Hitherto, the weight of supernatural belief inclines against the Protestants; and many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God, than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant.

Yet the services of Luther and his rivals are solid and important; and the philosopher must own his obligations to these fearless enthusiasts.(34) I. By their hands the lofty fabric of superstition, from the abuse of indulgences to the intercession of the Virgin, has been levelled with the ground. Myriads of both sexes of the monastic profession were restored to the liberty and labours of social life. A hierarchy of saints and angels, of imperfect and subordinate deities, were stripped of their temporal power, and reduced to the enjoyment of celestial happiness: their images and relics were banished from the church; and the credulity of the people was no longer nourished with the daily repetition of miracles and visions. The imitation of Paganism was supplied by a pure and spiritual worship of prayer and thanksgiving, the most worthy of man, the least unworthy of the Deity. It only remains to observe, whether such sublime simplicity be consistent with popular devotion; whether the vulgar, in the absence of all visible objects, will not be inflamed by enthusiasm, or insensibly subside in langour and indifference. II. The chain of authority was broken, which restrains the bigot from thinking as he pleases, and the slave from speaking as he thinks: the popes, fathers, and councils, were no longer the supreme and infallible judges of the world; and each Christian was taught to acknowledge no law but the Scriptures, no interpreter but his own conscience. This freedom, however, was the consequence, rather than the design, of the reformation. The patriot reformers were ambitious of succeeding the tyrants whom they had dethroned. They imposed with equal rigour their creeds and confessions: they asserted the right of the magistrate to punish heretics with death. The pious or personal animosity of Calvin proscribed in Servetus (35) the guilt of his own rebellion;(36) and the flames of Smithfield, in which he was afterward consumed, had been kindled for the Anabaptists by the zeal of Cranmer.(37) The nature of the tiger was the same, but he was gradually deprived of his teeth and fangs. A spiritual and temporal kingdom was possessed by the Roman pontiff: the Protestant doctors were subjects of an humble rank, without revenue or jurisdiction. His decrees were consecrated by the antiquity of the Catholic church: their arguments and disputes were submitted to the people; and their appeal to private judgment was accepted beyond their wishes, by curiosity and enthusiasm. Since the days of Luther and Calvin, a secret reformation has been silently working in the bosom of the reformed churches; many weeds of prejudice were eradicated; and the disciples of Erasmus(38) diffused a spirit of freedom and moderation. The liberty of conscience has been claimed as a common benefit, an inalienable right:(39) the free governments

(34) "Had it not been for such men as Luther and myself," said the fanatic Whiston to Hally the philosopher, "you would now be kneeling before an image of St. Winifred."

(35) The article of Servet in the Dictionaire Critique of Chauffepié, is the best account which I have seen of this shameful transaction. See likewise the Abbé d'Artigny, Nouveaux Memoires d'Histoire, &c. tom. ii. p. 55-154.

(36) I am more deeply scandalized at the single execution of Servetus, than at the hecatombs which have blazed in the Auto da Fes of Spain and Portugal. 1. The zeal of Calvin seems to have been envenomed by personal malice, and perhaps envy. He accused his adversary before their common cnemies, the judges of Vienna, and betrayed, for his destruction, the sacred trust of a private correspondence. 2. The deed of cruelty was not varnished by the pretence of danger to the church or state. In his passage through Geneva, Servetus was a harmless stranger, who neither preached, nor printed, nor made proselytes. 3. A Catholic inquisitor yields the same obedience which he requires, but Calvin violated the golden rule of doing as he would be done by; a rule which I read in a moral treatise of Isocrates (in Nicole, tom. i. p. 93, edit. Battie), four hundred years before the publication of the Gospel. 'A TаσXOνTES υφ' ετέρων οργίζεσθε, ταυτα τοις άλλοις μη ποιείτε.

(37) See Burnet, vol. ii. p. 84-86. The sense and humanity of the young king were oppressed by the authority of the primate.

(38) Erasmus may be considered as the father of rational theology. After a slumber of a hundred years, it was revived by the Armenians of Holland, Grotius, Limborch, and Le Clerc in England by Chillingworth, the latitudinarians of Cambridge (Burnet, Hist. of his own Times, vol. i. p. 261–268, octavo edition), Tillotson, Clarke, Hoadley, &c.

