stinian after great Calamities._

THE PERSIAN ATTACK _leads to the Loss of Syria and Fall of
Jerusalem.--The true Cross carried away as a Trophy.--Moral
Impression of these Attacks._

THE ARAB ATTACK.--_Birth, Mission, and Doctrines of
Mohammed.--Rapid Spread of his Faith in Asia and Africa.--Fall
of Jerusalem.--Dreadful Losses of Christianity to
Mohammedanism.--The Arabs become a learned Nation._

_Review of the Koran.--Reflexions on the Loss of Asia and
Africa by Christendom._

[Sidenote: Three attacks made upon the Byzantine system.]

I have now to describe the end of the age of Faith in the East. The
Byzantine system, out of which it had issued, was destroyed by three
attacks: 1st, by the Vandal invasion of Africa; 2nd, by the military
operations of Chosroes, the Persian king; 3rd, by Mohammedanism.

Of these three attacks, the Vandal may be said, in a military sense, to
have been successfully closed by the victories of Justinian; but,
politically, the cost of those victories was the depopulation and ruin
of the empire, particularly in the south and west. The second, the
Persian attack, though brilliantly resisted in its later years by the
Emperor Heraclius, left, throughout the East, a profound moral
impression, which proved final and fatal in the Mohammedan attack.

[Sidenote: The Vandal attack.]

[Sidenote: Conquest of Africa.]

No heresy has ever produced such important political results as that of
Arius. While it was yet a vital doctrine, it led to the infliction of
unspeakable calamities on the empire, and, though long ago forgotten,
has blasted permanently some of the fairest portions of the globe. When
Count Boniface, incited by the intrigues of the patrician Aetius, invited
Genseric, the King of the Vandals, into Africa, that barbarian found in
the discontented sectaries his most effectual aid. In vain would he
otherwise have attempted the conquest of the country with the 50,000 men
he landed from Spain, A.D. 429. Three hundred Donatist bishops, and many
thousand priests, driven to despair by the persecutions inflicted by the
emperor, carrying with them that large portion of the population who
were Arian, were ready to look upon him as a deliverer, and therefore to
afford him support. The result to the empire was the loss of Africa.

[Sidenote: The reign of Justinian.]

It was nothing more than might have been expected that Justinian, when
he found