CHRISTIANITY AND MAHOMETANISM.
(Compared as to Toleration.)

The Mahometans, according to the principles of their faith, are obliged to employ violence to destroy other religions, and yet they tolerate them now, and have done so for many ages. The Christians have no order, but to preach and instruct; and yet, time out mind, they destroy with fire and sword those who are not of their religion. “When you meet with Infidels,” says Mahomet, “kill them, cut off their heads, or take them prisoners, and put them in chains till they have paid their ransom, or you find it convenient to set them at liberty. Be not afraid to persecute them, till they have laid down their arms, and submitted to you.” Nevertheless, it is true that the Saracens quickly left off the ways of violence; and that the Greek churches, as well the orthodox as the schismatical, have continued to this day under the yoke of Mahomet. They have their patriarchs, their metropolitans, their synods, their discipline, their monks. I know very well that they suffer much under such a master; but after all, they have more reason to complain of the covetousness and extortion of the Turks than of their sword. The Saracens were still more gentle than the Turks. See the proofs of it given by Mr Jurieu; which are taken out of Elmacin and Eutychius. It may be affirmed, for a certain truth, that if the western princes had been lords of Asia,

instead of the Saracens and Turks, there would be now no remnant of the Greek church, and they would not have tolerated Mahometanism, as these Infidels have tolerated Christianity. Let us hear Mr Jurieu himself. “ It may be truly said, that there is no comparison between the cruelty of the Saracens against the Christians, and that of Popery against the true believers. In the wars against the Vaudois, or in the massacres alone on St Batholomew’s day, there was more blood spilt upon account of religion, than was spilt by the Saracens in all their persecutions of the Christians. It is expedient to cure men of this prejudice; that Mahometanism is a cruel sect, which was propagated by putting men to their choice of death, or the abjuration of Christianity. This is in no wise true; and the conduct of the Saracens was an evangelical meekness in comparison to that of Popery, which exceeded the cruelty of the Cannibals. It is not therefore the cruelty of the Mahometans which has destroyed Christianity in the east and south, but their avarice. They made the Christians pay dear for their liberty of conscience; they imposed upon them heavy taxes; they made them often redeem their churches, which they sometimes sold to the Jews, and then the Christians must redeem them again: poverty destroys wit and debases courage. But, above all, Mahometanism has destroyed Christianity by ignorance.” He repeats the same thing, in fewer words, in one of his Pastoral Letters, supposing always, that Christianity was destroyed under the empire of the Mahometans; but he is mistaken, and would have said otherwise, had he better consulted the historians. But that is not the point; let us proceed and observe, that he tells us plainly, that the Saracens and Turks treated the Christian church with more moderation, than the Christians showed either to the Pagans, or to one another. He observes, that the Christian emperors ruined Paganism, by demolishing its temples, destroying its images, and forbidding all religious worship of its false gods; and that the reformed princes abolished Popery by burning the images, burying the relics in the ground, and forbidding all adulterous worship. It is plain that princes, who prohibit on a sudden a religion, use more violence than princes who permit the public exercise of it, and only keep it under, as the Turks do that of the Christians.

The conclusion which I would draw from all this is, that men are little governed by their principles. The Turks, we see, tolerate all religions, though the Koran enjoins them to persecute the Infidels; and the Christians, we see, do nothing but persecute, though the Gospel forbids them to do it. They would make fine work in the Indies, and in China, if ever the secular power there should favour them; assure yourself they would apply the maxims of Mr Jurieu. They have already done it in some places. Read what follows, and you will find, that arguments not being sufficient to convert the Infidels, the viceroy of Goa was desired to assist the Gospel, by decress of confiscation, &c. “ It being necessary,” says a priest writing from thence, “ that, besides the authority of the church, the power of the great should concur in producing this plentiful fruit, our Lord God has in many things made use of the viceroy as his instrument. Therefore where the Brachmans found they wanted arguments, they thought it sufficient for their defence any how to escape the nets, professing to live after the manner of their ancestors. But when, through their innate obstinacy of mind, they would neither acknowledge themselves vanquished, nor submit to arguments however strong; the viceroy, to cut the matter short, published a law that those Brachmans, with their whole families, who should refuse to turn Christians within forty days after the publication of the decree, should forfeit their goods and estates, and

go into banishment, and threatening the disobedient with being sent to the gallies.” The barbarities which the Spaniards exercised in America were also horrible.

