to be the most elegant and polite in the world. Together with the mechanical, the Saracens had cultivated the liberal arts; and while a noble external appearance was manifested in their buildings, furniture, and dress, their poetry and music, consecrated to heroism and love, displayed generosity and elegance of mind, still more noble and affecting.*

Industry, learning, and all the fine arts, as I have frequently observed to you, flourished under the Kaliphat, while they were nearly extinguished in Europe. What is still more surprizing, the Christians of Spain were comparatively barbarians; while in the same country the Saracens were a polished people. But the Kaliphat, though the greatest, and perhaps the best civilized empire, that till then had ever existed, was doomed to a sudden fall. Like the Romans, they had a series of princes, some of them the greatest that ever dignified, and others the worst that ever disgraced, human nature.

The age of Arabian learning continued about five hundred years, till the great eruption of the Moguls, and was coeval with the darkest and

most

Watson's Continuator.

+ Universal History.

most indolent period of European annals; but, since the sun of science has arisen in the west, all oriental studies seem to have languished and declined. Under the Ommiades, however, or the beginning of the eighth century, the Arabian empire extended two hundred days journey from east to west, from the confines of Tartary and India, to the shores of the Atlantic. They possessed the continent of Africa, the solid and compact dominion from Fargana to Aden, and from Tarsus to Surat. The progress of the Mahommedan religion diffused over this ample space a general similarity of manners and opinions. The language and laws of the Koran were studied with equal devotion at Samarcand and Seville. The Moor and the Indian embraced, as countrymen and brothers, in the pilgrimage of Mecca; and the Arabian language was adopted, as the popular idiom, in all the provinces to the westward of the Tigris. The greater part, in short, of the temperate, as well as of the torrid zone, was subject to the Mahommedans.

The institution of the Inquisition in Spain, however, of which we have been speaking, was principally

principally levelled against these Moors, though it also, in a considerable degree, embraced the never to be forgiven Israelites. A very powerful, and a very brilliant writer, has thought fit to run a parallel between the effects of the Mahommedan and Christian religions on national characters. "The latter," he says," is marked by a spirit of benevolence and humanity, new in the history of the world, which in opposition to every distinction of language, of manners, and of national interests, has united the various people of which it is composed, in one firm and sacred bond of brotherhood and affection. Whereas, the nations who have embraced Mahommedanism, have been distinguished by a spirit of hostility and hatred to the rest of mankind. The Mahommedans progress in science, their capacity to invent, and even their willingness to adopt any useful or elegant arts, bear no proportion to their zeal and activity in the support of their religious tenets. Throughout every country where Mahommedanism is professed, the same deep pause is made in philosophy; and the same wide chasm is to be seen between the opportunities of men to improve, and their actual improvement.

"*

* Dr. White's Bampton Lectures.

The

The whole current of history is, however, unfortunately against this learned professor. The revival, and the subsequent cultivation of letters, is unquestionably due to the Saracens. To them we are, moreover, indebted for the invention of paper made from linen, of gunpowder, of the magnetic needle, and of the pendulum; and for many important improvements in mathematics, in geography, and astronomy.* In regard to their moral, and more domestic character, I have at present nothing new to say. Many years local information had enabled me to speak of them formerly, and in an unequivocal manner favourably; and that too, nearly at the time, I believe, with the eloquent doctor's admirable publication, from which the above is an tract.

By an ordinance, the emperor Frederic adjudged all persons, without distinction, to be burned, who were convicted of heresy by the ecclesiastical judge. The same emperor, by another constitution, ordained, that if any temporal lord,. admonished by the church, should neglect to clear his territories of heretics, within the year,

it

* L'Abbe Andres.

+ Philosophical Rhapsodies.

De Rebus Belgicis.

it should be lawful for good Catholics to seize and occupy the lands, and utterly to exterminate the heretical professors. And upon this foundation was built that arbitrary power so long claimed, and so fatally exerted by the pope, of disposing even of the kingdoms of refractory princes, to the more dutiful sons of the clergy.* But could you conceive it possible, even in the annals of depravity itself, that after the Duke of Alva had put to death, in cold blood, more than eighteen thousand persons, for daring to adore their God, in the manner most consonant to their own reason, Veraguas, a favourite of his, should say, "The Duke's lenity and compassion had ruined the king's affairs in the Netherlands.".

The first apologists of Christianity, and the first missionaries who preached the gospel to the Barbarians, claimed, indeed, and extended the benefit of toleration. But after their successors had established their spiritual dominion, they hastened to exhort all Christian kings to extirpate, without mercy, the remains of superstition, and to shew that the Christian religion admitted of no inter-community. Unresisting

*Blackstone.

Lyndewode de Hereticis..