On the whole we may say that in the descriptions of Paradise, with the Tree of Life, the companies of Old Testament worthies, etc., Hebrew ideas generally predominated, while the Greek Tartarus furnished most of the ideas of the Christian Hell. These ideas, however, did not include the doctrine of rebirth, which was so prominent a feature in the Greek mystic cults. Indeed, the literature of the Vision of the Otherworld appears to have belonged, in the main, to the orthodox portion of the Church, avoiding, on the one hand, everything pertaining to the popular cults of Isis, Serapis, Mithra, the Magna Mater, and other fashionable Oriental deities, and, on the other hand, taking from Hellenic beliefs only such as were in harmony with the general character of the Christian faith, little attracted by the Neo-Platonic theories of emanations, æons, and the like, which did so much to mould the Gnostic and other heresies. It would seem that the Vision of the Otherworld never acquired the same importance in the Western Church as in the East; nevertheless, several of the Western fathers report similar cases, many of which, it is probable, already existed in popular tradition. One of these, related by St. Augustine, tells how a certain Curina, a native of Hippo, died, but, as the condition of his body suggested that he was merely in a trance, his friends delayed the burial for some days. At length, however, the funeral was about to take place, when the corpse returned to life, and told his friends that he had really died, but, as he was being brought up for judgment, it was discovered that the Angel of Death had mistaken him for another Curina, a blacksmith, who dwelt in the same neighbourhood. Accordingly, after being favoured with a vision of Paradise, our Curina was dismissed with a caution to mend his ways, and present himself to St. Augustine for baptism, both of which commands he obeyed. The correspondence of St. Gregory the Great contains several instances of a similar kind. One of these preserves the experiences of a man of Constantinople, Stephen by name, which were much the same as those of Curina, he having received the fatal summons in place of another Stephen, who too was a blacksmith. Stephen, like Curina, was restored to the body, after receiving a vision, in his case, of Hell.