under Constantine the Bearded; it was saved again in 718, under Leo III. These two deliverances, with the fact that it had not been taken in all the interval from the time of Heraclius, may be termed the only checks received from Christians by the Mohammedan conquest in the whole period from the death of Mohammed. Had it succeeded in gaining Constantinople when it gained Toledo, it is difficult to see how the universal enthralment of the Christian faith under the almost insufferable tyranny of the Arabian false prophet could have been prevented. Thus when St. Gregory II. succeeded to the throne of Peter in 715, and Leo III. to the throne of Constantine in 717, the position of the Christian Faith before Islam seemed to stand in terrible danger.(253) The sons of Mohammed, lords of Asia, Egypt, Africa, and Spain, were besetting, with long prepared fleet and army, the last remains of the Greek power in Constantinople on the East, and on the West had only to look to the conquest of France. If they became masters of France, there was no strength left to resist them, neither Italy divided between Lombards, Greeks, and the old inhabitants, subjects of one or the other, nor Germany divided among various peoples. The whole world seemed to be reserved for the anti-Christian kingdom of Mohammed: all nations about to pass under the hard servitude of a conquering Arabian tribe, instinct with hatred to the Christian life; all women to become slaves of man’s passion: all reason to endure subjection to a lie imposed by the scimitar. What we have since seen of Mohammedan rule in Asia and in Africa during twelve hundred years, seemed then on the point of becoming the general doom.