The context to this passage in the Oration is as follows: Tatian is arguing about the immortality of the soul, and he states that the soul is not in itself immortal but mortal, but that nevertheless it is possible for it not to die. If it do not know the truth it dies, but rises again at the end of the world, receiving eternal death as a punishment. "Again, however, it does not die, though it be for a time dissolved, if it has acquired knowledge of God; for in itself it is darkness, and there is nothing luminous in it, and this, therefore, is (the meaning of) the saying: The darkness comprehends not the light. For the soul [------] did not itself save the spirit [------], but was saved by it, and the light comprehended the darkness. The Logos (Reason) truly is the light of God, but the ignorant soul is darkness [------]. For this reason, if it remain 1 We have already mentioned that the Gospel according to Peter contained the doctrine of the Logos. {376} alone, it tends downwards to matter, dying with the flesh," &c., &c.(1) The source of "the saying" is not mentioned, and it is evident that, even if it were taken to be a reference to the fourth Gospel, nothing would thereby be proved but the mere existence of the Gospel. "The saying," however, is distinctly different in language from the parallel in the Gospel, and it may be from a different Gospel. We have already remarked that Philo calls the Logos "the Light,"(2) and quoting in a peculiar form Ps. xxvi. 1: "For the Lord is my light [------] and my Saviour," he goes on to say that, as the sun divides day and night, so, Moses says, "God divides light and darkness" [------].(3) When we turn away to things of sense we use "another light," which is in no way different from "darkness."(4) The constant use of the same similitude of Light and darkness in the Canonical Epistles(5) shows how current it was in the Church; and nothing is more certain than the fact that it was neither originated by, nor confined to, the fourth Gospel. The third and last passage is as follows: [------] {377} Tatian here speaks of God, and not of the Logos, and in this respect, as well as in language and context, the passage differs from the fourth Gospel. The phrase is not introduced as a quotation, and no reference is made to any Gospel. The purpose for which the words are used, again, rather points to the first chapters of Genesis than to the dogmatic prologue enunciating the doctrine of the Logos.(1) Under all these circumstances, the source from which the expression may have been derived cannot with certainty be ascertained and, as in the preceding instance, even if it be assumed that the words show acquaintance with the fourth Gospel, nothing could be proved but the mere existence of the work about a century and a half after the events which it records. It is obvious that in no case does Tatian afford the slightest evidence of the Apostolic origin or historical veracity of the fourth Gospel.