efficacy of Christianity supplied a plausible train of objections to its credibility and its

use.

It is an obvious though just remark, that true religion and learning have ever flourished and fallen together. Both had now for some centuries been hastening with equal and visible steps to decay. The sciences, unpatronized by the emperors and persons in authority, had long ceased to be considered as the roads to wealth and honour, and were therefore no longer cultivated. The interests of polite literature and philosophy had received irreparable injuries, by the incursions of the Goths and other barbarous nations into the western provinces of the Roman empire. During the violence and danger which naturally attended these tumultuous scenes, there remained but little leisure or opportunity for those who were still desirous of attending to the liberal arts. And it is highly probable that they must have totally perished in the general confusion, had they not found a wretched and precarious shelter in the cloisters of the monks. Here indeed their still venerable remains were preserved awhile; though they received only such a degree of culture, as served to

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display the glorious height from which they had fallen.

Historians have exhibited to us the most melancholy picture of the universal darkness and ignorance, which at the beginning of the seventh century had overspread all ranks of men. Even the ecclesiastical orders scarcely afforded an exception to this general description. Among the bishops, the grand instructors and defenders of the Christian church, few (we are told) could be found, whose knowledge and abilities were sufficient to compose the discourses, however mean and incoherent, which their office sometimes obliged them to deliver to the people. The greater part of those among the monastic orders, whom the voice of an illiterate age had dignified with the character of learning, lavished their time and talents in studying the fabulous legends of pretended saints and martyrs, or in composing histories equally fabulous, rather than in the cultivation of true science, or the diffusion of useful knowledge.

Nor was the condition of the Eastern Church more favourable to the interests of literature. Distracted by the implacable animosity of contending parties, Nestorians,

Monophysites, and the numberless subdivisions of those two sects, it was a stranger to that peace and tranquillity which is absolutely necessary to the cultivation, and even the existence of learning. Intent only upon the annoyance of each other, all parties had equally forsaken the broad and open paths of manly philosophy and liberal science, for the narrow and perplexing intricacies of metaphysics. The champions of the contending factions directed alike their principal attention to the writings of Aristotle; and, in order to arm their followers with logical subtleties, translated many of the works of that profound philosopher into their respective languages.

Of the writings which threw a feeble glimmering over the darkness of this unhappy period, the far greater part were controver sial. In the few which have remained to the present times, it is easy to trace the melancholy decline of piety as well as of literature, That natural and beautiful simplicity which is the striking characteristic of the writings of the apostolic age, and of the first defenders of Christianity, was now succeeded by the coarse and confused jargon of the schools, by the loud and fierce clamours of See Abul-Pharaj. Hist. Dynast. p. 94.

personal invective, and by all the disingenuous arts of sophistry, which industriously perplexed truth; and of bigotry, which perversely opposed it.

While ignorance was thus extending her dominion over the Christian world, superstition, her genuine offspring, followed close behind. The progress of corruption is rapid and unbounded. When once the professors of Christianity had departed from that purity of worship, and that simplicity of faith, which Christ and his apostles had prescribed, and impiously dared to erect a superstructure of worthless materials upon the firm and solid foundations of the gospel, it was impossible to fix any limits to the growing corruption. One abuse was daily added to another; and the introduction of one superstition served only to pave the way for a thousand others, more false and more pernicious, which followed in its train.

To go back no farther than the beginning of the third century; even at that early period, it is easy to observe the unseemly fabric of superstitious ceremony gradually rising upon the ruins of genuine piety. The far greater part of those corrupt doctrines and vain superstitions, which formerly occasioned the separation of our ancestors from

the communion of the Romish church, and of which we still continue to entertain a just abhorrence, were introduced and established during the darkness of this and the succeeding ages. An extravagant veneration for departed saints and martyrs; the idolatrous worship of images and relics; and, lastly, the absurd and fanciful notion of a Fire destined to purify the soul after death from the pollu-. tions it had contracted while in the body; these opinions, which are still held sacred and essential by the church of Rome, were the successive progeny of the ignorance and superstition of these ages,

At the time of Mahomet these corrupt opinions had nearly eclipsed the lustre of the gospel. The very essence of Christianity was lost under a load of idle and supersti tious ceremonies, which were daily multiplied without bounds; and the unmeaning pomp of a gaudy and ostentatious worship was substituted in the room of the simple yet nobler oblation of the heart.

The primitive Christians with anxious zeal confined their worship to the one most high God, and his son Jesus Christ; but those who now called themselves by that venerable name, had multiplied almost to infinity the objects of their devotion. Neglecting or