(39) I am sorry to observe, that the three writers of the last age, by whom the rights of toleration have been so nobly defended, Bayle, Leibnitz, and Locke, are all layinen and philosophers.

of Holland(40) and England(41) introduced the practice of toleration; and the narrow allowance of the laws has been enlarged by the prudence and humanity of the times. In the exercise, the mind has understood the limits of its powers, and the words and shadows that might amuse the child can no longer satisfy his manly reason. The volumes of controversy are overspread with cobwebs: the doctrine of a Protestant church is far removed from the knowledge or belief of its private members; and the forms of orthodoxy, the articles of faith, are subscribed with a sigh or a smile by the modern clergy. Yet the friends of Christianity are alarmed at the boundless impulse of inquiry and skepticism. The predictions of the Catholics are accomplished: the web of mystery is unravelled by the Armenians, Arians, and Socinians, whose numbers must not be computed from their separate congregations. And the pillars of revelation are shaken by those men who preserve the name without the substance of religion, who indulge the license without the temper of philosophy.(42)

CHAPTER LV.

The Bulgarians-Origin, migrations, and settlement of the Hungarians—Their inroads in the East and West-The monarchy of Russia-Geography and trade-Wars of the Russians against the Greek empire-Conversion of the Barbarians.

UNDER the reign of Constantine, the grandson of Heraclius, the ancient barrier of the Danube, so often violated and so often restored, was irretrievably swept away by a new deluge of Barbarians. Their progress was favoured by the caliphs, their unknown and accidental auxiliaries: the Roman legions were occupied in Asia; and after the loss of Syria, Egypt, and Africa, the Cesars were twice reduced to the danger and disgrace of defending their capital against the Saracens. If, in the account of this interesting people, I have deviated from the strict and original line of my undertaking, the merit of the subject will hide my transgression or solicit my excuse. In the East, in the West, in war, in religion, in science, in their prosperity, and in their decay, the Arabians press themselves on our curiosity: the first overthrow of the church and empire of the Greeks may be imputed to their arms; and the disciples of Mahomet still hold the civil and religious sceptre of the oriental world. But the same labour would be unworthily bestowed on the swarms of savages, who, between the seventh and the twelfth century, descended from the plains of Scythia, in transient inroad, or perpetual emigration.(1) Their names are uncouth, their origins doubtful, their actions obscure, their superstition was blind, their valour brutal, and the uniformity of their public and private lives was neither softened by innocence nor refined by policy. The majesty of the Byzantine throne repelled and survived their disorderly attacks; the greater part of these Barbarians has disappeared without leaving any memorial of their existence, and the despicable remnant continues, and may long continue, to groan under the dominion of a foreign tyrant. From

(40) See the excellent chapters of Sir William Temple on the religion of the United Provinces. I am not satisfied with Grotius (de Rebus Belgicis, Annal. 1. i. p. 13, 14, edit. 12mo.), who approves the Imperial laws of persecution, and only condemns the bloody tribunal of the Inquisition.

(41) Sir William Blackstone (Commentaries, vol. iv. p. 53, 54,) explains the law of England, as it was fixed at the Revolution. The exceptions of Papist, and of those who deny the Trinity, would still leave a tolerable scope for persecution, if the national spirit were not more effectual than a hundred statutes. (42) I shall recommend to public animadversion two passages in Dr. Priestley, which betray the ultimate tendency of his opinions. At the first of these (Hist. of the Corruptions of Christianity, vol. i. p. 275, 276), the priest, at the second (vol. ii. p. 484), the magistrate, may tremble!

(1) All the passages of the Byzantine history which relate to the Barbarians are compiled, methodised, and transcribed, in a Latin version, by the laborious John Gotthelf Stritter, in his "Memoria Populorum ad Danubium, Pontum Euxinum, Paludem Mæotidem, Caucasum, Mare Caspium, et inde magis ad Septemtriones incolentium." Petropoli, 1771-1779; in four tomes, or six volumes, 4to. But the fashion has not enhanced the price of these raw materials.

the antiquities of, I. Bulgarians, II. Hungarians, and, III. Russians, I shall content myself with selecting such facts as yet deserve to be remembered. The conquests of the, IV. NORMANS, and the monarchy of the, V. TURKS, will naturally terminate in the memorable Crusades to the Holy Land, and the double fall of the city and empire of Constantine.

