the true worship as far as their dominions reached. And now the abomination of desolation may be said to have invaded the holy place: the Britons are expelled their country, London sacrifices to Diana, and Thorney (Westminster) spends her perfumes upon Apollo; and indeed the whole country is lost as to their faith, and quite sunk in the Heathen idolatry." Collier, who has the above words in his Ecclesiastical History, relates farther, that Christianity was at length driven to Cornwall, Cumberland, and Wales, the only districts in England where the persecuted natives had a foot of territory; and that Sampson Archbishop of York fled with many of his countrymen to Brittany, where a colony had been founded long before through nearly similar circumstances.

Upon a casual view of the subject, it may appear irrelevant to the nature of this work to dwell upon the religion prevailing at successive periods; a little reflection must convince the reader, that the fact is otherwise; for no particular effect on the manners of a people can be more completely accomplished than by any new set of religious opinions. Thus, when the Saxons destroyed the temples and forms of Christian worship, and introduced their own erroneous and absurd ideas of religion, the people of England who believed in the true faith must of necessity have assumed a gloomy restraint, and exhibited a general appearance of despair, united with terror and dis

gust;

gust; the former arising from the dread of their oppressors resenting every omission of respect to their idols and priests, and the latter from the violence such respect did their feelings. It seems very certain that the priests of the Saxons did not possess a similar degree of power with the Druids; and perhaps their influence in political affairs was limited, though it is probable they sometimes assisted by advice and prognostications. As to the government of themselves, it may be supposed that they superintended particular districts in certain numbers under the direction of a chief priest or council. With respect to their operations in war, we are informed by Tacitus, the priests of the Deity who presided over that detestable portion of human policy, attended armies with their idols, and flagellated the soldiers who were remiss in their duty, and yet they were denied the privileges of military command in other respects. The priestess, on the contrary, was treated with the utmost attention and gallantry, and received every thing but adoration from their votaries.

It is impossible to place much reliance on the accounts transmitted to us of the doctrines of these savages. Had they in the remotest degree resembled perfect ideas of the good effects of moral conduct, and consequent happiness in a future state, the term Savages would have been improper. Had the Saxon and Danish priests originally believed in the immortality of the soul,

and

and rejected the doctrine of transmigration, and sedulously taught the people, would it have been practicable for any army of adventurers from the Last to have been persuaded that their victorious lealer was the God they had long worshiped? This Odin or Wodin might, and no doubt did, suppress all opposition to his power, and, like another Alexander, possibly wished to deify himself; but I should incline to think the adoration paid under this name was addressed to a greater spirit than ever inhabited the body of the chief in question, and resulted from a similar intuitive impulse experienced by all unpolished nations, which certainly do not deify their heroes. The very circumstance of their having a number of subordinate deities, and their connexion with a set of wild and ridiculous ideas, serves to prove, that their minds wandered far beyond the limits of this earth, and finding nothing to rest upon, became confused; in short, if Wodin, the principal God, is thus appropriated, how are we to appropriate his inferior brethren but in the way have mentioned. The fallacy of attempting to trace authentic genealogies up to Odin, connected with the reveries of the antient Saxons, must therefore be evident upon the least reflection.

I

The same authorities which enable us to say any thing on this subject tell us, that the divinities of the Saxons were approached with prayer, and celebrated with songs, abounding with adu

latory

latory epithets, and those were naturally suited' to the properties they affixed to their different idols. If they did not appear to favour their wishes, they vented their disappointment by throwing their weapons into the air, as if intended to reach and penetrate the unpropitious being; at the same time they were by no means deficient in their incitements for favour by offering various descriptions of animals in sacrifice, the blood of which was sprinkled on the people by the priests, who augured from the appearance of the entrails, and burnt the flesh on the altar; captives, slaves, criminals, and even persons of consequence, were on particular and great occasions offered in expiation or solicitation, and copious draughts of extracts from grain were swallowed in honour of the idol. As every other nation under similar circumstances is known to have entertained ideas of the existence of good and evil spirits, the Saxons had their Faul, the source of injury and misfortune.

With respect to the visible representatives of their Gods, the most correct ideas may be formed from the sculpture they have left upon the Christian churches in England. Supposing their idols to be represented in the human shape, we must be aware that their execution of statutes was rude and uncouth to the greatest extreme, even after they were assisted by more enlightened conceptions than the Pagan system suggested; how,

therefore,

therefore, are we to credit that they erected temples of incredible grandeur and magnificence during the prevalence of that system. Conjectures are wretched substitutes for authentic facts, and the fact appears clearly to be, that we have no authentic records to guide us with respect to the particular rites of their worship, or the preservation of a holy fire, or the celebration of the various religious festivals. Our best writers on this subject assert, that they offered cakes to their deities in February, which caused them to term this period of the year Sol monath: in September they had other ceremonies, whence it was called Halig monath, or the holy month; November was Blot month, or that for devoting slain cattle to the gods; Geol or Jule was their principal feast, and occurred at our Christmas, in commemoration, according to Henry, of Thor; which festival, Mr. Turner conjectures to have been in honour of the Sun. Bede says, they derived it from the return of that luminary; and it was, besides, the first day of their year.

Sufficient for my purpose has been already offered on the Pagan state of our ancestors, which, though an unpleasing retrospect, is accompanied by the gratifying reflection, that though the British community had every reason to detest their successful invaders, the peasantry had been so completely humanized by the precepts of Christ that the Saxons were insensibly

prevailed