ion. Egypt
exchanged the great men, who had made her Museum immortal, for bands of
solitary monks and sequestered virgins, with which she was overrun.

CHAPTER III.

CONFLICT RESPECTING THE DOCTRINE OF THE UNITY OF GOD.--THE
FIRST OR SOUTHERN REFORMATION.

The Egyptians insist on the introduction of the worship of
the Virgin Mary--They are resisted by Nestor, the Patriarch
of Constantinople, but eventually, through their influence
with the emperor, cause Nestor's exile and the dispersion of
his followers.

Prelude to the Southern Reformation--The Persian attack; its
moral effects.

The Arabian Reformation.--Mohammed is brought in contact
with the Nestorians--He adopts and extends their principles,
rejecting the worship of the Virgin, the doctrine of the
Trinity, and every thing in opposition to the unity of God.--
He extinguishes idolatry in Arabia, by force, and prepares
to make war on the Roman Empire.--His successors conquer
Syria, Egypt, Asia Minor, North Africa, Spain, and invade
France.

As the result of this conflict, the doctrine of the unity of
God was established in the greater part of the Roman Empire--
The cultivation of science was restored, and Christendom
lost many of her most illustrious capitals, as Alexandria,
Carthage, and, above all, Jerusalem.

THE policy of the Byzantine court had given to primitive Christianity a
paganized form, which it had spread over all the idolatrous populations
constituting the empire. There had been an amalgamation of the two
parties. Christianity had modified paganism, paganism had modified
Christianity. The limits of this adulterated religion were the confines
of the Roman Empire. With this great extension there had come to the
Christian party political influence and wealth. No insignificant portion
of the vast public revenues found their way into the treasuries of the
Church. As under such circumstances must ever be the case, there were
many competitors for the spoils--men who, under the mask of zeal for the
predominant faith, sought only the enjoyment of its emoluments.

ECCLESIASTICAL DISPUTES. Under the early emperors, conquest had reached
its culmination; the empire was completed; there remained no adequate
objects for military life; the days of war-peculation, and the
plundering of provinces, were over. For the ambitious, however, another
p