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not translate the grove with the idol, they l carv'd 

 out something like it, which the superstitious people 

 bought, carried home, and made use of representing 

 those venerable places, in which they had the images 

 of some feign'd deity (suppose it Tellus, Baal or 

 Priapus) ; and such was the Jupiter ?v8ev8poc of the 

 Rhodians, Bacchus of the Boeotians, the Sidonian 

 Ashteroth : And the women mentioned 2 Reg. 23. 7. 

 who are said to weave hangings and curtains for the 

 grove, were no other than makers of tentories, to 

 spread from tree to tree, for the more opportune and 

 secret perpetration of those impure rites and mysteries, 

 which (without these coverings) even the opacousness 

 of the places were not obscure enough to conceal. 



9. The famous Druids, or 2 Saronides, whom the 

 learned Bochart from Diodorus, proves to be the 

 same, derived their oak-theology, namely, from that 

 spreading and gloomy shading tree, probably the grove 

 at Mamre, XIII. Gen. 1 8. How their mysteries were 

 celebrated in their woods and forests, is at large to 

 be found in Caesar, Pliny, Strabo, Diodorus, Mela, 

 Apuleius, Ammianus, Lucan, Aventinus, and in- 

 numerable other writers, where you will see that they 

 chose the woods and the groves, not only for all their 

 religious exercises, but their courts of justice ; as the 

 whole institution and discipline is recorded by Caesar, 

 /. 6. and as he it seems found it in our country of 

 Britain, from whence it was afterwards translated 

 into Gallia : For he attributes the first rise of it to 

 this once happy island of groves and oaks ; and affirms, 



1 Luci dicuntur, non modo collectio arborum, &c. sed etiam sciagraphiae sive 

 delineationes lucorum in tabella : See the Annotation on Isa. 17. collated with 

 2 Reg. 23. 6. Crit. Sacr. for they brought the grove out of the temple, and burnt 

 it, which clearly shews it was the picture or image of the grove, and not the trees 

 themselves. 



2 Cane. 1. i. cap. 42. Selden Jani Angl.fac. cap. 2. 



