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sword, was of less fatal importance than the decay of arts, agriculture and population, in this long and destructive war: and although a victorious army had been formed under the standard of Heraclius, the unnatural effort seems to have exhausted rather than exercised their strength. While the emperor triumphed at Constantinople or Jerusalem, an obscure town on the confines of Syria was pillaged by the Saracens, and they cut in pieces some troops who advanced to its relief: an ordinary and trifling occurrence, had it not been the prelude of a mighty revolution. These robbers were the apostles of Mahomet; THEIR FANATIC VALOUR HAD EMERGED FROM THE DESERT; and in the last eight years of his reign, Heraclius lost to the Arabs the same povinces which he had rescued from the Persians."

When Christianity was promulgated, Rome was in its prime. A colossal paganism was moved from its base by the lever of truth: and a bloodless triumph was achieved by light against darkness. Taking up the cross, and preaching it also, the apostles of Jesus and the other missionaries of the gospel braved, without a frown, the hatred of all men for his sake: And, in reversal of the fabled battles in which armed gods became earthly warriors and came to the help of men, the very gods of the Romans were vanquished, in defiance of all the power of the Cæsars. But that power was greatly broken, and had very recently been weakened anew, at the time when thousands of armed fanatics issued from the desert to extend at once their empire and their faith. On the one hand they entered into the already vanquished and dismembered kingdom of Persia, and, on the other, into the exhausted provinces of the Roman empire. The conquests and the fall of Chosroes alike opened a way for sword-propagated Mahometanism into the west and the east. Each year, during the month of Ramadan, Mahomet withdrew from the world; in the cave of Hera, three miles from Mecca, he con

* Gibbon's Hist. ib. pp. 260, 261.

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sulted the spirit of fraud and enthusiasm, whose abode: is not in the heavens, but in the mind of the prophet."* In the reign of Phocas, A. D. 609, at the very time when, surrounded by a blaze of glory and magnificence,” like a star, Chosroes was invading the Roman empire, Mahomet, "an obscure citizen," was preaching at Mecca, and "observed with secret joy the progress of mutual destruction." "The distress

of Heraclius" is dated from the year six hundred and ten to the year six hundred and twenty-two, during which time Mahomet was so feebly propagating his faith, that "three years were silently employed in the conversion of fourteen proselytes, the first fruits of his mission;" and "the first expedition of Heraclius against the Persians, (A. D. 622,)" is coeval with the commencement of the Hegira, or Mahometan era. Constantinople was besieged by Chosroes; and a Persian army was defeated by the emperor Heraclius on Mount Taurus, and a Roman camp was established on the plains of Cappadocia,† in the midst of the territories of Persia, in the same year that Mahomet fled from Mecca. An Arab lance, as Gibbon has remarked, might then have "changed the fate of the world." Had it pierced the impostor, the first three chapters of the Koran, which alone were then written, might never have been heard of beyond the walls of Mecca; and the dark smoke which then began to arise, and which has deluded the minds of millions of millions, would have passed as a vapour, and have been extinguished in a moment. Thus it may be determined in human speculations, as if the fancy of man could change the past, and put back the world from its course. It was otherwise written in the word of

Gibbon's. Hist. vol. ix. pp. 259, 260, chap. 50. † Ibid. vol. viii. p. 239. chap. 46.

"The

God; and we must now read history as it is. spirit of fraud and enthusiasm, whose abode is not in the heavens," was let loose on earth. The bottomless pit needed but a key to open it; and that key was the fall of Chosroes. He had contemptuously torn the letter of an obscure citizen of Mecca. But when from his "blaze of glory" he sunk into "the tower of darkness" which no eye could penetrate, the name of Chosroes was suddenly to pass into oblivion before that of Mahomet, and the crescent seemed but to wait its rising till the falling of the star. Chosroes, after his entire discomfiture and loss of empire, was murdered in the year six hundred and twenty-eight ;* and the year six hundred and twenty-ninet is mark"the conquest of Arabia," "and the first war of the Mahometans against the Roman empire." And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit. He fell unto the earth. When the strength of the Roman empire was exhausted, and the great king of the east lay dead in his tower of darkness, the pillage of an obscure town on the borders of Syria was "the prelude of a mighty revolution." "The robbers were the apostles of Mahomet, and their FANATIC valour EMERGED from the desert.

