5

;
106 TH6 HISTORY
that ifittni; of them ithith believed, and us'd curims
arU, hf'oiight their books together,
and burnt thent
Bsfdi-e all ifieii; and they counted the price of thetri,
Md found it fifty thousand pieces of silver*, or
about three hiltldred pounds sterling;
This ^ras
the first itiistancie of btirnihg books atnotig christians;
and fever since that tiilie the examjile has
been better foUdW'd, than dny precept of the gospel.
XVII. I^rom what tre have hitherto observ'd,
yoii
see that our historians, iny lord, do (in spitfe
of all chances) abound with matter enough to retive
and illusttrate the memory of the Druids.
Besides
that the rites and opinions of other nations
serve not only to give light to theirs, but were
many of them of Druidical ot Celtic extraction^
This no body will deny of the aboriginal Italians,
who haviiig been often over-run by the Gauls, and
luiving several Gallic colonies planted among them,
they partook both of their language and religion
as Avill
be Very easily ovinc'd in our DissertatioUi
and has been already tolerably done by Father
Pezron in his Celtic originals. Diogenes Laertius,
in the proem oi his philosophical history, reckons
the
Druids among the chief authors of the
barbarous theology and philosophy, long anterior
to the Greecs, their disciples :
and Phurnutus, in
his treatise of the Nature of the Gods, says most
expressly,
that " among the many and various
* Acts 19. 19.