of all in the
oracles of the _Old_ and _New Testament_. We may say the same of
pre-existence. This doctrine is nowhere expressly revealed as an
article of faith, but it is evidently implied in the _Wisdom of
Solomon_, by the author of _Ecclesiasticus_, by our Saviour's silence,
by St. Paul's comparisons, and by the sacred doctrine of original sin,
which becomes not only inexplicable, but absurd, repugnant, and
impossible, if that of pre-existence be not true.... The Fifth General
Council held at Constantinople pronounces anathema against all those
who maintain the fabulous doctrine of pre-existence in the Origenian
sense. It was not then the simple doctrine of pre-existence that was
condemned by the council, but the fictitious mixtures and erroneous
disguises by which this ancient tradition had been adulterated by the
Origenites."

Soame Jenyns writes:

"That mankind had existed in some state previous to the present was
the opinion of the wisest sages of the most remote antiquity. It was
held by the Gymnosophists of Egypt, the Brahmans of India, the Magi of
Persia, and the greatest philosophers of Greece and Rome; it was
likewise adopted by the _Fathers of the Christian Church, and
frequently enforced by her early writers_; why it has been so little
noticed, so much overlooked rather than rejected, by the divines and
metaphysicians of latter ages, I am at a loss to account for, as it is
undoubtedly confirmed by reason, by all the appearances of nature and
the doctrines of revelation.

"In the first place, then, it is confirmed by reason, which teaches us
that it is impossible that the conjunction of a male and female can
create an immortal soul; they may prepare a material habitation for
it; but there cannot be an immortal, pre-existent inhabitant ready to
take possession. Reason assures us that an immortal soul, which will
exist eternally after the dissolution of the body, must have eternally
existed before the formation of it; _for whatever has no end can never
have had any beginning_....

"Reason likewise tells us that an omnipotent and benevolent Creator
would never have formed such a world as this, and filled it with such
inhabitants if the present was the only, or even the first, state of
their existence; for this state which, if unconnected with the past
and the future, would seem calculated for no purpose intelligible to
our understanding, neither of good or evil, of happiness or misery, of
virtue or vice,