was the reward of extirpating those who would not Decome his followers. It was his maxim, that "the sword is the key of heaven and of hell." The Jews were more the objects of his hatred than any other sect. He utterly destroyed them in Arabia, confiscated their property, and subjected them to tortures. He would not condescend to allow them to become his followers, and gave testimony of the hatred he bore them in his last hours. "May God curse the Jews," said he, "for they have made temples of the sepulchres of their prophets !" With this exception, the alternative he offered to his enemies was, to acknowledge the true God and his prophet, pay tribute, or die. And with this alternative, he subdued a great part of the world. His first conquests were in Arabia, Persia, and Syria. Subsequently his successors subdued Egypt and Africa, from the Nile to the Atlantic Ocean. After the Saracens became Mahometans, they overran and desolated the Roman empire, and made the most fearful devastation of the oriental churches. Not satisfied with these conquests, they penetrated into Spain and France; subsequently attached the Turks to their standard, became masters of the fairest portions of Europe, and planted the crescent on the walls of Constantinople. The mildest feature in the religion of Mahomet was, that he did not deny that the followers of any religion might be saved, if their actions were virtuous. And yet strange to say; wherever he came in contact with men, he recognized no rights of conscience, no degree of religious liberty. Wherever his followers went, it was Islamism, tribute, or death.*

* Vide Sale's Koran, Picart's Ceremonies, and Herbelot's Bib liothèque Orientale.

The pagan world too has fiercely set itself against the Lord and against his Anointed. With few exceptions, the pagan nations cannot be said to have expressed any great degree of intolerance toward one another. They have been bitter persecutors of the religion of the Old and New Testaments, but no often persecutors of paganism itself. Though plunged in the grossest superstition, and though almost every nation had its own peculiar deities, this variety of gods and religions was rarely the source even of division or animosity. Dr. Mosheim observes, that the Egyptians are an exception to this remark; while at the same time he confesses, that "the Egyptian wars, waged to avenge their gods, cannot properly be called religious wars, not being undertaken either to propagate, or to suppress any one form of religion." The Roman empire, in the days of her pagan princes, became drunk with the blood of Christendom. Before the close of the first century, the power of the gospel was felt throughout that vast empire. But its successes only roused the dormant hostility of its foes. After the demolition of the Jewish state by Vespasian, a series of persecutions against Christianity was commenced, beginning under Nero, in the thirty-first year of the Christian era, and extending to the reign of Dioclesian, including about three centuries of as bitter suffering and cruelty as men were ever called to endure. The Christian religion was deemed a "detestable superstition," and the Christian name contemptible to a proverb. Under the reign of Nero, no class of men were considered more the enemies of mankind than the Christians; and notwithstanding the purity and benevolence of their character, they incurred the hatred of the pagan world, were obnoxious to its fury, torn by wild beasts, consumed by

fire, and in such multitudes that the streets of Rome, night after night, were illuminated by the fearful conflagrations. In the latter part of the reign of Domitian, who succeeded to the empire in the year eighty-one, all the horrors of Nero's persecution were renewed. Under Trajan, the persevering profession of Christianity was by law a capital offence. It was by his order, that Ignatius the bishop of Antioch was carried a prisoner from that city to Rome, and thrown to the wild beasts in the amphitheatre. After Trajan, Marcus Antoninus, though a prince so universally popular that the gratitude of Rome at his death enrolled him among the gods, became the implacable enemy of Christianity, subjected its disciples to torture, and put to death whole churches. It was under his reign that Justin Martyr, Polycarp, the martyrs of Lyons and Vienne, became victims of the ghastly tortures and bloody animosity of the pagans. After him, torrents of blood were shed by Severus, in Africa and Egypt; and many a Christian female, like those noble women Felicitas and Perpetua, was stripped, scourged and thrown to the wild beasts, exclaiming, as the latter did to her weeping friends, "Continue firm in the faith, love one another, and be not offended at our sufferings!" After him, the spirit of persecution broke out in all its horrors under Decius, whose cruel and terrible edicts were executed with a variety and intenseness of newly invented suffering. The successor of Decius was Gallus, whose short reign was distinguished by such severity of persecutions and such a collection of human miseries, that Cyprian, the bishop of Carthage, himself a martyr to the Christian faith, thought that the reign of Antichrist was come, and the final judgment near at hand. During the early part of the reign of Valerian, the

church found in him a friend and protector; but after a short truce of three years, as one of the most memorable instances of the instability of the human character, he commenced a deadly persecution. After Valerian, a general persecution, instigated by the pagan priests, broke out under the reign of Dioclesian, who demolished the temples of the Christians, burned their sacred books, deprived them of all civil rights and honours, and consigned them to torture and flames. This persecution raged against all sorts of men who bore the Christian name; and with the exception of France, pervaded the whole Roman world. As evidence of the severity of this persecution, a coin was struck under the reign of this detestable persecutor, with this inscription, "Nomine Christianorum deleto"-"The Christian name extinguished."* Thus was this vast pagan empire, this colossal power, extending itself from the straits of Gibraltar to the Caspian sea, covering all Europe, and having its territories even in Africa and the south of Britain, combined almost as with the counsels and heart of one man, against the gospel of Christ. All ranks and conditions of men seemed bent on its destruction; emperors trembling for their crowns, priests for their gold, philosophers for their systems, and the common people the more terrible for their ignorance and superstitions. It was indeed a dark day to the church. One universal cry of persecution and death might have been heard from Jerusalem to Ephesus, from Ephesus to Rome, from Rome to the provinces of Gaul. 1

It were devoutly to be wished that we could say with truth, that the Christian Church was herself

* Vide Mosheim, Milner and Lardner.

pure from the spirit of intolerance, and the blood of persecution. It is a most melancholy retrospect to look back upon the slow progress of religious liberty, even in the visible Church of God. The world has no where seen greater evidences of the imperfection of men, of the blindness of the human heart, of the dangers of an excited state of mind in religious controversies, and of the influence of the spirit of the age and times in which men live, than in the tardy growth of religious liberty even under the light of Christian truth. It is indeed a melancholy retrospect to look back upon the very slow progress of religious toleration in our world. The principles of religious liberty seem to have been understood by few of any religious denomination, until a very late period. The human mind seems to have been enveloped in an unaccountable hallucination on this plain subject; and ages and men, otherwise distinguished for discretion, for piety, and even for moral grandeur, have been scarcely less distinguished for an intolerance and bigotry utterly at war with the spirit of Christianity, and a lasting reproach to the Christian name. Not a little watchfulness is necessary, even on the part of the best of men, before they will cultivate a kind spirit toward those who dissent from them on subjects so important as the various topics of their religious faith. No man, and no set of men, know what they will do, till they have power. The pride of power, and power too over the conscience, a pride which, while it seems to be associated with the love of the truth, is at heart associated with that subtle self-complacency which says, "Stand by thyself for I am holier than thou;" a pride which, while it conceals its true motives under the pretence of contending earnestly for the faith, cannot suppress the ostentatious claim of Jehu, "Come