gress, the properties and powers of animal life. This lower state was a state of evil; but there could be no sin there because there could be no choice, and therefore death was always the passage to a higher step of being. But when the soul had reached its human form, it then possessed the knowledge of good and evil, for man is born to make his choice between them; he is born also to experience change and suffering, these being the conditions of humanity. The soul, thus elevated, became responsible, and if it had chosen evil instead of good, returned after death to the state of evil, and was condemned to an inferior grade of animal life, low in proportion to the debasement whereto it had reduced itself. But they who had chosen the better part, which it is free for all to choose, passed into a state from whence it was not possible to fall for when death had delivered them from the body, evil had power over them no longer, because they had experienced it, and knew that it was evil: and they were no longer subject to suffering, neither to change; but continuing the same in goodness and in heavenly affections, they increased in knowledge, and thereby in happiness, through all eternity. They believed also that the beatified soul retained the love of its country and its kind; and that the spirits of the good sometimes returned to earth, and became prophets among mankind, that they might assist their brethren, and by teaching them heavenly things, oppose the power of Cythraul, or the Evil One.

These were but the conceits of imagination; and they who impose upon the people their own imaginations, however innocent, prepare the way for the devices of deceit and wickedness. Good men may have mingled these fancies with the truth; bad ones feigned that there were other gods beside Him in whom we live and move and have our being; Teutates, whom they called the father, and Taranis the thunderer, and Hesus the god of battles, and Andraste the goddess of victory; Hu the mighty, by whom it is believed that Noah, the second parent of the human race, was intended; Ceridwen, a goddess in whose rites the preservation of mankind in the ark was figured; and Beal or Belinus, ... for the Phenicians had introduced the worship of their Baal. By favour of these false gods, the Druids pretended to foretell future events, and as their servants and favourites they demanded gifts and offerings from the deluded multitude.

The better to secure this revenue, they required the people, at the beginning of winter, to extinguish all their fires on one day, and kindle them again from the sacred fire of the Druids, which would make the house fortunate for the ensuing year: and if any man came who had not paid his yearly dues, they refused to give him a spark, neither durst any of his neighbours relieve him; nor might he himself procure fire by any other means, so that he and his family were deprived of it till he had discharged the uttermost of his debt. They erected also great stones so cunningly fitted one upon another, that if the upper one were touched in a certain place, though only with a finger, it would rock; whereas no strength of man might avail to move it if applied to any other part: hither they led those who were accused of any crime, and under pretence that the gods would, by this form of trial, manifest the guilt or innocence of the party, directed him where to touch and make the proof: and thus at their discretion they either absolved the accused, or made them appear guilty.

The mistletoe, the seed whereof is eaten and voided by the birds, and thus conveyed from one tree to another, they affected to hold in veneration. When it was discovered growing upon an oak, upon which tree it is rarely to be found, the Druids went thither with great solemnity, and all things were made ready for sacrifice and for feasting. Two white bulls were fastened by their horns to the tree; the officiating priest ascended, and cut the mistletoe with a golden knife; others stood below to receive it in a white woollen cloth, and it was carefully preserved, that water wherein it had been steeped might be administered to men as an antidote against poison, and to cattle for the sake of making them fruitful. The sacrifice was then performed. The best and most beautiful of the flocks and herds were selected for

this purpose. The victim was divided into three parts: one was consumed as a burnt offering; he who made the offering feasted upon another, with his friends; and the third was the portion of the Druids. In this wise did they delude the people. But they had worse rites than these, and were guilty of greater abominations. They were notorious, above the priests of every other idolatry, for the practice of pretended magic. They made the people pass through fire in honour of Beal; and they offered up the life of

man in sacrifice, saying that when the victim was smitten with a sword, they could discover events which were to come by the manner in which he fell, and the flowing of his blood, and the quivering of his body in the act of death. When a chief was afflicted with sickness, they sacrificed a human victim, because they said the continuance of his life might be purchased if another life were offered up as its price; and in like manner, men were offered up when any calamity befell the people, and when they were about to engage in war. Naked women, stained with the dark blue dye of woad, assisted at these bloody rites. On greater occasions, a huge figure in the rude likeness of man, was made of wicker-work, and filled with men: as many as were condemned to death for their offences were put into it; but if these did not suffice to fill the image, the innocent were thrust in, and they surrounded it with straw and wood, and set fire to it, and consumed it, with all whom it contained.