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A more succinct, yet ample, commentary may be given in the words of another historian.

"While Chosroes of Persia was pursuing his dreams of recovering and enlarging the empire of Cyrus, and Heraclius was gallantly defending the empire of the Cæsars against him; while IDOLATRY and metaphysics were diffusing their baleful influence through the church of Christ, and the simplicity and purity of the gospel were nearly lost beneath the mythology which occupied the place of that of ancient

* Gibbon's Hist. vol. viii. p. 256, c. 46.

Ibid. vol. ix. pp. 309, 312. c. 50.

Greece and Rome, the seeds of a new empire, and of a new religion, were sown in the inaccessible deserts of Arabia.

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The first woe arose at its time, when transgressors had come to the full, when men had changed the ordinances and broken the everlasting covenant, when idolatry prevailed, or when tutelary saints were honoured and when the "mutual destruction" of the Roman and Persian empires prepared the way of the fanatic robbers, or opened the bottomless pit, from whence an imposture, which manifests its origin from the “father of liars," spread over the greater part of the world.

Like the

And there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. noxious and even deadly vapour which the winds, particularly from the south-west, diffuse in Arabia, Mahometanism spread from hence its pestilential influence and arose as suddenly, and spread as widely, as smoke arising out of the pit, the smoke of a great furnace. Such is a suitable symbol of the religion of Mahomet, of itself, or as compared with the pure light of the gospel of Jesus. It was not, like the latter, a light from heaven; but a smoke out of the bottomless pit. The apologist of Mahometanism, whose writings called forth an apology for Christianity, confesses that, with powers of eloquence, "Mahomet was an illiterate barbarian, whose youth had never been instructed in the arts of reading and writing."+ And he rightly characterises the Koran as an "endless incoherent rhapsody of fable, and precept, and declamation, which seldom excites a sentiment or an idea, which sometimes crawls in the dust, and is sometimes lost in the clouds." Such, as Gibbon

*Outlines of History, p. 168.

Gibbon's Hist. vol. ix. p. 257, c. 50.

Ibid. p. 269.

has almost said, is the smoke which obscured or darkened, but could not enlighten the world. His were dark sentences. And the propagation of his faith was the plea for the use of his sword, and the pretence for the extension of his kingdom. He maintained the character of a prophet and a king.

"Mahomet was alike instructed to preach and to fight; and the union of these opposite qualities, while it enhanced his merit, contributed to his success: the operation of force and persuasion, of enthusiasm and fear, continually acted on each other, till every barrier yielded to their irresistible power." ."*"The first caliphs ascended the pulpit to persuade and edify the congregation."+

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While the state was exhausted by the Persian war, the church was distracted by the Nestorian and Monophysite sects, Mahomet, with the swORD in one hand, and the KORAN in the other, erected his throne on the ruins of Christianity and of Rome. The genius of the Arabian prophet, the manners of his nation, and the spirit of his religion, involve the causes of the decline and fall of the eastern empire; and our eyes are curiously intent on one of the most memorable revolutions which have impressed a new and lasting character on the nations of the globe."‡

Mahomet, it may be said, has heretofore divided the world with Jesus. He rose up against the Prince of princes. A great sword was given him. His doctrine, generated by the spirit of fraud and enthusiasm, whose abode is not in the heavens, as even an unbeliever could tell, arose out of the bottomless pit, spread over the earth like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. It spread from Arabia, over great part of Asia, Africa, and Europe. The Greeks of Egypt, whose numbers could scarcely equal a tenth of the nation, were overwhelmed by the universal defection.§ And even in the farthest extremity of continental Europe, the decline of the

* Gibbon's Hist. vol. ix. p. 350. Ibid. p. 434.

Ibid. p. 236.
Ibid. vol. x. p. 19.

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