together wth immoderate feasting and gluttony used at this day by ye English and Scots was begun at this time by K. Arthur, and that it is nowhere els in use beyond the Seas.—Hect. Boet. l. 9, fol. 160.—[W. K.]
In the Infancy of Christian Religion it was expedient to plough (as they say) with the heifer of the Gentiles: (i) to insinuate with them, and to let them continue and use their old Ethnick Festivals which they new named with Christian names, e. g. Floralia, they turnd to ye Feast of St Philip and Jacob, etc. The Saturnalia into Christmas. Had they donne otherwise, they could not have gain'd so many Proselytes or established their Doctrine so well, and in so short a time, and besides they well understood that profound Aphorisme of Numa Pompilius, Nulla res efficacius multitudinem regit, quam Superstitio: of which, if taken away, Atheisme and (consequently Libertinisme) will certainly come into its roome
sted. This after the Ecclesiasticall politie of those times. The Gentiles would not perfectly relinquish all their Idols; so, they were persuaded to turne the Image of Jupiter with his thunderbolt to Christus crucifixus, and Venus and Cupid into ye Madonna and her Babe, which Mr. Th. Hobbes sayth was prudently donne. See his Leviathan p. [364].
See St. Hierome's Epistles. He speakes in one of them of their building their Christian Churches where their old Ethnick ones were, etc.—Get the Christmas Caroll and the Wasseling Song.
Old customes and old wives fables are grosse things, but yet ought not to be buried in oblivion
quite rejected; there may some truth and usefulnesse be picked
elicted out of them, besides tis' a pleasure to consider the errours that enveloped former ages as also the present.
Excerpta out of Ovid's Fastorum
Lib. I. January.
T. Livy, lib. 1, Numa Pomp.
Per totidem (sc. x.) menses a funere conjugis uxor
Sustinet in vidua tristia signa domo.—[35-6.]
