5

'
62 THE HISTORY
This, my lord, I reckon to be
of their profession.
no digression from ray subject, since what little
opposition their happen 'd to be in Ireland to
Christianity, Avas wholly made by the Dniids, or
at their instigation :
and that when they perceiv'd
this new religion like to prevail, none came into it
speedier, or made a more advantageous figure in
it, than they. The Irish, however, have their martyrologies,
(lest this shou'd be objected by some
trifler) but they are of such of their nation as suffered
in other Countries, or under the heathen
Danes in their own country, some hundreds of
years after the total conversion of it to Christianity.
V. Those advantages we have nam'd in the two
last sections, and many the like articles, with tlie
Druids pretences to work miracles, to foretel
events by augury and otherwise,
to have familiar
intercourse with the gods (highly confirm'd by
calculating eclipses) arid
a thousand impostures
of the same nature*, I can, by irrefragable authorities,
set in such a light, that all of the like kind
may to every one appear in as evident a view»
which, as I hinted before, cannot but be very serviceable
both to religion and morality.
For true
religion does not consist in cunningly devis'd
fables, in authority, dominion, or pomp; but in
* The heads of the two last sections, with these here mentioned,
(though conceived in few words) will yet each make a separate
chapter in the History ; this present specimen being chiefly ia.
tondod for modem iustances, «9 by the sequel will aj^ear.