tendom. Contemporary witnesses describe the appalling evils of the times; and anticipate some commensurate impending visitation. It would appear, that, as at the period of the deluge, the whole Christian world had now perverted its ways before God; and, accordingly, a twofold visitation, faithfully adapted to the twofold cha racter of their apostasy, fell, in one hour, upon the two churches. The same age, nearly the same point of time, gave birth to the archheresy of Mahomet in the East, and to the temporal tyranny of the Papal power in the West: the latter domination to become the champion and the scourge of moral, as the former of heretical, corruption.

Christianity and Mahometanism, compared together under the characters which they respectively bore, at the periods of their first promulgation, faithfully reflect the image, and throughout, preserve the distance, of the original covenants with Isaac and Ishmael: the religion of the Gospel, like the former covenant, being pure, peaceful, spiritual, and free; that of the Koran, like the latter covenant, carnal, sanguinary, secular, slavish: in a word, taking up the comparison at this point, the analogy is every way that which might be expected to subsist, between the religion emanating from the legitimate,

and the superstition springing from the spurious, seed; in every sense the Gospel shines transcendent.

But at that awful period when Mahometanism arose, the parallel between the two systems assumes a wholly different aspect: the comparison no longer lies between the essentially opposed principles of the Gospel and Koran; but, by the just retribution of God's Providence toward an apostate church and people, between the kindred corruptions of the Mahometan tyranny, and its genuine counterpart, Papal Rome.

The relations of resemblance and contrast, of sympathy and opposition, which combine to link together these hostile ecclesiastico-political dominations, have been repeatedly touched on in the progress of this work; and compose, altogether, one of the most striking features of its general argument. It becomes now our duty to assemble the detached phenomena, and to present this important branch of the parallel, as a whole.

The following is a circumstantial outline of the leading heads of correspondence :

1. Coincidence in time: the beginning of the seventh century stands as the common era, for the commencement of the Papal and Mahometan tyrannies.

2. Antithetical relation of place: Papal Rome held in the West, exactly the position which Ma

hometanism occupied in the East; was, in other words, the providential scourge to western, which Mahometanism was to eastern, Christendom.

3. Each despotism was, in its very essence, a union of the spiritual and the temporal power; and such a union, as neither time nor change, which loosen every bond of merely human policy, has been able to dissolve.2

4. The Pope was the acknowledged temporal and spiritual head of the Roman or Latin church the Caliph the acknowledged temporal and spiritual head of the Mahometan world; insomuch as to be styled, by both Christian and Jewish writers in the middle ages, the Pope of the Mahometans.*

5. The Roman pontiffs claimed to derive their authority, and that of their church, by regular succession, from Saint Peter, the first of the apostles: the caliphs claimed to derive theirs, by regular succession, from Mahomet, according to their creed, the last and greatest of the apostles of God.

6. The Papal and Mahometan tyrannies alike advanced the claim to universal sovereignty.

* The words of Friar Bacon are "Calipha quasi Papa eorum :" the correspondence was too exact, to escape the notice of an enemy to both superstitions; " Calipha Muhammedanorum religionis antistes est; ipsique omnes Ismaelitarum reges fasces submittunt; iis, enim, eodem modo præest, quo Papa Christianis." Benjamin. Itin. p. 63. ap. Hott. Hist. Orient. p. 287.

7. They alike enforced their pretensions by persecution and the sword.

8. Mahometanism instituted the Saracen holy wars: Popery originated the Christian crusades.

9. Popery, among other first-fruits of the crusades, produced the mendicant orders: Mahometanism, the parallel mendicant orders of Dervises, Fakirs, Santons, &c.

10. Mahometanism was the parent, Popery the nurse, of the schoolmen.*

11. The Christian princes of the West all held their crowns by authority of the Roman pontiffs; to whom accordingly they did fealty and homage for them all Mahometan princes held theirs, on a like tenure, by authority of the caliphs.

12. Popery and Mahometanism alternately appear, first, as the extinguishers, and, secondly, as the restorers, of letters.

The parallel comprized in this brief enumeration, like that between Christianity and Mahometanism at large, is one, of which the history of the world supplies no second example. Particulars of it have been repeatedly noticed by Protestant writers; but to understand its real extent, and its place in the present argument, it must be contemplated in its full character and proportions.

In tracing the necessary steps of this analogy,

* See sect. xiii.

it is remote, indeed, from the writer's intention, to identify the antichristian papal tyranny, with the western Catholic church. Under the yoke of Rome, indeed, the rights and liberties of the Latin church had altogether passed away: the pure and peaceful spirit of the Gospel had long been submerged, beneath the incumbent weight of a dark and bloody superstition: in every period, however, of that bondage, even in the worst, the western church preserved unextinguished the vital spark of its Christianity nor, while men chronicle the crimes of the church and court of Rome, should the list of worthies be forgotten, which ennobles her annals, and which all but redeems her heavy kalendar of guilt. The church, which, at a period that has been justly entitled the night of Europe, produced a Saint Bernard, a Bede, a Thomas-àKempis*, with other shining lights, — which, in later times, engendered and matured the piety and virtues of a Fenelon, an Arnaud, a Pascal, a Nicole, is no meet subject for indiscriminate censure. Protestant writers, in particular, would do well to recollect, that to popes, and devoted ministers of the papal power, they stand indebted for much of the knowledge and civilization, which

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* The author of the "De Imitatione Christi," whoever he may have been, has appropriated this name to himself, by the best of titles.