’Tis not to be wonder’d at, that the ancients wrap’d up this doctrine in an abstruse and symbolic way of speaking, of writing, and in hieroglyphic characters and works, as we have seen. It was communicated to them in the same manner; they did not, could not comprehend it any more than we, but they held it as a precious depositum of sacred wisdom.
We may therefore make this deduction from what has been said, that the christian doctrine of distinct personalities in the deity, is so far from being contrary to reason, as some would have it, or above human reason as others, that ’tis evidently deducible therefrom, at least highly agreeable thereto, when seriously propos’d to our reason. And when most undoubtedly the ancients had such a notion, even from the creation, those minds that were of a contemplative turn, would embrace it and cultivate it, as being the most exalted knowledge we are capable of. Of such a turn were our Druids, as all accounts agree.
CHAP. XVI.
Of the third species of patriarchal temples, form’d in the resemblance of a circle and wings. A description of one of this sort on the banks of the Humber in Lincolnshire. A very remarkable sort of barrows there, like to beds. This figure of the alate circle, the Egyptians call’d by the name of CNEPH; authors mistake in telling us it was the name of God. ’Tis indeed the symbol of the third divine emanation from the supreme, call’d the anima mundi. CNEPH is an oriental word, from canaph, to fly, עוף. The entire symbol, circle, snake and wings, was call’d CNEPHPTHA. Ptha more particularly meant the serpent, or symbol of the second divine person. The supreme, they held to be ineffable, as well as invisible, therefore symboliz’d him by the circle. The Neptune of the Greeks deriv’d from CNEPH, דניא dunia, a circle added to Cneph, is circulus alatus. He was president of the waters, from Gen. i. 2. and the divine spirit moved upon the face of the waters. Hence this temple set on the edge of the Humber. Of the Egyptian Canopus. Another of these alate temples on Navestock-common in Essex. The word ganaph preserv’d in the name of the town. Knave, gnavus and knap, a teutonic word, all from the hebrew. Mr. Toland mentions an alate temple of the Druids in the hebrid islands, but does not altogether understand it. Of Abaris the hyperborean Druid, a friend of Pythagoras’s. That the directive virtue of the magnetic needle was known anciently. The bed barrows on the Humber banks explain’d. A metaphysical disquisition concerning the Druids’ knowledge of a third emanation or divine person, from the supreme; a truth agreeable to reason. This was the Mercury of the ancients, as well as Neptune. The names which the Druids gave to the three divine persons. Conclusion. They were in effect Christians.
WHEN I wrote my Itinerary, I travelled a good deal of the Hermen-street road, and the Foss road, having Mr. Samuel Buck in my company. At that time I engag’d him to take in hand the work, which he has so laudably pursued, and sav’d the remembrance of innumerable antiquities in our island, by that collection of elegant prints which he has publish’d. When we were on the banks of the Humber, the name of Barrow invited my curiosity, and it was fully answer’d, by finding that most noble antiquity there of the old Druids, upon the marsh, call’d Humbers castle.
A rivulet rises near the town of Barrow, and when it falls off the high ground, and enters on the level marshes on the [Humber] shore, it turns a mill. Just there, upon the edge of the marsh, upon a gentle eminence, nearly overflow’d by high spring-tides, and between the salt and fresh water, is the work we are to speak of, made of great banks of earth thrown up, in an odd manner, which gives it the denomination of castle. I observ’d all about it, and in the adjacent marshes, many long tumuli of different sizes, but all of a particular shape, such as I had never seen elsewhere, being form’d like a bed. I immediately set to work in digging into several of them, and we found burnt bones, ashes, bits of urns, and such kind of matters, all extremely rotten and decay’d; and the very same appearances as I had so often seen, in digging the barrows about Stonehenge and Abury.
This satisfied me that the work must belong to the most ancient inhabitants of the island, notwithstanding its unusual form. And when I attentively consider’d those banks, and made a plan of them, I was very agreeably surpriz’d in discovering the purport and meaning, which was to represent the circulus alatus or winged circle, an ancient hieroglyphic well known to those more particularly conversant with Egyptian monuments; and what they rightly call the symbol of the anima mundi, or spirit pervading the universe; in truth, the divine spirit.
I had no hesitation in adjudging this to be a temple of our Druids. All reasons imaginable concurr’d. Tho’ instead of stones, they have made this work with mounds of earth; I suppose for want of stones, lying on the surface of the ground. It makes the third kind of the Druid temples which I proposed to describe. The vertical line of it is north-east and south-west, the upper part being directly north-east; and the barrows generally conform to this line, being either upon it, or at right angles with it; the head of the barrow sometimes one way, sometimes the other.
The circle was 120 cubits in diameter. The wings 100 cubits broad, 150 long; but the eastern wing was more extended than the other. For the design of it is somewhat in perspective, as ’tis sometimes seen on Egyptian antiquities.