The toleration given to it by the Mahometan princes proves that they have always had more humanity for other religions than the Christians, and I have added, that the different communions in the Greek church, which have preserved themselves under their empire, would have soon been extirpated, if they had lived under Christian kings, who had not been of the same belief A father of the Oratory, who is of the same opinion, thus observes, “ It will therefore be also concluded from the same evidence, how necessary the imperial laws were for the preservation of the church, since Egypt and the neighbouring provinces have been so. over-run and subjugated by the Eutychians, that they have never since been well reconciled or reunited to the Catholic church. Thomassin,Of the Unity of the Church, tom. i, part ii, chap. ix, page 374. ⁸² If the emperors had not supported the faith against the Eutychians, the whole world would have been overrun by them. They spread themselves very much over the provinces of Africa and Æthiopia, and the countries most remote, from the west to the east, for no other reason but because the emperors of Constantinople were no longer masters of them, or had never been so. I might say the same thing of the Nestorians: as soon as they had been fulminated by the first council of Ephesus, the emperor Theodosius the younger made very nearly the same edicts against them; they were exiled with Nestorius into frightful solitudes; yet they multiplied prodigiously towards the east and the north, the emperors not being able to pursue them beyond the limits of their empire. The Saracens or Mahometans a little after over-ran Africa and all Asia, seizing upon I know not how many provinces of

the Roman empire; and, through the favour of the Mahommetan princes, all these heretics gave an incredible extent to their sects. God preserved the Catholic faith only in the Roman empire; which was owing merely to the care and edicts of the Christian and Catholic emperors. Without this assistance from heaven, the Eutychians, Nestorians, and Arians, not to mention so many more ancient sects, would doubtless have established themselves in the greatest part of the provinces of the Roman empire, as they did in those which were out of its jurisdiction; and the followers of all the new sects, which have sprung up only within these hundred years, would not have been able to find a church, which they might first be born in, and afterwards separate from. They must have come into the world among the Arians, Nestorians, or Eutychians, and would have been infected with the same errors from their birth. They would have taken the word for a mere creature, with the Arians; Jesus Christ for a mere man, with the Nestorians; and for them as well as for the Eutychians, Jesus Christ would be God, but he would not be truly man. Why therefore do they quarrel with the Christian emperors, or kings, and their severe laws for the ancient religion, since it is by their assistance only that the divine providence has delivered them from all these errors? They ought rather to give thanks to him who has not permitted that they should be so far separated from us, as the ancient deserters of the Catholic church are, who departed from it above a thousand years ago, and are not yet altogether returned from their errors. We must not omit mentioning the cause of the long delay of the eastern sects from returning to the Catholic church. It is as we have already said, their dispersion into provinces and kingdoms, which now no longer belong to the Christian empire, but to Arabian princes, to the kings of Persia, the Moguls and the Tartars. The Catholic bishops whether Greeks or Syrians, but chiefly the missionaries from the holy see, have all along made some converts and some progresses among them; but all these efforts not having been supported, by the power and favour of temporal princes, they could never obtain either much extent or duration.

When I said the Mahometans have been less rigorous to the Christians than these to the heretics, I was supported by the testimony of a minister. Jurieu. ⁸³ I now build upon that of a priest; and by this means my opinion will appear the more reasonable, since it is confirmed by the testimonies of two witnesses of so opposite a character. These two evidences agree in another thing, which is a little scandalous; for they both confess, that if the Christian princes had not employed the rigour of the laws against the enemies of the orthodox faith, false religions would have over-run the whole world. By this rule, when our Saviour promised he would maintain his church against the gates of hell, he only promised that he would raise up princes who should subdue the enemies of the truth, by depriving them of their estates, thrusting them into prisons, banishing them, sending them to the gallies, hanging them, &c. There is no doctrine, how absurd soever, but by these means might brave all the infernal powers that would oppose it. This brings into my mind what has been said of Mahomet the impostor: it is reported, that when he was upon his death-bed, he left his disciples a prediction, which savours not. at all of a false prophet, “ My religion shall last as long as your victories.”

I cannot part with Thomassin before I ask him upon what grounds he goes, when he says the Euty-chian heresy would have overrun all the world, had not the emperors supported the faith. What had this heresy so charming? Did it favour the passions of

the heart? Did it enervate the morality of the gospel? Not at all: it was not upon the doctrine of morality that this heretic combated the orthodox: he contended with them about a mystery which reason cannot well comprehend; but he explained it after a manner less to be comprehended than the orthodox, and manifestly absurd. Perhaps it would be no mistake to say, that the Eutychian heresies found so many followers, only because the proceedings of councils shocked an infinite number of persons, and gave a very disadvantageous prepossession against the orthodox party. We may pass the like judgment on the sect of Nestorius. A vast number of people embraced it from the abhorrence they had of the injustice which they believed was done Nestorius, by sacrificing him to the credit of St Cyril. They could not persuade themselves that a cause, which triumphed by such irregular ways, and through so unjust a partiality of the emperor, could have any right on its side. We should see more clearly into this affair, if we had the relations of the Nestorians, and those of the other sects; but we scarce know any thing of those matters otherwise than from the report of a victorious party, and yet we know enough to judge, that the imperial power has always had an undue share in the decision.—Arts,Mahomet and Nestorius.