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.