CHAPTER II. THE SAXONS. MISSION OF AUGUSTINE. OF KENT. CONVERSION The heavenly city, in the days of its pilgrimage on earth, enlists citizens out of all nations, and assembles a company of pilgrims out of all tongues; not caring for differences of manners, laws, and customs, but rather seeking to preserve them for the sake of earthly peace, if only they hinder not the religion which teaches the worship of the only Most High and True. ST. AUGUSTINE. City of God, b. xix. HE Anglo-Saxons, from whom we have received the language which we speak, and from whom the far greater portion of Englishmen are sprung, were of the tribes of nations inhabiting ancient Germany, who, when the appointed time was come, were employed by God's providence in breaking up the great empire of old Rome. It is plain that the laws and manners of the Romans were too little amended by the footing which Christianity had gained among them. The later emperors, after Constantine, had generally professed themselves Christians, and it was the public religion of the empire; the service of the more eminent Christian bishops was also found useful in promoting obedience to the laws: but a great part of the people were still pagans, stubbornly persisting in their old enmity to the cross. Even after Rome had been taken by the Goths, this pagan party made a struggle to revive the persecutions against the Christians, persuading their countrymen hat their misfortunes were owing to their having cast off their idol-gods; as the Jews in Egypt replied to Jeremiah, that their captivity came from their leaving off to burn incense to the queen of heaven. Among such a people there were many who lived abandoned to the most shameful vices of heathenism; and the laws of Rome were never able to reach them. So that there can be no doubt that the confession of one of their own poets spoke the truth: The far-off Irish shores And Orkney isles have seen our conquering fleet, On the contrary, the Goths and Germans, whom they called barbarians, though their habits were fierce and warlike, were alive to the shame of these unmanly morals, and severely punished such offenders. They sentenced traitors to die by hanging; but the worst transgressors against chastity they drowned by night in ponds or marshes. It 66 was well done," says a Roman who speaks of it; "for bold crimes ought to be punished openly, but base and shameful ones to be hidden in darkness." When they heard of the Romans giving up their leisure hours to theatres and public shows, "The people who have devised such amusements," they said, "act as if they had neither children nor wives at home."2 They had therefore a far more strict regard to the sacred tie of marriage, and to the honour of woman; not permitting, what has been common with other heathen nations, that a man should have more wives than one. No doubt the finger of God was in those wars, which made them masters of the Roman empire, that they might, in 1 Jer. xliv. 18. St. Chrysostom, Homily xxxviii. on St. Matthew. due time, promote the advancement of His Church by means of customs more suited to a union with Christianity than the corrupt state of society in Rome, now fast tending to its own decay. The Saxons were idolators,—as the names of the days of the week, which we have received from them, still remain to remind us. They worshipped the sun and moon; Thor, the thunderer; Woden, or Odin; Tiow, god of war; and other deities, whom it is not necessary to inquire after. As all false religions began in corruptions of the true, it would seem that they had still some dim belief of One great Being more excellent than these: for they had among them the name of God, which we have received from them; it is a name which means the Good. And though in rude and warlike times the notion of goodness is applied to bravery in war rather than deeds of mercy, and so their imaginations may have seen in Him a Being able to destroy, rather than ready to save, yet it is a proof of a purer tradition which they had from the beginning. But more than this dim shadow of the religion of the patriarchs they do not seem to have possessed; and the want of a Mediator between God and man left their religion without hope or comfort, and drove them to seek from the spirits of dead warriors or kings such help as they knew not how to ask from One higher but unknown. The first of the Saxons who established themselves in Britain were Hengist and Horsa with their followers, who founded the kingdom of Kent about A.D. 450. Before the end of that century were founded also the kingdoms of the South and West Saxons; and thus all the provinces along the southern coast of Britain, except Cornwall and part of Devonshire, were lost to Christianity. In the year 527, another great body, of Angles, invaded the eastern and midland districts, and by degrees con quering their way, established the kingdoms of Essex, East Anglia, and Mercia. The kingdom of Northumberland had its rise still earlier, but it was not firmly settled till about a century after the landing of Hengist in Kent. Against these invaders the Britons made no effectual resistance but in the west of England, where their king Emrys, called also Aurelius Ambrosius, one of the last Roman Britons, gained a great victory over Hengist, and drove him back into the province he had first occupied. When the West Saxons afterwards, under Cerdic, made an attempt to gain possession of Somersetshire, they were defeated with great loss by the famous king Arthur, at the British town of Cair-Badon, near Bath, to which they had laid siege, about A.D. 520. These victories seem to have settled the freedom of the Britons for that time in the West; and they remained for many years afterwards in Somerset, part of Devon, and Cornwall, under their own princes, as well as in Wales. In the North they defended themselves also for a long time in the mountains of Cumberland and Westmoreland. It was not long after the founding of these seven kingdoms, that the Saxon princes began to dispute with each other about the division of the land. Ceaulin, king of the West Saxons, A.D. 560, being at war with all his neighbours, the other Saxon kings made league against him, and appointed ETHELBERT, king of Kent, commander of the joint forces. Ethelbert was an able and moderate prince, who, after defeating Ceaulin, was honoured by the allies with the title of Bret-walda, or "Lord of Britain." This title was, after his death, enjoyed by other leading princes among the Saxons. It gave him authority to preserve the public peace of the different kingdoms, and to prevent the encroachments of one Ꭰ warlike prince on the territory of another. By his power and prudence the new people were kept from destroying themselves; and his long reign of fiftysix years gave them time to turn their attention to husbandry and peaceful occupations. At this period GREGORY, surnamed the Great, bishop of Rome, was happily inspired with a zeal for the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons. He was of Greek extraction, but born of honourable parents at Rome, where his grandfather Felix had been also bishop; for at this early period it was common for the bishops of Rome to be, like their first apostle St. Peter, married men. Gregory had been a great benefactor to the people of Rome, as governor of the city under the emperor of Greece, before he became a priest. When he determined to leave his civil duties and become a minister of the Church, he gave most of his wealth to build religious houses, and lived himself as a monk in a monastery of his own founding at Rome. He was a man of great piety and learning; but after the inroads of the Goths, almost all Christian learning was mixed with something of superstition. Nor ought this to move our wonder, if we consider how much of lawless violence was then let loose into the world. It was natural that at such times the suffering Christians should have fancied there was something wonderful and divine in what we should now call accidents, when they turned to the preservation of their lives or churches; as when they imagined that angels came in the form of beggars to ask their alms and warn them of danger in their way, or when the sword or fire suddenly stopped before the threshold of their homes. Nor should we pity these errors of fancy, as if all the advantage was on our side. It is far better for religion, when men live under a constant sense of the truth of things unseen, than when |