accompanied them to Constantinople as domestic servants, might not turn Turk, [557] it can easily be understood that slaves who had lost all hope of return to their native country, and found little in their surroundings to strengthen and continue the teachings of their earlier years, would yield to the influences that beset them and would feel few restraints to hinder them from entering a new society and a new religion. An English traveller [558] of the seventeenth century has said of them: “Few ever return to their native country; and fewer have the courage and constancy of retaining the Christian Faith, in which they were educated; their education being but mean, and their knowledge but slight in the principles and grounds of it; whereof some are frightened into Turcism by their impatience and too deep resentments of the hardships of the servitude; others are enticed by the blandishments and flatteries of pleasure the Mahometan Law allows, and the allurements they have of making their condition better and more easy by a change of their Religion; having no hope left of being redeemed, they renounce their Saviour and their Christianity, and soon forget their original country, and are no longer looked upon as strangers, but pass for natives.” Much of course depended upon the individual character of the different Christian slaves themselves. The anonymous writer, so often quoted above, whose long captivity made him so competent to speak on their condition, divides them into three classes:—first, those who passed their days in all simplicity, not caring to trouble themselves to learn anything about the religion of their masters; for them it was enough to know that the Turks were infidels, and so, as far as their captive condition and their yoke of slavery allowed, they avoided having anything to do with them and their religious worship, fearing lest they should be led astray by their errors, and striving to observe the Christian faith as far as their knowledge and power went. The second class consisted of those whose curiosity led them to study and investigate the doings of the Turks: if, by the help of God, they had time enough to dive into their secrets, and understanding enough for the investigation of them and light of reason to find the interpretation thereof, they not only came out of the trial unscathed, but had their own faith strengthened. The third class includes those who, examining the Muslim religion without due caution, fail to dive into its depths and find the interpretation of it and so are deceived; believing the errors of the Turks to be the truth, they lose their own faith and embrace the false religion of the Muslims, hereby not only compassing their own destruction, but setting a bad example to others: of such men the number is infinite. [559]