"After having for a thousand years turned the wheel (of existence), these souls come forth in a mighty troop to the Lethean stream to which God calls them that they may lose the memory of the past, see the higher regions,[166] and begin to wish to return into bodies." Ovid, in his _Metamorphoses_ also deals with the teaching of Pythagoras, his master, on the subject of palingenesis: "Then Death, so-called, is but old matter drest In some new figure, and a varied vest; Thus all things are but alter'd, nothing dies, And here and there th' embodied spirit flies, By time, or force, or sickness dispossest, And lodges, when it lights, in man or beast. Th' immortal soul flies out in empty space To seek her fortune in some other place." NEW TESTAMENT. The _New Testament_ is far more explicit than the _Old_, even though we find the teachings of reincarnation indicated in only a vague, indirect fashion. All the same, it must not be forgotten that the canonical Gospels have suffered numerous suppressions and interpolations. On the other hand, there can be no doubt that the early Fathers of the Church made use of gospels that are now either lost or have become apocryphal.[167] It has been proved that neither Jesus nor his disciples wrote a single word, and that no version of the Gospels appeared earlier than the second century.[168] It was at that time that religious quarrels gave birth to hundreds of gospels, the writers of which signed them with the name of an apostle or even with that of Jesus, after forging them in more or less intelligent fashion. Celsus, Jortin, Gibbons, and others have shown that Christianity is directly descended from Paganism; it was by combining the doctrines of Egypt, Persia, and Greece with the teachings of Jesus that the Christian doctrine was built up. Celsus silenced all the Christian doctors of his time by supplying evidence of this plagiarism; Origen, the most learned doctor of the age, was his opponent, but he was no more fortunate than the rest, and Celsus came off victorious. Thereupon recourse was had to the methods usual in those days; his books were burnt. And yet it is evident that the author of the _Revelation_ was a Kabalist; and the writer of the _Gospel of Saint John_ a Gnostic or a Neoplatonist. The _Gospel of Nicodemus_ is scarcely more than a copy of the _Descent of Hercules into the Infernal Regions_; the _Epistle to the Corinthians_ is a distinct reminiscence of the initiatory Mysteries of Eleusis; and the Roman Ritual, according to H. P. Blavatsky, is the reproduction of the Kabalistic Ritual.