"But you are told that our ancestors brought with them the Common Law of England, and that Christianity is a part of the Common Law. There are in the books some sayings of the English Judges that Christianity is a part of the Common Law, and one of the most distinguished among those, who have held this doctrine, is the celebrated Sir Matthew Hale. But this Judge is one of those Judges, who have condemned persons for witchcraft, and the ermine of his judicial robes was stained with the blood of the innocent victims of superstition. Sir Matthew Hale would be as good authority to sustain a prosecution for witchcraft, as to sustain the present prosecution against the defendant, by establishing that Christianity is a part of the Common Law of England. Indeed Sir Matthew Hale was the great authority in Massachusetts to sustain the prosecutions for witchcraft which disgraced our early history. What is the Common Law of England ? It is called the customs of immemorial antiquity handed down by tradition, among the English people. Now during the period of the existence of the Common Law, England has had all kinds of religion ? Has the Common Law embraced all those kinds of religion ? Are they parts of the Common Law ? Yet one must be as well as another, or else none of those various kinds of religion are parts of the system. The Common Law is older than Christianity. In the earliest times of British history, the British religion was the dark superstitions of the Druids, the Priests of Mona's isle, who worshipped in the deepest recesses of the woods, and offered up the horrid sacrifice of human victims to the objects of their idolatry. Is this religion a part of the Cotnmon Law? When the Romans came they brought with them the Gods of Rome, and Ceesar, who found London a great place, and as Shakspeare tells us in Richard the Third, built the Tower, bore with him the God of War and the other Gods of his Country. Did the religion of ancient Rome become a part of the Common Law of England ? When the Saxons invaded Britain, they brought with them their Gods of War, Woden and Thor ? Did the Saxon religion become a part of the Common Law ? Yet two days in the week in England and the United States, Wednesday and Thursday bear the names of their Deities, and have perpetuated the memory of these " fabled Gods " even to the present day. It was not till the reign of Claudius, the successor of Tiberius in whose reign Jesus Christ was crucified, that Christianity was introduced into England, by means of the conversion of a noble Jady, by a missionary from Rome. Up to that period surely, Christianity was no part of the Common Law of England. The religion of England has been often changed, and the dates of the changes, are well known, and some of them are recent affairs. But the Common Law is of immemorial antiquity, and as old as the native Britons, say the English law books, and therefore these various kinds of religion, introduced within legal memory, and can be no part of this system of immemorial antiquity. England after the introduction of Christianity embraced the Catholic religion."