CHAP. III. The Religion of the SAXONS in their Pagan State. At this happy period of the world, we cannot reflect on the idolatry of ancient times without some astonishment at the infatuation which has so inveterately, in various regions, clouded the human mind. We feel, indeed, that it is impossible to contemplate the grand canopy of the universe; to descry the planets moving in governed order; to find comets darting from system to system in an orbit of which a space almost incalculable is the diameter; to discover constellations beyond constellations in endless multiplicity, and to have indications of the light of others whose full beam of splendour has not yet reached us; we feel it impossible to meditate on these innumerable theatres of existence without feeling with awe, that this amazing magnificence of nature announces an Author tremendously great. But it is very difficult to conceive how the lessons of the skies should have taught that localising idolatry, which their transcendent grandeur, and almost infinite extent, seem expressly calculated to destroy. THE most ancient religions of the world appear to have been pure theism, with neither idols nor temples. These essential agents in the political mechanism of idolatry were unknown to the ancient Pelasgians, from whom the Grecians chiefly sprung, and to the early Egyptians and Romans. The Jewish patriarchs had them not, and even our German ancestors, according to Tacitus, were without them. In every nation but the Jewish a more gross system of superstition was gradually established. The Deity was dethroned by the symbols which human folly selected as his representatives; the most ancient of these were the CHAP. III. III. CHAP. heavenly bodies, the most pardonable objects of erring adoration. But when it was found possible to make superstition a profitable craft, then departed heroes and kings were exalted into gods. Delirious fancy soon added others so profusely, that the air, the sea, the rivers, the woods, and the earth became so stocked with divinities, that it was easier, as an ancient sage remarked, to find a deity than a man. BUT if we meditate more profoundly on the subject, we may infer that polytheism and idolatry were in part the effects of human pride throwing off all superior tuition; and in part the natural progress of the human mind towards knowlege, and in reasoning. They were erroneous deductions, but they were, in some of their authors, mistaken efforts at improvement. As the intellect became more exercised, and the sensibilities awakened, and as vice began to spread, the idea arose in some that the adored Supreme was so great, and man so unworthy, that human beings, or concerns, could not be objects of his divine attention. In others a desire began, to withdraw from the sovereignty of a Being so perfect and so holy, that the pleasures of the body might be indulged with less restriction and remorse. Hence every supposition was encouraged that favoured the wish of mankind to have deities more resembling their own imperfections; and the theory of our world being consigned to inferior divinities more like our feeble selves, was a welcomed suggestion, because it attempted to reconcile the perception of the exalted majesty of the Deity with the feeling of the daily misconduct and follies of the human race. Mankind would neither deny his existence, nor disbelieve his providence, nor could they live in comfort without believing both; and polytheism was therefore patronised by the refining and self-indulging religious intellect, as a supposition calculated to unite both these truths, and to satisfy the doubts of the scrupulous and inquisitive. At first the new fancies were venerated as the ministers and delegates of the Supreme. But as new distinctions and caprices succeeded, and especially after the custom of allegorising natural phenomena prevailed, the invented deities were multiplied, and connected with all the departments and agencies of nature. Hero-worship emerged from their belief of the soul's immortality, and was in time added to that excess of posthumous gratitude and veneration to which mankind are always prone. These follies seem to have been a natural consequence of man's deserting the Divine guidance, as we cannot have any authentic knowlege of the creation, providence, and will of an Almighty Ruler, but from his own revelations of these awful mysteries. The human race had no choice but to believe and to preserve faithfully all that he had communicated to them, and to be governed by its tuition. But when once the taste and habit had become popular, of turning from His grand and simple truths to create and prefer the speculations of Man's own ignorance and conjecture, error and falsehood were the inevitable results of such unfortunate misconduct; the mind became blinded and debased by its own theories, and the world was filled with