summarily ascertained, by a brief comparison of the motives which actuated, the agents who conducted, and the quarters of the world which became the theatre of, this twofold antichristian warfare.

1. If we compare the actuating motives of the two movements, we find, that in both alike, ambition combined with fanaticism to give the first impulse; which, in both cases, was alike obeyed in the spirit of a blind and devoted zeal. Again, in the conduct of both enterprizes, the professed object was the same, the destruction, namely, of false religion, and the restoration of the worship of the true God; while, in the pursuit of this common object, both sides equally held it to be not only allowable, but meritorious, both to defend, and to propagate, religion by the sword. From these coinciding principles, there arose, among the Saracens and the crusaders, a corresponding persuasion, that to fight the battles of the faith was the first duty of religion, and the service most acceptable to God. By the rival champions of the crescent and the cross, the field of battle, accordingly, was regarded as consecrated ground; and, while they combated from similar motives, they anticipated the same reward: Paradise, and the crown of martyrdom, was the reward held out in the Koran, to all

who fell in the cause of Islamism; and Paradise, and the crown of martyrdom, was likewise the promised and expected recompense of those crusaders, who should die by the hands of the infidels, fighting the battles of the faith.*

2. When we contrast the directing agents, by whom the opposed armaments were levied and put in motion, we obtain fresh materials for the establishment of the historical analogy between the Mahometan and the Papal sacred wars. For, as these wars were themselves antagonist movements of the two great antichristian powers, so were they conducted severally, the one by the acknowledged heads of the eastern, the other by the acknowledged heads of the western, antichrist: the Mahometan popes, as the caliphs were significantly styled even by ecclesiastical writers in the middle ages, acted always as the projectors and prime movers in the holy wars both of the Saracens and of the Turks; the Roman pontiffs, on the other hand, no less invariably impelled and directed the entire series of the crusades.t

*Breve et quodammodo succinctum est consilium nostrum, pro Christo, Christique legibus, — gloriose mori et vivere æternaliter:" in this sentence is contained the genuine sense of the times, as expressed in a full council of the crusaders. See Martene et Durand, tom. v. p. 530.

+ See M. De Choiseul D'Aillecourt, Essai sur l'Influence des Croisades, pp. 83-85, with note 135, for a striking historical coincidence between these antagonist heads of antichrist. On the capture of Antioch,

3. From the common motives which incited, and the kindred agents who prosecuted, the two vast expeditions, we proceed, in the last place, to consider their successive appearance, and eventual collision, upon a common field of action; the circumstance which brings to a point all their other features of resemblance and providential relation.

The propagation of Islamism, was the general end proposed by the Mahometan sacred wars; the defence of Christianity, was the avowed general object of the crusades; but a first and favourite project, common to both undertakings, was the design of rescuing JERUSALEM out of the hands of the unbelievers. For, by Christians and Mahometans, in every age, Jerusalem was regarded as the holy city; the cradle and dwelling-place of the prophets; the chosen seat of God's temple, and abode of his peculiar presence. On both sides, accordingly, its possession was aimed at, and contended for, on the ground of religious duty; and the pursuit of this special object, thus necessarily brought the successive

it appears, the pope was formally invited, by the crusading chieftains, to come and put himself at the head of his own war; in the very same manner as, on the eve of their conquest of Jerusalem, the Caliph Omar had been called on, by the primitive Saracens, to assume the command in person, and head the triumph of the true believers. Compare Ockley's History of the Saracens.

movements into contact, upon the same spot, from opposite quarters of the globe. The primitive Moslems sought to wrest Jerusalem from the Greeks, whom they accounted unbelievers; the crusaders, to effect the deliverance of the holy city from the Turkish infidels. The Saracens, advancing upon Palestine from the heart of Arabia, and the Latins, pressing forward towards it from the extremity of Europe, thus present to the eye the wonderful spectacle, of Isaac and Ishmael, in the persons of their literal and their spiritual descendants, striving together for mastery over the city of God, in the land of Abraham their father.

But it is not in Palestine only, that the prophetic conflict of the sons of Abraham was renewed, through the instrumentality of the Mahometan and Papal holy wars: as we follow the earlier operations of these religious armaments, the historical parallel between them will be found every where geographically preserved: thus, the conquest of Syria and Palestine, and the capture of Antioch and Jerusalem, were the common first-fruits of the great battles of Yermuk and Dorylæum, fought at an interval of four hundred and fifty years: and, at subsequent periods of their two-fold progress, Egypt, Western Africa,

and Spain*, were reciprocally occupied, or traversed, by the Saracenic and crusading armies; whose rival careers may be traced on the map of the ancient world, from the confines of Arabia, to the western extremity of Europe.

The similarity of the two enterprizes, in their original character and design, has been already sufficiently illustrated: it remains to be noticed, that, as the crusades drew towards their close, their resemblance to the wars of Mahometanism became, in every point of view, complete: for the warfare which had been instituted for the

defence of Christianity, was now converted, through the agency of the popes, into an engine for the propagation of the Gospel, like that of the Koran, by the power of the sword. This antichristian process commenced, with the crusades set on foot, by Innocent III., for the extirpation of the Waldenses and Albigenses; it proceeded, in the exploits of the knights of the Teutonic order, from the persecution of heresy, so called, in the south, to the annihilation of paganism in the north of Europe,-by the forcible reduction of the Prussians, and the few remaining adherents of heathenism, to the profession of Christianity, and obedience to

* A. D. 843, 844, Saracen Spain was invaded by the Normans. See Des Marlès, tom. i. pp. 327, 328. Compare Abulfeda, Annal. Muslem. tom. ii. pp. 178, 179, with Reiske's note 168. The Normans were not yet converted to Christianity.