330 THE SAXONS IN ENGLAND, [book i.
and as it were ministerial beings : and lastly the god-
born and heroic personages of the epopoea.
The prudence or the contempt of the earliest
Saxon Christians has left but sparing record of
what Augustine and his brother missionaries over-
threw. Incidental notices indeed are all that re-
main in any part of Teutonic Europe ; and on the
continent, as well as in England, it is only by the
collation of minute and isolated facts,—often pre-
served to us in popular superstitions, legends and
even nursery tales,—that we can render probable
the prevalence of a religious belief identical in its
most` characteristic features with that which we
know to have been entertained in Scandinavia. Yet
whatsoever we can thus recover, proves that, in all
main points, the faith of the island Saxons was that
of their continental brethren.
It will readily be supposed that the task of de-
monstrating this is not easy. The early period
at which Christianity triumphed in England, adds
to the difficulties which naturally beset the sub-
ject. Norway, Sweden and Denmark had entered
into public relations with the rest of Europe, long
before the downfall of their ancient creed : here,
the fall of heathendom and the commencement of
history were contemporaneous: we too had no
Iceland1 to offer a refuge to those who fled from
the violent course of a conversion, preached sword
1 Thus was Iceland colonized, by men who would neither relinquish
their old belief, nor submit to the growing power of a king. The Old-
saxons had no such place of refuge, and the arms of Oharlemagne pre-
vailed to destroy their national independence and their religion together.
CH. x∏∙]
HEATHENDOM.
331
in hand, and coupled with the loss of political inde-
pendence ; still the progress of the new faith seems
to have been on the whole easy and continuous
amongst us; and though apostasy was frequent,
history either had no serious struggle to record, or
has wisely and prudently concealed it.
In dealing with this subject, we can expect but
little aid from the usual sôurces of information.
The early chroniclers who lived in times when hea-
thendom was even less extinct than it now is, and
before it had learnt to hide itself under borrowed
names, would have shrunk with horror from the
mention of what to them, was an execrable im-
piety: many of them could have possessed no
knowledge of details which to us would be invalua-
ble, and no desire to become acquainted with them :
the whole business of their life, on the contrary, was
to destroy the very remembrance that such things
had been, to avoid everything that could recall the
past, or remind their half-converted neophytes of
the creed which they and their forefathers had held.
It is obvious that, under such circumstances, the
greater and more powerful the God, the more dan-
gerous would he continue to be, the more sedu-
lously would all mention of him be avoided by
those who had relinquished his service or overthrown
his altars. But though this may be the case with
the principal deities, there are others whose power,
though unacknowledged, is likely to be more per-
manent. Long after the formal renunciation of
a public and national paganism, the family and
household gods retain a certain habitual influence,