, particularly that of the
Saxons, was of the grossest and most barbarous kind; and being founded
on traditional tales, received from their ancestors, not reduced to
any system, not supported by political institutions, like that of the
druids, it seems to have made little impression on its votaries, and to
have easily resigned its place to the new doctrine promulgated to them.
Woden, whom they deemed the ancestor of all their princes, was regarded
as the god of war, and, by a natural consequence, became their supreme
deity, and the chief object of their religious worship. They believed
that, if they obtained the favor of this divinity by their valor, (for
they made less account of the other virtues,) they should be admitted
after their death into his hall; and reposing on couches, should satiate
themselves with ale from the skulls of their enemies, whom they had
slain in battle. Incited by this idea of paradise, which gratified
at once the passion of revenge and that of intemperance, the ruling
inclinations of barbarians, they despised the dangers of war, and
increased their native ferocity against the vanquished by their
religious prejudices.

[* Chron. Sax. p. 21.]

[** H. Hunting, lib ii.]

We know little of the other theological tenets of the Saxons; we only
learn that they were polytheists; that they worshipped the sun and moon;
that they adored the god of thunder, under the name of Thor; that they
had images in their temples; that they practised sacrifices; believed
firmly in spells and enchantments; and admitted in general a system
of doctrines which they held as sacred, but which, like all other
superstition must carry the air of the wildest extravagance, if
propounded to those who are not familiarized to it from their earliest
infancy.

The constant hostilities which the Saxons maintained against the
Britons, would naturally indispose them for receiving the Christian
faith, when preached to them by such inveterate enemies; and perhaps the
Britons, as is objected to them by Gildas and Bede, were not over-fond
of communicating to their cruel invaders the doctrine of eternal life
and salvation. But as a civilized people, however subdued by arms, still
maintain a sensible superiority over barbarous and ignorant nations,
all the other northern conquerors of Europe had been already induced to
embrace the Christian faith, which they found established in the empire;
and it was impossible but the Saxons,