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tacle was exhibited of a Christian priesthood succeeding ( though after great opposition ) in gaining the
assistance of the civil power in treating with unexampled bigotry and cruelty , a people from whom they had met with nothing but humanity and toleration , * while the political fanaticism * Les Maures Vainqueurs des
Espagnols , ne perse * cuterent point les Vaincus ; les Espagnols , Vainqueurs des Maures , les ont persecut 6 s et chassis . " Pre * cis Historique , prefixed to Le Gonsalve de Florian .
r comparative toleration of each other by the followers of the rival faiths , might be a subject of much interest , and would devek > pe some curious matter , though I am inclined to think that the result would be very discreditable to the professors of Christianity , owing , perhaps mainly , to the ignorance in which they were studiously kept of the doctrines and principles of their opponents .
In the first period of Mahometan conquest , religious antipathy doubtless ran very high , though always curbed by a sense of political interest , which extended full toleration in consideration of tribute . The Mahometans seem ever to have borne in mind , that the God whom they worshiped was , after all , the God of the Christian .
When the first effervescence of furious 2 eal had subsided , the Christian Churches were left in peaceable exercise of their own worship and opinions , and during all the provocation of the bloody crusades , the followers of Mahomet seem to have aimed only at preserving political power and independence , asserting , not as the
Christians did , that they alone had a title to "the exclusive possession and veneration of the holy places , but that they held these objects of veneration dear and sacred . While Richard Cceur de Lion is represented by the chroniclers of his exploits as even enjoying a cannibal feast of a * ' Saracen young and fat , " and vowing ,
" Everie day w « shall eat All so many as we may get , To England will we nought gon , Till we have eaten every one ;" ( Romance of Richard Cceur de Lion ;) while Damietta was running with the
blood of tens of thousands slaughtered in cold blood by Cardinal Pelagius on the capture of that city , ( see Mills ' s Hist , of the Crusades , II . 185 , ) Alexandria had its Christian Church and its patriarchs , ivho were visited only with a rigorous exaction and occasional increase of their toleration tax . —I am not aware of any
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of Ximenes , as if to emulate , in the 15 th century , the fabled barbarism of a Mussulman of the first century of
instances of Christian forbearance towards the Saracens similar to that of Camel , Sultan of Cairo , who , when the whole army of Pelagius was in his power after the slaughter of Damietta , shed tears of pity over their miserable condition , and opened the Egyptian granaries for their support ; or to that of his successor towards &t . Louis and his nobles after the destruction of their army at Massoura .
The ignorance which prevailed among the Christians concerning the nature of the Mahometan faith , its founder and history , was extreme . Mahomet himself , or a personification of his power , was talked of under all possible absurd names and titles , sometimes as a great idol , sometimes as a pagan deity > the object
of the worship of his followers . An instance of this may be seen in the story concerning the Templars and the " Figura Baffometi" in Mills ' s Crusades , II . 407 , quoted from Raynouard . —This ignorance led the Church into the impiety of openly cursing the God whose unity and perfections the Mahometan system pretended to co-operate with the
Christian in maintaining . The African Church in its confession of faith said , " I curse the God of Mahomet , who , he says , is one entire Deity , neither begetting nor being begotten , and like to whom there is no other being , " &c . ( Priestley ' s Hist , of the Christian
Church , III ., quoted from Robinson , p . 115 . ) There was , however , at several periods , considerable inclination shewn , arising , perhaps , from motives of policy , to soften down the asperity , of this feeling , and to consider the Mahometan rather
as a heretic than a Pagan or Infidel . " Hildebrand , in 1076 , ( I quote from the History of the Crusades , II . 161 , ) wrote the King of Morocco a letter of thanks for some liberty granted to Christians , in which he says he is sure the King had been moved by the Spirit of God , and that both he and the King worshiped , believed and trusted in the same God , though the modes of their
adoration and faith were different . " The Emperor Manuel Comnenus was very anxious to expunge from the Greek Catechisms the anathema against the God of Mahomet , whom the Christians chose the
to think was a different being from object of their own adoration .- — Tnc sticklers for orthodoxy were alarmed , and the din of Jjolethics resounded through the empire . —A moderate party , however , reconciled the combatants , and it was
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264 The Nonconformist * No . XVIII .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1820, page 264, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2488/page/8/
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