dren, whilst living, their prayers were besought, and their precepts received, as the oracles of heaven.

After their death, their memory was revered, and a growing superstition may have begun to invoke these undoubted favourites of heaven, as mediators with the supreme being (just so the saints of the Roman church are invoked), and at last proceeded to worship them as gods.

The ark, also, was the means of preservation to the righteous. Its figure may have been consecrated, as a religious memorial of that preservation, till superstition began to view it as a pledge of safety, and to put it under the charge of an ideal being, who was worshipped as the universal mother.

Thus, the Arkite theology may have sprung from a corruption of the patriarchal religion; and in a manner which would not set the vain imaginations of man in immediate and open hostility with his fallible reason.

As to the incorporation of Sabian idolatry with this superstition, when I recollect, that amongst the heathen Britons, the sacred ship, or ark, the zodiac and the circular temple, had equally the name of Caer Sidi, I cannot help surmising, that the confusion arose from an abuse of the earliest post-diluvian astronomy.

Whether that science revived in Ararat or Chaldea, it was its evident design, to commemorate the history and circumstances of the deluge, in the disposition of signs and constellations. This device may have sprung from an innocent, or even laudable motive.

But from henceforth, the heavens represented those very scenes, with which Noah and his sons had been conversant. These canonized patriarchs were acknowledged to be immortal: for the age which first paid religious homage to the deceased, must of course have admitted the immortality of the soul, and the doctrine of future rewards.

The unbridled imagination of man no sooner contemplated the sun, moon, and planets, expatiating amongst the heavenly mansions of these immortals, than it also began to regard them as emblems of their persons, and of their sacred vessel; and therefore as mediators between the human race, and the unknown and great Supreme. Thus, the Arkite and the Sabian idolatry became one and the

same.

This union seems not to have been coeval with the earliest Arkite superstition of the Noachida. Hence the traditions of the Greeks and other nations relative to the persecution of Latona and her children, of Hercules, Bacchus, and other characters which implied an adoration of the host of heaven. They were admitted, with reluctance, to the rank of gods. Mankind adopted the practice of Sabian idolatry, with an avowed consciousness, that they were departing from the principles of their forefathers.

That the heathen Britons felt this consciousness, we have had abundant proof. It may also be urged, from their own traditions and acknowledgements, that their Arkite superstition was a manifest corruption of better principles.

They had become so gross in their ideas, as to worship. Hu the Mighty, or the patriarch, as a god. Yet they had not absolutely forgotten his true history. The Triads view him,

as a righteous man, and ascribe to him the actions of a man. Taliesin says of him and his family-" The just

ones toiled: on the sea which had no land, long did they "dwell: of their integrity it was, that they did not endure "the extremity of distress."*

If they were preserved for their integrity, it must have been by some superintending power: and this power is acknowledged by the same Bard, in his song upon Dylan, where we find, that "A sole supreme God, most wise un"folder of secrets, most beneficent," had destroyed a profligate world, and preserved the righteous patriarch. And again: the sovereign, the supreme ruler of the land, extended his dominion over the shores of the world, or destroyed it by the deluge; but, at the same time, preserved the inclosure of the righteous patriarch in perfect security.†

So that the great Diluvian god, who was worshipped under the symbol of the bull and the dragon, and who was even identified with the luminary of the material heavens, is acknowledged to have been no other than a saint of the most high.

If such principles were admitted by heathens, when they came to the candid avowal of the truth, wherein did the great heinousness of heathenism, and its votaries, consist?

Not in an absolute ignorance of a great First Cause, and of his superintending Providence, but in giving his glory to another, and in acting against those better principles, which their own minds could not but acknowledge.

* Appendix, No. 10.

+ Appendix, No. 3.

"Because that which may be known of God, is manifest "to them, for God hath shewed it unto them. For the "invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are "clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made,

even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are "without excuse: because that, when they knew God, they "glorified him not, as God, neither were thankful; but "became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart 46 was darkened.

"Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, " and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an "image, made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things-who changed the "truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the "creature, more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever."*

Such is the view of this subject, communicated by a true philosopher, a good antiquary, and no mean scholar.

The human mind is prone to such woful lapses, when it gives way to vain imagination and self-conceit to the opinions of fallible, or the views of designing men.

Thus, Druidism was removed but a few paces further from the religion of Noah, than popery, and some other modes of worship, denominated Christian, are departed from the faith, the purity, and the simplicity of the gospel. Wherefore it behoves all men, who build their hopes upon the religion of Christ, not to place an implicit confidence in the practice of a corrupt age, or in the principles of an arrogant and presumptuous teacher; but to have a constant eye to the foundation once laid by the apostles and prophets.

K K

St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, Chap. I.

Here another remark of some importance offers itself.

As Gentilism arose from a corruption of the patriarchal religion, it is reasonable to suppose, that amongst a multiplicity of errors and absurdities, it preserved some tincture of the venerable source from whence it sprung: in the same manner as popery is acknowledged still to possess some of the genuine forms and tenets of primitive Christianity; and a diligent comparison of heathen systems with the book of Job, and the first book of Moses, will evince that this was actually the case.

Whatever Gentilism had thus preserved without corruption, must be regarded as derived from the revelations vouchsafed to the patriarchs, and therefore, in its origin, of Divine authority, like those uncorrupted forms and tenets in popery, which are derived from the truth of the Gospel.

We are not, therefore, to conclude, a priori, that every form of sacrifice, every rite of purification, every sacred symbol, or even every fundamental doctrine, which may have prevailed amongst the ancient heathens, was of human device, and therefore could have nothing similar to it in the revealed will and ordinances of the Supreme Being. For this mode of argument would lead us to conclusions, as unjust as the cavils of those scrupulous persons, who assert, that the church of England must be superstitious, because it retains some of the forms of the church of Rome.

As this church has retained some of the institutes of true Christianity, so Gentilism had not lost every institute of the patriarchal religion: and these uncorrupted institutes are pure and sacred, notwithstanding the general corruption of the channels through which they have flowed.