Phut was a great arch druid or patriarchal high-priest, as being the head of his family. And according to my notion of the matter, these long barrows all belong to some of the higher order of the Druids. Eustathius interprets Homer’s word by that of ταφος, tomb. Stephanus the scholiast on Hesiod’s Theogon, makes Arima a mountain in Cilicia or Lydia, where is Tiphon’s κοιτη. V. Oppian. Alexand. ver. 599. Lucan ver. 191. Apollon. II. Strabo XVI. Mela I. 13. Pausanias in Atticis tells us of Hippolita the Amazons’ tumulus, that ’twas made in shape of an Amazonian pelta or shield; perhaps somewhat like our tumulus.
In the beginning of the idolatrous times, they likewise consecrated Hermes the Egyptian into Mercury, but the Egyptians took Mercury in a different light from the Canaanites: they made him the god of divine wisdom, the Canaanites who were immers’d in trade and traffick, made him the god of profit and gain; and that in the person of their ancestor Canaan. Nevertheless they knew the holy spirit prior to idolatry: for many think that Mercury was no mortal man, S. Augustin, C. D. viii. 26. and Orpheus in his hymn to him, pronounces him to be of the race of Dionysus, by whom Jehovah is understood.
I suppose Canaan when he died, had an alate temple built about his place of sepulture, which in after times occasion’d posterity to deify him under the name of Mercury. Again I suppose the like done over the tumulus of the patriarch TARSIS; which gave a handle in idolatrous times, to consecrate him into the Neptune of the heathen; who in effect is the same as Mercury, saving that being done by people of a different genius and disposition, they divided one god into two.
Thus we have sail’d thro’ a wide ocean of antiquities, and that not without a compass. We set old things transmitted to us in writing, in parallelism with these we may now see at home, in such a manner, as I think evidently shews them to be the same.
Nec sum animi dubius, verbis ea vincere magnum
Quàm sit, & antiquis hunc addere rebus honorem.
Sed me Parnassi deserta per ardua dulcis
Raptat amor—————— Virg.
I shall conclude, with 1. what we may very well imagine to have been the ratiocination of the Druids among one another, in their theological contemplations, concerning this last kind of their works, these winged temples. Of such sort would be their speculations thereon, in their serious scrutiny into the nature of the deity.
We observ’d, the Druids in their theological studies must, with the other eastern sages, find out two ways of the supreme being exerting his almighty power, multiplying himself, as the Zoroastrians, the Pythagoreans and the Platonists call it, or divine geniture: and creation. The first necessary, therefore done before time; the second arbitrary, therefore done in time. Nevertheless this second was fit and proper to be done, therefore necessarily to be perform’d. For whatever becomes the allperfect being, we may pronounce necessary with him.