Turkey, and though the want of even-handed justice and the oppression of unscrupulous officials in the days of the empire’s decline, may have driven some Christians to attempt to better their condition by a change of faith, such cases were rare in the first two centuries of the Turkish rule in Europe, to which period the mass of conversions belong. It would have been wonderful indeed if the ardour of proselytising that animated the Ottomans at this time had never carried them beyond the bounds of toleration established by their own laws. Yet it has been said by one who was a captive among them for twenty-two years that the Turks “compelled no one to renounce his faith.” [491] Similar testimony is borne by others: an English gentleman who visited Turkey in the early part of the seventeenth century, tells us that “There is seldom any compulsion of conscience, and then not by death, where no criminal offence gives occasion.” [492] Writing about thirty years later (in 1663), the author [493] of a Türcken-Schrifft says: “Meanwhile he (i.e. the Turk) wins (converts) by craft more than by force, and snatches away Christ by fraud out of the hearts of men. For the Turk, it is true, at the present time compels no country by violence to apostatise; but he uses other means whereby imperceptibly he roots out Christianity.... What then has become of the Christians? They are not expelled from the country, neither are they forced to embrace the Turkish faith: then they must of themselves have been converted into Turks.”