( v )
Religion have occasioned whole folios: And yet we may perhaps, with reason assert, that a work which should endeavour to unfold the spirit, and mark the influence of that Religion in a moral and political view, is yet wanted.
Nevertheless that Religion only extended itself in Europe over Greece and Italy. How indeed could it take root among the conquered nations, who hated the Gods of Rome both as foreign Deities, and as the Gods of their masters? That Religion then so well known among us, that even our children study its principal tenets, was confined within very narrow bounds, while the major part of Gaul, of Britain, Germany and Scandinavia uniformly cultivated another very different, from time immemorial.
The Europeans may reasonably call this Celtic worship[1], the Religion of their
- ↑ “It little imports that the learned stile this Religion in France, the Gaulish; in England, the British; in Germany, the Germanic, &c. It is now allowed to have been the same, at least with respect to the fundamental doctrines, in all these countries: As I here all along consider it in a general light, I use the word Celtic as the most universal term, without entering into the disputes to which this word hath given rise, and which
