incarnations. Justin Martyr
speaks of the soul inhabiting successive bodies, with loss of memory of
past lives. For several centuries the early Church held within its bosom
many earnest advocates of Reincarnation, and the teaching was recognized
as vital even by those who combatted it.

Lactinus, at the end of the third century, held that the idea of the
soul's immortality implied its pre-existence. St. Augustine, in his
"Confessions," makes use of these remarkable words: "Did I not live in
another body before entering my mother's womb?" Which expression is all
the more remarkable because Augustine opposed Origen in many points of
doctrine, and because it was written as late as A. D. 415. The various
Church Councils, however, frowned upon these outcroppings of the
doctrine of Reincarnation, and the influence of those who rose to