were awakened by an apprehension, that under the mask of
Christianity, they had restored the religion of their fathers: they
heard, with grief and impatience, the name of idolaters; the incessant
charge of the Jews and Mahometans, [15] who derived from the Law and the
Koran an immortal hatred to graven images and all relative worship.
The servitude of the Jews might curb their zeal, and depreciate their
authority; but the triumphant Mussulmans, who reigned at Damascus,
and threatened Constantinople, cast into the scale of reproach the
accumulated weight of truth and victory. The cities of Syria, Palestine,
and Egypt had been fortified with the images of Christ, his mother, and
his saints; and each city presumed on the hope or promise of miraculous
defence. In a rapid conquest of ten years, the Arabs subdued those
cities and these images; and, in their opinion, the Lord of Hosts
pronounced a decisive judgment between the adoration and contempt of
these mute and inanimate idols. [1511] For a while Edessa had braved
the Persian assaults; but the chosen city, the spouse of Christ, was
involved in the common ruin; and his divine resemblance became the slave
and trophy of the infidels. After a servitude of three hundred years,
the Palladium was yielded to the devotion of Constantinople, for a
ransom of twelve thousand pounds of silver, the redemption of two
hundred Mussulmans, and a perpetual truce for the territory of Edessa.
[16] In this season of distress and dismay, the eloquence of the monks
was exercised in the defence of images; and they attempted to prove,
that the sin and schism of the greatest part of the Orientals had
forfeited the favor, and annihilated the virtue, of these precious
symbols. But they were now opposed by the murmurs of many simple or
rational Christians, who appealed to the evidence of texts, of facts,
and of the primitive times, and secretly desired the reformation of
the church. As the worship of images had never been established by any
general or positive law, its progress in the Eastern empire had been
retarded, or accelerated, by the differences of men and manners, the
local degrees of refinement, and the personal characters of the bishops.
The splendid devotion was fondly cherished by the levity of the capital,
and the inventive genius of the Byzantine clergy; while the rude and
remote districts of Asia were strangers to this innovation of sacred
luxury. Many large congregations of Gnostics an