tutions of their religion. And from the title which they assumed of Catholics, or a party spread over the world; the supposition, as well as the fact is, that all accessible regions were quickly penetrated by their doctrines and modes for life and death. The point of time at which that far part of the world, the island of Britain, which is the only one necessary here to be defined, was affected by the predominancy of christian rites over the previous mortuary system of the country, concurs with this course of things. In the outset of the labours of St. Augustine, Anno Dom: 596, Canterbury was erected into a metropolitan archbishopric and created the first place of a christian sepulchre. After this example public church yards found their admission generally into cities and towns, Anno Dom: 740: and funerals were first celebrated in them Anno Dom: 758. Chron: ta. The attendant rites, emanating from the common head of the see of Rome, would correspond with those used in every other part of the catholic institutes. And of these the commentator upon St. Cyprian gives the following information. "Qui plura huc pertinentia "desiderat, legat August. lib. de cura pro mortuis. Ceremo"nias vero vel ab ipsis ecclesiæ cunabulis in sepultura mortuorum usitatas pulchre describit Dion. Areopag. sub finem "Hier: Eccle. ac Clemens Romanus constit. Apostol. lib. vi c. 30 ac lib. viii. c. 47, 48, 49 ac 50. Quibus locis illas "ipsas orationes reperire est, quibus etiam nunc ecclesia utitur." This imports---" Any who has a wish for more appertaining "hereto, may consult Augustine's work concerning the method

"with the dead. Dion. Areopag, moreover excellently describes "the ceremonies used even from the very cradle of the "church, &c., &c. In which tracts one may find the iden"tical passages, which even now the church allows." Some part of the heathen ceremonial seems however to have remained, or rather of the Jewish types to have been adopted, as the sacrificium pro dormitione:---the sacrifice for the repose of the soul.

How, previous to this revolution, the mode of British sepulture was conducted, enters at length into the essence of the present consideration. Some usages, derived from the patriarchal model common to human kind, may be rationally expected to have existed both through the aboriginal islanders, and their contemporaries, the continentals who had attained to the supremacy. Others are likely to have descended from their more refined and departed masters the Romans; all of which have, with a long view to this point of the enquiry, been shewn at large in their most principal features. This at the same time, it will be remembered, has been done only in the particular of inhumation in the seasons of peace; whilst there remain the act of consuming by fire and the method incidental to war; each of them equally applicable to the condition of the British, as well as to that of other nations of the ancient world, into whose histories a digression must once more be made to collect the most approved extant information. This is the more indispensible, because until a knowledge is acquired of the rites of the implacable pile, only half, and

that the least momentous, of the triumphs and effects of benign Christianity can be seen or appreciated.

With respect then to the exposure of the dead to the operation of fire, it appears to claim a parity of date and practice with the former method, amongst all other nations but the patriarchal tribes, who never gave it any toleration, being defended from it by the comparative purity of their religious principles. For its first origin is doubtless to be assigned to the ferocious spirit of idolatrous worship; an exact exemplification of which occurs in sacred writ, ii Kings xvi, 3. King Ahaz "made his own son to pass through the fire, according to "the abomination of the heathen." Manasseh did the same. ii Kings, xxi, 6. And the particular consecration of these ceremonies to idolatrous purposes, together with their immediate derivation from the repeopling of the earth after the deluge, is demonstrated in Leviticus xviii, 21. "Thou shalt "not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech:"---upon which the Genevese commentator Diodati has the following note: Molech, an idol of the Ammonites, called also "Milcom, i Kings, ii, 57: which seemeth to be the same as "the pagans' Saturn, in honour of whom the idolators caused "their children to pass through the fire of his sacrifices: "either for some manner of expiation and consecration, or to "really sacrifice them to him." But that the last was as "horribly as really the case, is too evident from Psalm cvi, 37, 38.

"Yea, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters "unto devils,

"And shed innocent blood, even the blood of their "sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed "to the idols of Canaan; and the land was polluted "with blood."

The same too is indubitably confirmed from various passages in the prophetical books.

Jer: xix, 5, and Exek: xx, 31, &c.

Where the cruelty of fire was thus exercised upon the living, its application to the dead is less repulsive, and naturally to be expected. Philosophy indeed was in time adduced for its foundation upon reasoning principles;--- "Heraclitus "with his followers imagining fire to be the first principle of "all things, affected burning. For every one thought it the "most reasonable method, and most agreeable to nature, so to dispose of bodies, as they might soonest be reduced to their "first principles.---And it seems to have been the common opinion, that fire was an admirable expedient to refine the "celestial part of man, by separating from it all gross and "corruptible matter, and the impure qualities which attend it; "and so the soul, separated from the gross and unactive "matter, might be at liberty to take its flight to the heavenly "mansions." Bp. Potter's Ar: Græ. Recourse was had to it likewise in after times, to prevent any contumely to the remains of leading men amidst the violence of political factions, as in the case of Sylla the Roman dictator. But men were

"It seems

not always philosophers or politicians; and the combustion of bodies by fire is only deducible originally from the corruption of principles, by which they addicted themselves to idolatry. For before their perversion to its rites they coincided universally with the patriarchal fashion of interment. "probable," says the Archæologist, "that however the later "Græcians were better affected to the way of burning, yet the "custom of the most primitive ages was to inter their dead." Its first general adoption in profane history, as a simple funeral rite, was amongst the Grecians during the Trojan war. Hence it overspread the eastern continent, where it appeared oftentimes in consummations most signally awful. Thus "Calanus the Indian, having lived fourscore and three years, "without ever having been afflicted with sickness, now feeling "the approaches of disorder, resolved to put himself to death--"He ascended, with the utmost cheerfulness, the funeral pile, "laid himself down upon it, and covered his face; and, when "the flame reached him, he did not make the least motion; "but, with a patience and constancy that surprized the whole army, continued in the same posture in which he at first "laid himself, and compleated his sacrifice by dying agreeably "to the strange superstitions of the enthusiasts of his country." Dr. Goldsmith's Grecian History. From the same period and place it spread to the utmost known limits of the west,