[A. D. 680.] In his march to Italy, Theodoric(2) the Ostrogoth had trampled on the arms of the Bulgarians. After this defeat the name and the nation are lost during a century and a half; and it may be suspected that the same or a similar appellation was revived by strange colonies from the Borysthenes, the Tanais, or the Volga. A king of the ancient Bulgaria(3) bequeathed to his five sons a last lesson of moderation and concord. It was received as youth has ever received the counsels of age and experience: the five princes buried their father; divided his subjects and cattle; forgot his advice; separated from each other: and wandered in quest of fortune, till we find the most adventurous in the heart of Italy, under the protection of the exarch of Ravenna. (4) But the stream of emigration was directed or impelled toward the capital. The modern Bulgaria, along the southern banks of the Danube, was stamped with the name and image which it has retained to the present hour: the new conquerors successively acquired, by war or treaty, the Roman provinces of Dardania, Thessaly, and the two Epiruses;(5) the ecclesiastical supremacy was translated from the native city of Justinian: and, in their prosperous age, the obscure town of Lychnidus, or Achrida, was honoured with the throne of a king and a patriarch. (6) The unquestionable evidence of language attests the descent of the Bulgarians from the original stock of the Sclavonian, or more properly Slavonian race;(7) and the kindred hands of Servians, Bosnians, Rascians, Croatians, Walachians,(8) &c. followed either the standard or the example of the leading tribe. From the Euxine to the Adriatic, in the state of captives, or subjects, or allies, or enemies, in the Greek empire, they overspread the land: and the national appellation of the SLAVES (9) has been degraded by chance or malice from the signification of glory to that of servitude.(10) Among these colonies, the Chrobatians,(11) or Croats, who now attend the motions of an Austrian army, are the descendants of a mighty people, the conquerors and sovereigns of Dal

(2) Hist. vol. iii. p. 5.

(3) Theophanes, p. 296--299. Anastasius, p. 113. Nicephorus, C. P. p. 22, 23. Theophanes places the old Bulgaria on the banks of the Atell or Volga; but he deprives himself of all geographical credit, by discharging that river into the Euxine Sea.

(4) Paul Diacon. de Gestis Langobard. 1. v. c. 29, p. 881, 882. The apparent difference between the Lombard historian and the above-mentioned Greeks, is easily reconciled by Camillo Pellegrino (de Ducatû Beneventano, dissert. vii. in the Scriptores Rerum Ital. tom. v. p. 186, 187,) and Beretti. (Chorograph. Italia medii Ævi, p. 273, &c.) This Bulgarian colony was planted in a vacant district of Samnium, and learned the Latin, without forgetting their native language.

(5) These provinces of the Greek idiom and empire, are assigned to the Bulgarian kingdom in the dispute of ecclesiastical jurisdiction between the patriarchs of Rome and Constantinople (Baronius, Annal. Eccles. A. D. 869, No. 75).

(6) The situation and royalty of Lychnidus, or Achrida, are clearly expressed in Cedrenus (p. 713). The removal of an archbishop or patriarch from Justinianea prima to Lychnides, and at length to Ternovo, has produced some perplexity in the ideas or language of the Greeks (Nicephorus Gregoras, l. ii. c. 2, p. 14, 15. Thomassin, Discipline de l'Eglise, tom. i. 1. i. c. 19.23); and a Frenchman (d'Anville) is more accurately skilled in the geography of their own country. (Hist. de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xxxi.) (7) Chalcocondyles, a competent judge, affirms the identity of the language of the Dalmatians, Bosnians, Servians, Bulgarians, Poles (de Rebus Turcicis, 1. x. p. 283), and elsewhere of the Bohemians (1. ii. p. 38). The same author has marked the separate idiom of the Hungarians.

(8) See the work of John Christopher de Jordan, de Originibus Sclavicis Vindobonæ, 1745, in four parts, or two volumes, folio. His collections and researches are useful to elucidate the antiquities of Bohemia and the adjacent countries; but his plan is narrow, his style barbarous, his criticism shallow, and the Aulic counsellor is not free from the prejudices of a Bohemian.

(9) Jordan subscribes to the well-known and probable derivation from Slava, laus, gloria, a word of familiar use in the different dialects and parts of speech, and which forms the termination of the most illustrious names (de Originibus Sclavicis, pars i. p. 40, pars iv. p. 101, 102).

(10) This conversion of a national into an appellative name appears to have arisen in the viiith cen tury, in the oriental France, where the princes and bishops were rich in Sclavonian captives, not of the Bohemian (exclaims Jordan,) but of Sorabian race. From thence the word was extended to general use, to the modern languages, and even to the style of the last Byzantines (see the Greek and Latin Glossaries of Ducange). The confusion of the Zelot, or Servians, with the Latin Servi, was still more fortunate and familiar (Constant. Porphyr. de administrando Imperio, c. 32, p. 99).

