Page 26.—_Doctrine of reminiscences._] Plato’s doctrine, that the soul’s present knowledge is only a remembrance of a former state, is the basis of much of his reasoning in favour of the immortality of the soul in his Phædo, sect. xviii. ed. Forster. Τὸ ὄν, that which is, is the real nature of things, the knowledge of which it is the highest flight of philosophy to attain. Page 26.—_A wise Jew who was also a Platonist._] In this description, the author evidently refers to Philo, (Brucker, ii. 193.) who lived a little after the time of our Saviour, but may be fairly presumed not to have been the founder of this system of Platonico-Mosaic allegory, since he speaks of it himself as _old_; Op. p. 1190, Ed. Par. although he was so eminent in it, that Photius, ciii. says of him, ἑξ οὖ οἶμαι καὶ πᾶς ὁ ἀλληγορικὸς τῆς γραφῆς ἐν τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ λόγος ἔσχεν ἀρχὴν. The author supposes Philo to have conceived of the Λόγος as a being distinct from the mind of God—yet strongly as many passages in his works favour this opinion, all seems at other times to resolve itself into a personification of a divine attribute and energy. See Mosheim ad Cudw. Syst. Int. i. 835. “Vocabulorum et nominum quibus hunc λόγον Judæus noster multis in locis ornat ea vis et ratio est, ut si ex usû et recepta loquendi consuetudine æstimantur, notionem _personæ_, summo licet Numine inferioris, in animis pariant—Ego vero vehementer metuo, ne si umbræ dissipantur quibus dictionem suam obscuravit Philo, idem nobis de hoc verbo dicendum sit, quod de binis potentiis ejus de quibus antea egimus.—Qui de hominum cogitationibus tam argute ac figurate philosophatur, is si Dei sapientiam et rationem aut divina decreta et cogitata _primogenitum Dei filium_ vocat, nihil ab institutis suis alienum admittat.” On the other side of the question may be consulted, Kidder’s Demonstration of the Messiah, P. iii. ch. 5, 6.; Bull, Def. Fid. Nic. i. 1. 16. Page 28.—_God only can be our instructor in things relating to himself._] See Plato, Rep. vii. init. Leland’s Necessity of Revelation, i. 270. Page 34.—_An Egyptian Jew._] The book of Tobit was probably composed before the time of our Saviour, but when, or where, is very uncertain. (Eichhorn, Einl. ins A. T. 4. 410.) Alexandria, however, was the great workshop of the Jewish apocryphal writings, and probably produced this.