text:  Such then being the unmerited disparagement of the Byzantine government and so great the ingratitude of later Christendom to that sheltering power under which themselves enjoyed the leisure of a thousand years for knitting and expanding into strong nations; on the other hand what is to be thought of the Saracen revolutionists? Every where it has passed for a lawful postulate that the Saracen conquests prevailed half by the feebleness of the Roman government at Constantinople and half by the preternatural energy infused into the Arabs by their false prophet and legislator