(11) The emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, most accurate for his own times, most fabulous for eding ages, describes the Sclavonians of Ďalmatía (c. 29—36).

pre

matia. The maritime cities, and of these the infant republic of Ragusa, implored the aid and instructions of the Byzantine court: they were advised by the magnanimous Basil to reserve a small acknowledgment of their fidelity to the Roman empire, and to appease, by an annual tribute, the wrath of these irresistible Barbarians. The kingdom of Croatia was shared by eleven Zoupans, or feudatory lords; and their united forces were numbered at sixty thousand horse and one hundred thousand foot. A long seacoast, indented with capacious harbours, covered with a string of islands, and almost in sight of the Italian shores, disposed both the natives and strangers to the practice of navigation. The boats or brigantines of the Croats were constructed after the fashion of the old Liburnians: one hundred and eighty vessels may excite the idea of a respectable navy; but our seamen will smile at the allowance of ten, or twenty, or forty men for each of these ships of war. They were gradually converted to the more honourable service of commerce; yet the Sclavonian pirates were still frequent and dangerous; and it was not before the close of the tenth century that the freedom and sovereignty of the Gulf were effectually vindicated by the Venetian republic. (12) The ancestors of these Dalmatian kings were equally removed from the use and abuse of navigation: they dwelt in the White Croatia, in the inland regions of Silesia and little Poland, thirty days' journey, according to the Greek computation, from the sea of darkness.

[A. D. 640—1017.] The glory of the Bulgarians(13) was confined to a narrow scope both of time and place. In the ninth and tenth centuries, they reigned to the south of the Danube; but the more powerful nations that had followed their emigration, repelled all return to the north and all progress to the west. Yet, in the obscure catalogue of their exploits, they might boast an honour which had hitherto been appropriated to the Goths; that of slaying in battle one of the successors of Augustus and Constantine. The emperor Nicephorus had lost his fame in the Arabian, he lost his life in the Sclavonian war. In his first operations he advanced with boldness and success into the centre of Bulgaria, and burnt the royal court, which was probably no more than an edifice and village of timber. But, while he searched the spoil and refused all offers of treaty, his enemies collected their spirits and forces: the passes of retreat were insuperably barred: and the trembling Nicephorus was heard to exclaim: "Alas, alas! unless we could assume the wings of birds, we cannot hope to escape." Two days he awaited his fate in the inactivity of despair; but, on the morning of the third, the Bulgarians surprised the camp, and the Roman prince, with the great officers of the empire, were slaughtered in their tents. The body of Valens had been saved from insult: but the head of Nicephorus was exposed on a spear, and his skull, enchased with gold, was often replenished in the feasts of victory. The Greeks bewailed the dishonour of the throne; but they acknowledged the just punishment of avarice and cruelty. This savage cup was deeply tinctured with the manners of the Scythian wilderness; but they were softened before the end of the same century by a peaceful intercourse with the Greeks, the possession of a cultivated region, and the introduction of the Christian worship. The nobles of Bulgaria were educated in the schools and palace of Constantinople; and Simeon,(14) a youth of the royal line, was instructed in the rhetoric of Demosthenes and the logic of Aristotle. He relinquished the profession of a monk for that of a king and warrior; and in his reign, of more than forty years, Bulgaria assumed a rank among the civilized powers of the earth.

(12) See the anonymous Chronicle of the xith century, ascribed to John Sagorninus (p. 94-102), and that composed in the xivth by the Doge, Andrew Dandolo (Script. Rerum Ital. tom. xii. p. 227–230); the two oldest monuments of the history of Venice.

(13) The first kingdom of the Bulgarians may be found under the proper dates in the Annals of Cedrenus and Zonaras. The Byzantine materials are collected by Stritter (Memoriæ Populorum, tom. ii. pars ii. p. 441-647); and the series of their kings is disposed and settled by Ducange (Fam. Byzant. p. 305-318).

(14) Simeonem semi-Græcum esse aiebant, eo quod a pueritia Byzantii Demosthenis rhetoricam et Aristotelis syllogismos dedicerat. Liutprand, 1. iii. c. 8. He says in another place, Simeon, fortis bellator, Bulgariæ præerat; Christianus sed vicinis Græcis valde inimicus (1. i. c. 2).

