Diogenes Laertius says expressly that the Jews adopted the doctrine of the two principles from the Magi; and St. Augustine assures us that it was the foundation of the religion of the Assyrians, who were so often the masters of the little miserable Jewish horde. Manicheism (so called from Manes, the founder) was one of the first branches of Christianism; but adhered more than any other of the heresies, to the original Zoroastrian stock, though it lay as a stage between that religion and the recent version of Christianity, which, as well as Judaism, is a mere heresy from the religion of the Persians. Since the Persian cosmogony and religion, as well as all others of the East, were purely and confessedly allegorical, is it rational to suppose that anything of the kind got up by the Jews, could be other than a rough and ignorant version of that of their masters? It has been admitted by most of the learned that the Shastras and Vedas, or scriptures of the Hindus, were in existence 1,400 years before the alleged time of Moses; and, in all probability, the Zendavesta, or Persian Bible, was long anterior also. Sir William Jones, of pious and orthodox memory, confesses that, "the name of Chrishna,* and the general outline of his story, _was long anterior to the birth of our Savior_, and, to the time of Homer, _we know very certainly_. I am persuaded also (continues he), that a connexion existed between the old idolatrous nations of Egypt, India, Greece, and Italy, _long before the time of Moses_. In the Sanscrit Dictionary, compiled more than two thousand years ago, we have the whole story of the incarnate Deity, BORN OF A VIRGIN, and miraculously escaping in his infancy from the reigning tyrant of his country." * Sir William Jones says, in his "Asiatic Researches," that he was assured by Colonel Valency, that Chrishna in Irish means the sun. The Baal-fire feast, or meeting, was a great festival in Ireland, on the 25th of December, and midsummer eye. Baal, or Bel, was a name of the sun all over the east. ** This probably alludes to the great period of nearly 26,000 years, in which time the sun passes through the whole circle of the zodiac. That is, he is in each sign, at the venial equinox, for the space of 2,155 years.