A generation that has watched the decay of the Turkish power in Europe and the successive curtailment of its territorial possessions, and is accustomed to hearing it spoken of as the “sick man,” destined to a speedy dissolution, must find it difficult to realise the feelings which the Ottoman empire inspired in the early days of its rise in Europe. The rapid and widespread success of the Turkish arms filled men’s minds with terror and amazement. One Christian kingdom after another fell into their hands: Bulgaria, Servia, Bosnia, and Hungary yielded up their independence as Christian states. The proud Republic of Venice saw one possession after another wrested from it, until the Lion of St. Mark held sway on the shores of the Adriatic alone. Even the safety of the Eternal City itself was menaced by the capture of Otranto. Christian literature of the latter half of the fifteenth and of the sixteenth centuries is full of direful forebodings of the fate that threatened Christian Europe unless the victorious progress of the Turk was arrested; he is represented as a scourge in the hand of God for the punishment of the sins and backslidings of His people, [546] or on the other hand as the unloosed power of the Devil working for the destruction of Christianity under the hypocritical guise of religion. But—what is most important to notice here—some men began to ask themselves, “Is it possible that God would allow the Muhammadans to increase in such countless numbers without good reason? Is it conceivable that so many thousands are to be damned like one man? How can such multitudes be opposed to the true faith? since truth is stronger than error and is more loved and desired by all men, it is not possible for so many men to be fighting against it. How could they prevail against truth, since God always helps and upholds the truth? How could their religion so marvellously increase, if built upon the rotten foundation of error?” [547] Such thoughts, we are told, appealed strongly to the Christian peoples that lived under the Turkish rule, and with especial force to the unhappy Christian captives who watched the years drag wearily on without hope of release or respite from their misery. Can we be surprised when we find such a one asking himself? “Surely if God were pleased with the faith to which you have clung, He would not have thus abandoned you, but would have helped you to gain your freedom and return to it again. But as He has closed every avenue of freedom to you, perchance it is His pleasure that you should leave it and join this sect and be saved therein.” [548]