SYLVA 217 



how this innocent veneration to groves passed from 

 the people of God to the Gentiles, and by what 

 degrees it degenerated into dangerous superstitions : 

 For the Devil was always God's ape, and did so ply 

 his groves, altars, and sacrifices, and almost all other 

 rites belonging to his worship, that every green tree 

 was full of his abominations, and places devoted to his 

 impure service \Hifuere (saysPliny, speaking of groves) 

 quondam numinum templa^ &c. c These were of old 

 c the temples of the gods, and after that simple (but 

 c ancient custom) men at this day consecrate the 

 c fairest and goodliest trees to some deity or other ; 

 c nor do we more adore our glittering shrines of gold 

 c and ivory, than the groves, in which with a pro- 

 found and awful silence, we worship them. 2 Quintilian 

 speaking of the veneration paid an old umbragious 

 oak, adds, In quibus grandia & antiqua robora jam non 

 tantum habeat speciem^ quantum religionem : For in 

 truth, the very tree it self was sometimes deified, 

 and that Celtic statue of Jupiter no better than a 

 prodigious tall oak, whence 'tis said the Chaldean 

 theologues deriv'd their superstition towards it; 3 and 

 the Persians we read, us'd that tree in all their 

 mysterious rites. And as for wood in general, they 

 paid it that veneration, for its maintaining their deity, 

 (represented by their perennial fire) that they would 

 not suffer any sort of wood to be us'd for coffins to 

 inclose the dead in, (but in plates of iron) counting 

 it a profanation. In short, so were people given up 

 to this devilish and unnatural blindness, as to the 

 offering of human sacrifices not to the tree-gods only, 

 but to the trees themselves as real gods. 



1 Cyril. Alexand. in Hos.$. 13; Deut. 16. 4; 2 Reg. 16. 4. 



2 Melchior Adamus Hist. Eccles. de Sueconibus, c. 234. 



3 Mariana in 2. Paralip. 28. 4. 



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