Ot THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

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church by insensible degrees, and each petty chap.step was pleasing to the superstitious mind, as .productive of comfort and innocent of sin. But ^’^ge 0 "in the beginning of the eighth century, in the worsli 'P-full magnitude of the abuse, the more timorousGreeks were awakened by an apprehension,that under the mask of Christianity , they hadrestored the religion of their fathers; they heard,with grief and impatience, the name of idolaters;the incessant charge of the Jews and Mahome-tans, p who derived from the law and the koranan immortal hatred to graven images and all therelative worship. The servitude of the Jews might curb their zeal and depreciate their au-thority; but the triumphant Mussulmans, whoreigned at Damascus, and threatened Constan-tinople , cast into the scale of reproach the ac-cumulated weight of truth and victory. Thecities of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt , had beenfortified with the images of Christ, his mother,and his saints; and each city presumed on thehope or promise of 'miraculous defence. In arapid conquest of ten years, the Arabs subduedthose cities and these images; and, in their opi-nion, the Lord of hosts pronounced a decisivejudgment between the adoration and contemptof these mute and inanimate idols. For a whileEdessa had braved the Persian assaults; butthe chosen city, the spouse of Christ, was in-volved in the common ruin; and his divine re-

p By Oedrenus, Zonaras , Glycas, and IManasscs the origin of theIconoclasts is imputed to the caliph Ye^id and two Jews , who promisedthe empire to Lee j and the reproaches of these hostile strlaiits areturned into an absurd conspiracy for rcstoriug the purity of the Chris-tian worship (ace Spanheim, Hist. Imig. c. 2).