superstition and absurdity. THE use of idols was an attempt to solace the mind, to excite the memory, interest the feelings, and fix the attention by a visible image of the invisible Omnipresence. In all religious countries they have been found to be efficacious for these purposes, especially with the less intellectual. But in all, both polytheism and idolatry tend at last to fix the mind almost exclusively on their own false imaginations, to deprave the reasoning faculty, to supersede the adoration of the universal Parent, and to occasion the most deplorable superstitions and tyrannical persecutions. The continuing advance of the human mind then led to the abolition of both these fictitious systems as steadily as it originally suggested them. When our Saxon ancestors had settled themselves in England they used both. They had many gods, and they venerated their images; but that the progress of their manly intellect was fast operating to shake the attachment to the national superstitions, we may infer from the candour with which they listened to the first Christian missionaries, and from the rapidity with which they adopted the Christian faith. CHAP. III. CHAP. III. THERE is a beauty in the name appropriated by the Saxon and German nations to the Deity which is not equalled by any other, except his most venerated Hebrew appellation. The Saxons call him GOD, which is literally THE GOOD; the same word signifying both the Deity and his most endearing quality. THE peculiar system of the Anglo-Saxons is too imperfectly known to us for its stages to be discriminated, or its progress detailed. It appears to have been of a very mixed nature, and to have been so long in existence as to have attained a regular establishment and much ceremonial pomp. THAT When they settled in Britain they had idols, altars, temples, and priests; that their temples were surrounded with inclosures; that they were profaned if lances were thrown into them; and that it was not lawful for a priest to bear arms, or to ride but on a mare; we learn from the unquestionable authority of our venerable Bede.1 SOME of the subjects of their adoration we find in their names for the days of the week. Of the sun and moon we can only state, that their sun was 1 Bede, lib. 1. c. 15. et 9.; lib. ii. c. 6. Pope Gregory mentions, that if their pagan temples were well built, they might be used for Christian churches, lib. i. c. 30. Their name for idol vas pig, and for altar pigbed, the table or bed of the idol. The word pig so signifies war, and this may imply either that the idol was a warrior or the god of war. 2 I take the Saxon names of the days of the week from the Cotton MS. Tiberius A. 3. They may be also found in the Saxon Gospels, p. 24 S. 72 M. 55 T. 48 W. 49 Th. 28 F. 52 S. As Thon means also a mountain, his name may have some connection with the ancient Eastern custom of worshipping on mountains and hills. He was called the god of thunder; hence is named Thunpe. The word Thon seems to imply the mountain a female deity, and their moon was of the male sex3: of their Tiw, we know nothing but his name. Woden was the great ancestor from whom they deduced their genealogies. It will be hereafter shown that the calculations from the Saxon pedigrees place Woden in the third century.4 Of the Saxon Woden, his wife Friga, and of Thunr, or Thor, we know very little, and it would not be very profitable to detail all the reveries which have been published about them. The Odin, Frigg, or Friga, and Thor, of the Northmen, were obviously the same characters; though we may hesitate to ascribe to the Saxon deities the apparatus and mythology which the Northern scalds of subsequent ages have transmitted to us from Denmark, Iceland, and Norway. Woden was the predominant idol of the Saxon adoration, but we can state no more of him but so far as we describe the Odin of the Danes and Norwegians. 5 3 The same peculiarity of genders prevailed in the ancient Northern language. Edda Semundi, p. 14. It is curious, that in the passage of the Arabian poet, cited by Pocock, in not. ad Carmen Tograi, p. 13., we meet with a female sun and masculine moon. The distich is, Nec nomen femininum soli dedecus, So the Caribbees think the moon a man, and therefore make it masculine, 4 Perhaps hleothop, the Saxon for oracle, may have some reference to Thon. pleo means a shady place, or an asylum. pleochor is literally the retirement of Thon. pleorhon cpyde means the saying of an oracle, pleothonrrede the place of an oracle. 5 Without imitating those who have lately fancied that there never was an Odin, and that he is merely a mythological personage, the name of a deity, we may remark, that the date of Odin's appearance in the North cannot be accurately ascertained. This difficulty has arisen partly from the confusion in which, from their want of chronology, all the incidents of the North, CHAP. III. |