The Greeks, whom he repeatedly attacked, derived a faint consolation from indulging themselves in the reproaches of perfidy and sacrilege. They purchased the aid of the Pagan Turks; but Simeon, in a second battle, redeemed the loss of the first, at a time when it was esteemed a victory to elude the arms of that formidable nation. The Servians were overthrown, made captive, and dispersed; and those who visited the country before their restoration could discover no more than fifty vagrants, without women or children, who extorted a precarious subsistence from the chase. On classic ground, on the banks of the Acheolous, the Greeks were defeated; their horn was broken by the strength of the barbaric Hercules. (15) He formed the siege of Constantinople; and, in a personal conference with the emperor, Simeon imposed the conditions of peace. They met with the most jealous precautions: the royal galley was drawn close to an artificial and well-fortified platform; and the majesty of the purple was emulated by the pomp of the Bulgarian. "Are you a Christian?" said the humble Romanus; "It is your duty to abstain from the blood of your fellow-christians. Has the thirst of riches seduced you from the blessings of peace? Sheath your sword, open your hand, and I will satiate the utmost measure of your desires." The reconciliation was sealed by a domestic alliance; the freedom of trade was granted or restored; the first honours of the court were secured to the friends of Bulgaria, above the ambassadors of enemies or strangers ;(16) and her princes were dignified with the high and invidious title of Basileus, or emperor. But this friendship was soon disturbed: after the death of Simeon the nations were again in arms; his feeble successors were divided and extinguished; and, in the beginning of the eleventh century, the second Basil, who was born in the purple, deserved the appellation of conqueror of the Bulgarians. His avarice was in some measure gratified by a treasure of four hundred thousand pounds sterling (ten thousand pounds weight of gold) which he found in the palace of Lychnidus. His cruelty inflicted a cool and exquisite vengeance on fifteen thousand captives who had been guilty of the defence of their country. They were deprived of sight, but to one of each hundred a single eye was left, that he might conduct his blind century to the presence of their king. Their king is said to have expired of grief and horror; the nation was awed by this terrible example; the Bulgarians were swept away from their settlements, and circumscribed within a narrow province; the surviving chiefs bequeathed to their children the advice of patience and the duty of revenge.

[A. D. 884.] II. When the black swarm of Hungarians first hung over Europe, about nine hundred years after the Christian era, they were mistaken by fear and superstition for the Gog and Magog of the Scriptures, the signs and forerunners of the end of the world. (17) Since the introduction of letters, they have explored their own antiquities with a strong and laudable impulse of patriotic curiosity.(18) Their rational criticism can no longer be amused with a vain pedigree of Attila and the Huns; but they complain that their primitive records have perished in the Tartar war: that the truth or fiction of their rustic songs is long since forgotten; and that the fragments of (15)

....Rigidum fera dexterà cornu

Dum tenet infregit, truncàque a fronte revellit.

Ovid (Metamorph. ix. 1—100,) has boldly painted the combat of the river-god and the hero; the native and the stranger.

(16) The ambassador of Otho was provoked by the Greek excuses, cum Christophori filium Petrus Bulgarorum Vasileus conjugem duceret, Symphona, idest consonantia, scripto juramento firmata sunt ut omnium gentium Apostolis idest nunciis penes nos Bulgarorum Apostoli præponantur, honorentur, diligentur (Liutprand in Legatione, p. 482). See the Ceremoniale of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, tom. i. p. 82, tom. ii. p. 429, 430. 434, 435. 443, 444. 446, 447, with the annotations of Reiske.

(17) A bishop of Wurtzburg submitted this opinion to a reverend abbot; but he more gravely decided, that Gog and Magog were the spiritual persecutors of the church; since Gog signifies the root, the pride of the Heresiarchs, and Magog what comes from the root, the propagation of their sects. Yet these men once commanded the respect of mankind. (Fleury, Hist. Eccles. tom. xi. p. 594, &c.)

(18) The two national authors, from whom I have derived the most assistance, are George Pray (Dissertationes ad Annales veterum Hungarorum, &c., Vindobonæ, 1775, folio,) and Stephen Katona (Hist. Critica Ducum et Regum Hungariæ stirpis Arpadianæ, Pæstini, 1778-1781, 5 vols. octavo). The first embraces a large and often conjectural space; the latter, by his learning, judgment, and perspicuity, deserves the name of a critical historian.