then born, and that the number of thy days are many_, or they depend upon the translation, which the LXX give of the text, _I know that thou wast then born, for the number of thy days is many_, that is, that thou wast then existent; for though thou knowest not what thou didst, from that time, till thou camest into the world, yet the number of thy days is great, that is, thou hadst an existence many ages before. How easy a matter it is for persons to strain the sense of some words of scripture, to serve a purpose, contrary to the general scope and design thereof, if they attempt to give countenance thereby to any doctrine of their own invention. As for those scriptures, which they bring to prove that the Jews were of this opinion, I will not deny the inference from thence, that some of them were, as appears from the report that the disciples gave to our Saviour, when he asked them, _Whom do men say that I am?_ They replied, _Some say that thou art John the Baptist, some Elias, and others Jeremias, or one of the prophets_, Matth. xvi. 13, 14. that is, they judged, according to the Pythagorean hypothesis, that the soul of _Jeremias_, or _one of the prophets_, dwelt in that body, which he had, and therefore that he was one of them. And there is another scripture, in which our Saviour’s disciples, speaking concerning the blind man, asked him, _Did this man sin, or his parents, that he was born blind?_ John ix. 2. as if he should say: Was it for some sin that this man’s soul committed, before it entered into the body, to which it is united? And was his being born blind a punishment thereof? I say, I will not deny, but that some of the Jews, from hence, may be supposed to have given into this fabulous notion, agreeably to the sentiments of the philosophy, which they had been conversant in. But I will not allow that our Saviour’s not confuting this absurd opinion, is an intimation; (as the defenders thereof generally conclude it to be) that he reckoned it just; but I rather think, that he passed it over, as a vulgar error, not worthy of his confutation. And as for that passage, which they quote, for this purpose, out of the apocryphal book of _Wisdom_, which is no proof of this matter from Scripture, when one is represented, as saying to this effect, that _because he was good, he came into a body undefiled_; this only proves, that this was the opinion of some of that trifling generation of men. And, when they speak of it, as what, has been maintained by some of the Fathers, who received the notion from the philosophy above-mentioned, this is also as little to the purpose; and, indeed, all the other arguments that they bring, amount to nothing else but this; that, if the scripture had not given us ground to establish the contrary doctrine, there might have been, at least, a possibility of the truth of this, but to lay this as a foundation, on which they assert the truth thereof, and that with the design above-mentioned, this is