Protestants were ever inviting the assaults of the Papists. Its
multitude of sovereigns were passing their leisure moments in wrangling
among themselves as usual on abstruse points of theology, and devoting
their serious hours to banquetting, deep drinking, and the pleasures of
the chase. The jeremiads of old John of Nassau grew louder than ever,
but his voice was of one crying in the wilderness. The wrath to come of
that horrible Thirty Years' War, which he was not to witness seemed to
inspire all his prophetic diatribes. But there were few to heed them.
Two great dangers seemed ever impending over Christendom, and it is
difficult to decide which fate would have been the more terrible, the
establishment of the universal monarchy of Philip II., or the conquest of
Germany by the Grand Turk. But when Ancel and other emissaries sought to
obtain succour against the danger from the south-west, he was answered by
the clash of arms and the shrieks of horror which came daily from the
south-east. In vain was it urged, and urged with truth, that the Alcoran
was less cruel than the Inquisition, that the soil of Europe might be
overrun by Turks and Tartars, and the crescent planted triumphantly in
every village, with less disaster to the human race, and with better hope
that the germs of civilization and the precepts of Christianity might
survive the invasion, than if the system of Philip, of Torquemada, and of
Alva, should become the universal law. But the Turk was a frank enemy of
Christianity, while Philip murdered Christians in the name of Christ.
The distinction imposed upon the multitudes, with whom words were things.
Moreover, the danger from the young and enterprising Mahomet seemed more
appalling to the imagination than the menace, from which experience had
taken something of its terrors, of the old and decrepit Philip.

The Ottoman empire, in its exact discipline, in its terrible
concentration of purpose, in its contempt for all arts and sciences, and
all human occupation save the trade of war and the pursuit of military