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CHAPTER V.
A general idea of the ancient religion of the northern nations.
IT is not easy to form an exact notion of the religion formerly professed in the north of Europe. What the Latin and Greek authors have written on this subject is commonly deficient in point of exactness. They had for many ages little or no intercourse with the inhabitants of these countries, whom they styled Barbarians; they were ignorant of their language, and, as ‘most of these’ nations[1] made a scruple of unfolding the grounds of their religious doctrines to strangers, the latter, who were thereby reduced to be meer spectators of
- ↑ Particularly all those of Celtic origin. The author had expressed it simply “As all the Celtic nations made a scruple,” supposing the Gothic nations to be the same with the Celtic: but this opinion is considered in the preface. T.
