HKB
OF THE STATE OF CHRISTIANITY, PARTICULARLY OF THE EASTERN CHURCHES, AND OF JUDAISM, AT THE TIME OF MOHAMMED'S APPEARANCE; AND OF THE METHODS TAKEN BY HIM FOR THE ESTABLISHING OF HIS RELIGION, AND THE CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH CONCURRED THERETO.
IF WE look into the ecclesiastical historians even from the third century, we shall find the Christian world to have then had a very different aspect from what some authors have represented; and so far from being endued with active graces, zeal, and devotion, and established within itself with purity of doctrine, union, and firm profession of the faith,1 that on the contrary, what by the ambition of the clergy, and what by drawing the abstrusest niceties into controversy, and dividing and subdividing about them into endless schisms and contentions, they had so destroyed that peace, love, and charity from among
1 Vide Poc. Spec. p. 163, &c. 2 Vide Hyde ubi sup. p. 4. 1 Ricaut's State of the Ottoman Empire, p. 187.