Next to behold the chirography thereof, written in no other than the old Court Hand, not of the best form, but seeming somewhat older than we find it in other places, and some of the letters and characters different from the common Court Hand. As to the speech itself, it is such as the common speakers of the Cornish now used here do not understand, nor any but such as will be at the pains to study it, no more than the common speakers of the vulgar nation of the Greeks do at this day Homer’s Iliad. So the Lord’s Prayer in the year 700 was thus in English: Vren fader thic arth, &c. In 900, Thu ure fader the eart on heofenum. As to the antiquity thereof, we observe the name of our Saviour is all along written IHS, after the old form used in crucifixes, and then also the name written Chrest, not Christ. So we find it written in Tacitus, Suetonius, and in some other Roman authors it may be found. So Christians were called Chrestians, as Tertullian observes, Apol. c. 3.[25] And so the vulgar in Cornish speak it Chrest, and not Christ. In this old piece are no words antiently intermixed of the Saxon tongue or Angles, which shews, in all probability, that it was written before their time at least, if not much further off; whereas, the common speech of it now carries much of those latter figures, to the disfiguring of the face thereof. But of all other intermixion, it seems to receive in it (with a kind of delight) the tongue of the Romans, by whom the people were easily brought to take up that tongue which they brought with them, and afterwards more and more by degrees in succeeding times, the Roman speech was interwoven with the Cornish, out of a natural propensity to it, as that tongue came to be used of all other nations afterwards, as was observed before. Another argument there is (and that which is to be admired and rejoiced at) that in this old piece of the Passion, there is nothing heretical, little of error to be found, or savouring of ill opinions; which is strange, since it has passed through so many ages, in which so many ill broods have been hatched, and, amongst others, one of our own, the Pelagian heresy, a brat bred here amongst us at Bangor. Nor is there any mention made of any monastical persons, or several orders of men so living. Nothing that refers to Monks, Friars, Priors, or to any other orders, secular or sacred, nor any thing said in approbation or dislike of any such thing. There is nothing in it savouring of the old bards or their poetry, nor having references to Merlyanisms, but a bare and sober relation of matter of fact. II. As to the description of the Passion and Resurrection of our Saviour, I cannot again but admire, that it is so unpolluted with the Arian or Pelagian heresies. There are, it is true, some inoffensive and harmless traditions, and a word may be let slip of the Virgin Mary; and in those traditions you may observe the concurrence of others.