As to that other Account[383] of the Original of mystical Interpretation of Scripture, or at least of the greater Progress and Improvement of it, which the _Bishop_ out of _Porphyry_ gives, by saying the Fathers learned it of the gentile Philosophers, it is the most senseless and _unscholarlike_ Opinion that a Christian can hold, and I was surprised to see it come from him. It is true that St. _Clement_ of _Alexandria_, _Origen_, and others, were very conversant in the Writings of the _Greek_ Philosophers: And wherefore were they so? Was it to learn mystical Theology of them? No, but, as St. _Jerom_[384] says, to confirm the Doctrines of our Religion, and to confute the _Gentiles_ out of their own Books. For it was asserted by the Fathers, and confess'd by the _Gentile_ Philosophers, that the Mythology of the _Greeks_, the hieroglyphical Learning of the _Egyptians_ and the Oneirocritism of the _Chaldæans_, was all borrowed from the _Hebrews_, and had their Rise from the mystical and allegorical Interpretation of the Scriptures, as shall be made manifest, if the _Bishop_ and I go on in this Controversy: And _therefore_ the Fathers studied the Writings of the _Greeks_, and made the foresaid Use of them in the Conversion of the _Gentiles_; which the _Bishop_ can't but know, if he remembers at all, what he has read in St. _Clement_ of _Alexandria_, and other Fathers. But this, by the by, with a Hint to the _Bishop_ to consider, whether he, who holds here with _Porphyry_, or I who hold with the Fathers, writes the most like an _Infidel_. So much then to the Accounts, which the _Bishop_ of St. _David_'s has given, of the Origine of the mystical Interpretation of Scripture.