Their domestic institutions were not less pernicious than their idolatry. A wife was common to all the kinsmen of her husband, a custom which prevented all connubial love, and destroyed the natural affection between child and father; for every man had as many wives as he had kinsmen, and no man knew his child, nor did any child know its father. These were the abominations of our British fathers after the light of the Patriarchs was lost among them, and before they received the light of the Gospel.

CHAPTER II.

RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ROMANS.FIRST INTRODUCTION
OF CHRISTIANITY.—PERSECUTION.
FIRST ESTABLISHMENT OF

CHRISTIANITY.—RELIGION OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS.

WHEN the Romans established themselves as conquerors in Britain, the authority of the Druids was destroyed, and one system of idolatry was exchanged for another as far as Roman civilization extended. The heathenism, which was thus introduced, contained fewer remains of patriarchal truths than that which it displaced it was less bloody, because, during the progress of knowledge and refinement, the more inhuman of its rights had fallen into disuse; and it was not so fraudulent, because for the same reason it had in great measure ceased to obtain belief, or to command respect; but inasmuch as it had any influence over the conduct of the people, its effect was worse, because the fables which were related of its false deities, gave a sanction to immoralities of every kind, even the foulest and most abominable crimes. So gross indeed was this iniquitous mythology, that none except the most ignorant of the multitude gave ear to it; the priests who performed the service of the temple laughed in secret at the rites which they practised and the fictions upon which their ceremonies were founded, and the educated ranks looked upon the credulity of the vulgar with scorn. Religion had no connexion with morality among the Greek and Roman heathens, and this was one main cause of their degeneracy and corruption. Religion consisted with them merely in the observance of certain rites, and the performance of sacrifices; and men were left to the schools of philosophy, there to choose their system of morals, and learn a rule of life. And in those schools the blind led the blind. Some of the bedarkened teachers affirmed that there were no Gods; others, that if there were any, they took no thought for

I owe this remark to Stillingfleet, by whom it is coupled with this weighty caution, "Let us have a care of as dangerous a separation between faith and works."

this world, neither regarded the affairs of men. By some, the highest happiness was placed in sensual gratification; by others, in the practice of a cold stern virtue, of which pride was the principle, and selfishness the root. A miserable condition of society, in which the evil-disposed had nothing to restrain them but the fear of human laws; and the good, nothing to console them under the keenest sorrows which man is born to; no hope beyond this transitory and uncertain life; nothing to disarm death of its sting; nothing to assure them of victory over the grave. Yet the Romans became fiercely intolerant in support of a mythology wherein they had no belief: they admitted other idolatries, and even erected altars to the gods of the Britons: but when the tidings of salvation were proclaimed, they were kindled with rage, and persecuted the Christians to death.

It cannot now be ascertained by whom the glad tidings of the Gospel were first brought into Britain. The most probable tradition says that it was Bran,' the father of Caractacus, who, having been led into captivity with his son, and hearing the word at Rome, received it, and became on his return the means of delivering his countrymen from a worse bondage. There is also some reason to believe that Claudia, who is spoken of together with Pudens, by the Apostle Paul, was a British lady of this illustrious household: because a British woman of that name is known to have been the wife of Pudens2 at that time. Legends, which rest upon less credible grounds, pretend that a British king called Lucius, who was tributary to the Romans, was baptized with many of his subjects. These things are doubtful: "the light of the word shone here," says Fuller, the church historian, "but we know not who kindled it." It is said that the first church was erected at Glastonbury; and this tradition may seem to deserve credit, because it was not contradicted in those ages when other churches would have found it profitable to advance a similar pretension. The building is described as a rude structure of wickerwork, like the dwellings of the people in those days, and differing from them only in its dimensions, which were threescore feet in length, and twenty-six in breadth. An abbey was afterwards erected there, one of the finest of those edifices, and one of the most remarkable for the many interesting circumstances conOwen's Cambrian Biography, Triads. 2 Martial, 1. iv. ep. 13.