332 



A DISCOURSE 



BOOK IV. impure rites and mysteries, which (without these coverings) even the 

 '^"'"^'^""^ opacousness of the places were not obscure enough to conceal 



• Can. lib. i. Xhe famous Druids, or Saronides *, whom the learned Bochart, from 



cap. 42. Seidell 



.Fani Angi. fac. Diodorus, provcs to be the same, derived their Oak-theology, namely, 

 from that spreading and gloomy-shading tree, probably the grove at 

 INIambre, Gen. xiii. 2. How their mysteries were celebrated in their 

 woods and forests, is at large to be found in Caesar, Pliny, Strabo, Dio- 

 dorus, Mela, Apuleius, Ammianus, Lucan, Aventinus, and innumerable 

 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, lib. vi. 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, that the ancient 

 Gauls travelled hither for their initiation ^ To this Tacitus assents, 

 14 Annal. and our most learned critics vindicate it, both from the Greeks 

 and French impertinently challenging it: but the very name itself, which 

 is purely Celtic, does best decide the controversy : for though Apuq be 

 Quercus, yet A^ossius skilfully proves that the Druids were altogether 

 strangers to the Greeks ; but what comes yet nearer to us, dru, fides^ 

 (as one observes,) begetting our now antiquated trou or true, makes our 

 title the stronger : add to this, that amongst the Germans it signified no 

 less than God himself ; and we find drutin or trudin, to import divine, 

 or faitliful, in the Othfridian gospel, both of them sacerdotal expressions. 

 But that in this island of ours, men should be so extremely devoted to 



* For proofs of the lewdness and obscenity of many of the religious rites of the hea- 

 then, vid. Herodot. Euterp. cap. Ixiv. Diodor. Sicul. lib. iv. Valer. Maxim, lib. ii. 

 cap. vi. Juvenal, Sat. ix. ver. 24, and what Eusebius saith of a grove on Mount Li- 

 banus, dedicated to Venus, in his Life of Constantine, lib. ii. cap. Iv. Compare 1 Kings 

 xiv. 2.S. 



f Caesar and Tacitus differ as to the origin of the Druids, the former saying, that the 

 Druidical religion originated in Britain, and the latter, that it was introduced by the Celtic 

 Gauls, when they peopled this island ; of this latter fact, there can be no doubt. It is 

 certain, however, that the British Druids preserved their religion in greater purity than the 

 Gauls, insomuch that young men were frequently sent from Gaul into Britain, to be in- 

 structed in the mysteries of the Druidical religion. The true derivation of Druid, is from 

 the Celtic word Deru, an Oak. 



