184 Druidism in connection with Wiltshire. 
3. They taught that all who were guilty of notorious blasphemy 
were to be capitally punished, and that the priests were the sole 
judges of such crimes. 
4, That men should do unto others as they would be done by ; 
and that they should neither injure their neighbour nor themselves. 
5. They considered it wrong (like the Pythagoreans) to eat flesh, 
milk, or eggs, because human souls might perhaps have inhabited 
those bodies. 
6. That the first appearance of the new moon was to be observed 
with the utmost reverence, as that planet was supposed to have 
great influence over the conduct of mankind. 
Lastly. Those who committed injustice while inhabiting human 
bodies, were to be tormented in the bodies of snakes or other 
reptiles, till they had made an atonement for their sins, according 
to the directions of the priests. 
The cruel and abominable rites of the Canaanites and Syrians 
were in latter times too faithfully followed by the Druidical priest- 
hood in Gaul and Britain. They were accustomed to offer many of 
the captives taken in war, who were, by hundreds at a time, enclosed 
in awicker machine, to which the arch-Druid, attended by his 
subordinate priests, set fire; and while their miserable victims were 
being consumed, the priests chanted hymns or anthems, and the 
people danced round the burning pile. The mistletoe was held in 
the highest esteem by the Druids, and was conceived to possess 
many medicinal virtues: it was sacrilege for any but the priests to 
cut it from the oak. In all their public ceremonies the priest stood 
with his eyes fixed on heaven, and his face towards the east. 
“This ceremony,” says an author! to whom allusion has been for- 
merly made, ‘‘was peculiar to all those heathen nations who lived 
westward of the Hellespont, as well as the ancient Britons; and 
although they had all formed the most unworthy notions of the 
Divine Being, yet the hope of a great person being born in the 
east seems to have prevailed everywhere among them. This un- 
1 Hurd’s Ceremonies and Rites. 
