whoever refused to submit to their decree was exposed to the most
severe penalties. The sentence of excommunication was pronounced
against him: he was forbidden access to the sacrifices or public
worship: he was debarred all intercourse with his fellow-citizens,
even in the common affairs of life: his company was universally
shunned, as profane and dangerous. He was refused the protection of
law [f]; and death itself became an acceptable relief from the misery
and infamy to which he was exposed. Thus, the bands of government,
which were naturally loose among that rude and turbulent people, were
happily corroborated by the terrors of their superstition.
[FN [f] Caesar, lib. 6. Strabo, lib. 4.]

No species of superstition was ever more terrible than that of the
Druids. Besides the severe penalties, which it was in the power of
the ecclesiastics to inflict in this world, they inculcated the
eternal transmigration of souls; and thereby extended their authority
as far as the fears of their timorous votaries. They practised their
rites in dark groves or other secret recesses [g]; and in order to
throw a greater mystery over their religion, they communicated their
doctrines only to the initiated, and strictly forbad the committing of
them to writing, lest they should at any time be exposed to the
examination of the profane vulgar. Human sacrifices were practised
among them: the spoils of war were often devoted to their divinities;
and they punished with the severest tortures whoever dared to secrete
any part of the consecrated offering; these treasures they kept in
woods and forests, secured by no other guard than the terrors of their
religion [h]; and this steady conquest over human avidity may be
regarded as more signal than their prompting men to the most
extraordinary and most violent efforts. No idolatrous worship ever
attained such an ascendant over mankind as that of the ancient Gauls