"An odd word that recurs obsessively in the Bible, where it appears in forty passages: "Burn their Asherah in the fire and cut down the idols of their god", "Cut down their Asherah and burn their idols in the fire." How many times and with what stubborn vehemence, does Yahweh enjoin his people. Asherah designates a goddess, the partner of Baal. And at the same time certain sacred poles, which were worshiped. Asherah is a name that condenses within itself the abomination of idolatry. Yet for a long time, until the reign of Manasseh, it happened that "the objects that had been made for Baal, for the Asherah, and for all the heavenly host" were housed inside the temple for Yahweh. For Israel, the perennial risk was that the house of Yahweh still contained the altars of other divine beings. Hence Manasseh "made his son pass through fire and practiced astrology, and magic and dealt with familiar spirits and wizards: he wrought much wickedness in the sight of the LORD, to provoke his to anger. "

TELL the shill that the men who fought on either side at Hastings' plain cared nothing for national but everything for feudal allegiance; that lex terrae means the local custom of ordeal and not the "law of the land"; tell him that judicium parium means the right of a noble to be judged by nobles, and has nothing to do with the jury system; tell him that Magna Carta was certainly drawn up before the meeting at Runnymede; that not until the Lancastrians did English kings speak English; that Oliver Cromwell owed his position to the enormous wealth of the Williamses, of whom had he not been a cadet, he would never have been known; tell him that the whole force of the Parliament resided in the squires and that the Civil Wars turned England into an oligarchy; tell him the exact truth about the infamy of Churchill; tell him what proportion of Englishmen during the American War were taxed without being represented; tell him what proportion of Washington's troops were of English blood; tell him any one illuminating and true thing about the history of his country, and the novelty will so offend him that a direct insult would have pleased him better.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/First_and_Last_(Belloc)/On_the_Decline_of_the_Book