so natural to man; amid all the wrecks of humanity, the monuments of his former perfection." The infatuated Britons met with the objects of their religious veneration every where: the sun, the great regent of the day; the moon, illuminating the darkness of the night; the rivers, fountains, and lakes; the lofty mountains, and the waters of the ocean encircling Britain; together with the rude monuments interspersed throughout the country: to all these the forefathers of our race paid divine honours. But wherever Roman stations were fixed, and Roman towns raised, the consequence would be to withdraw the British populace from their own superstitions to those of Rome. By means of the Christians in the Roman army, and among their civil officers or their attendants, some of the natives would obtain the knowledge of Christianity, and yield to its transforming power and influence. The following reflections of the ingenious author before cited, are very appropriate to our subject: -: "Their system, (meaning that of the Romans,) was fully as wild a combination of human vice and folly, more splendid and less cruel, yet less retaining the illustrious doctrines of God's superintendence, the eternity of the soul, and the transitoriness of matter; and less adapted to touch the religious strings of the heart. But the Britons, on their imitating the manners of their conquerors, would naturally adopt their mythology; they would as readily class the Roman with the British deities as the Romans incorporated the British with their own. This strange conduct of exchanging divinities, so common to them and all the other Heathen, was the natural result of a conscious want of satisfaction in a right worship, and a misdirected desire of supplying the place of the one by multiplying the objects of the other. And yet it would become subservient to the more ready in troduction of both within the pale of the Christian religion. Both must, in consequence, have been less ad dicted to either: the Britons half Romanized, and the Romans, half Britonized in their idolatry, would lose all that attachment to their nation which is merely the servant of prejudice, and yet the strongest barrier generally against conversion." Thus, by the subjugation of Britain to the power of Rome, the grand purpose of Divine Providence was about to be matured. The knowledge and learning possessed by the Druids soon sunk into obscurity; and their temporal dignity was now gone for ever, as they were no longer to be invested with magisterial authority. The magic chain, whereby the multitude had been kept in awe, from the belief of their very superior knowledge, as well as their superior power, was now dissolved by the consummate artifices of their new masters; who, by civilizing them, at the same time were adopting the surest method of enslaving them. But the means whereby they rivetted the chains of the nations depending on them were one day to prove the subversion of Rome. CHAPTER II. The Progress of the Christian Religion among the HAVING discussed the various accounts respecting the introduction of Christianity into Britain, and endeavoured to ascertain that which appears the most worthy of credit; agreeable to the circumstances of the times, the general state of Christianity in the world, and the few documents which are retained of ancient British tradition, we must proceed to inquire what progress the Gospel made after its introduction among our an cestors. Here I shall be excused for adverting to the language of the ingenious Historian of Manchester, on the nature and tendency of our Divine religion; which appears the more illustrious when contrasted with the errors and obscurity of Heathenism. "When by the dread sin of our great representative in Paradise," Mr. Whitaker observes, "corruption was first admitted into the spiritual world, ignorance was equally introduced with it into the intellectual; and, as the former proceeded in its work, gradually tainting the principles of the moral life, the latter followed regularly behind, and as gradually clouded the powers of the moral discernment. In this state of the human constitution, the heart fuming up to the head, and viciousness in the one diffusing darkness over the other, the original religion of man would soon be coloured with folly. The mind, chained down to sensitive gratifications, and brooding perpetually over sensitive gratifications, must soon begin to lose its native elasticity of spirit in the consideration of religion. Many of its ideas concerning it would quickly become material and bodily: the soul of the generality could no longer rise of itself to the contemplation of that world of spirits with which it was so intimately connected; and to the adoration of that spiritual Lord to whom it was so immediately subjected. It required some corporeal representation, some substituted and imaginary resemblance, to be planted before the eye, in order to assist its ideas, and call out its devotions: hence the spreading tree was selected, and the lofty pillar raised, as an emblem of God, and an object of prayer; and the awful Majesty of heaven and earth was regularly worshipped through the medium of one or the other. "On this principle, probably, was the first introduction of images into the service of the Heathen. Associated vice and folly soon moulded religion into a more corporeal system. Accustomed to sensible objects in devotion, and weakened in her faculties by sin, the mind would soon lose all the spiritual ideas of worship, and retain only the exterior and bodily. "Thus, in all probability, was the adoration of the pillar and the tree brought at first into the world. And the Britons adopted this idolatry: they worshipped the flourishing oak; they adored the massy column." The sentiments which follow are so just and appropriate, that I cannot forbear transcribing them :— "Matter being once made universally the object of prayer, the mind would naturally wander over the creation, and select such parts of it as appeared most splendid and important. The sun and moon, therefore, would first engage her attention; and, for the same reason, appear to have been more the general objects of devotion than any other parts of our material system. The planets, the elements, and the ocean; mountains, rivers, and rocks; imaginary intelligences, and departed spirits; would next rise in succession to the world the senseless deities of abused reason. And all of these, probably,” adds our author," and most of them, certainly, were the national divinities of Britain." The following extract is also so full of fine and appropriate remarks, and expressed in Mr. Whitaker's own brilliant manner, that my presenting it to the Reader can no less than gratify him :— "Amidst these wild wanderings of disordered religion, the two primary institutions of God, priests and sacrifices, and the three principal doctrines of a superintending Providence, the world's final destruction, and the soul's continuance in a future period of existence, were all carefully retained by the Britons. The great incident of the Fall occasioned the institutions at first: and it was still pointed out by the observances. If the Deity had not known man to have sunk from his original perfection, and if Heathenism had not believed a corruption to have stained his original purity, the former could not have enjoined, or the latter have retained, these particular observances at all. The appointment of interceding ministers, and the establishment of conciliating sacrifices, were obviously made on account of, and must as obviously have indicated in their use, some fixed but erazable taint of impurity in man, and some permanent but appeaseable principle of anger in God. And these were retained by all the Heathen. But the doctrines of a Providence, the soul's immortality, and the world's destruction, were almost confined to the Britons; and they remained among them peculiar incen tives to moral actions. In that vitiated tone of the liuman mind, however, the united force of all these was |