The Litchfield County post., 1827-01-02

the masters of every spot to which the wri- tings of the Apostles were addressed except Rome.
 It must be too deep for human knowl- edge to trace the detail of Providence.- But if it had been the will of Heaven to crush the Church ofAsia, the Turks were, of all nations, the most furnished for its hopeless oppression. If Asia Minor had been overrun by the Barbarians of the North, it might have retained or recovered both it's civilization and religion, for those barbarians have been susceptible of both in Europe. If it had been seized by Persia; it would have been in the hands of peo- pie holding a high rank in Eastern civili- zation, not averse to European improve ment, not furiously bigotted to their own blind superstition. But a tribe of robbers was summoned from the mountains, where they had been kept like a frozen torrent for ages, till the moment when its whole loosened might was to rush down upon the plain. They had no letters, no legisla- ton, no knowledge they were utterly new race, separated from all the accesses by which civilization might approach, with no means of Government but the sabre, no law but the Koran, and no purpose but conquest. animal indulgence, and merciless tyranny they were sent forth to take pos session of the land, and fearfully they exc cuted their commission.
 But in all those visitations of Providence which we are permitted to follow, the ap- parent tardiness ofthe punishmentis scarce .ly less remarkable than the completeness, when all is done. The coming of the Turks was before the Church of Asia for the astonishing period of almost thousand years. From their first burst they were an object of acknowledged terror the thun- der cloud fixed every eye, from the emoment of it's gathering on the great central chain of the Asiatic hills; in its first advances it lad nearly broke over the empire, but it was strangely turned away, and thus con- tinued the storm, alternately approaching and retiring, till it was finally rolled upon Censtantinople. In the year 545, the Turks issued from the Imans. In half q century, they had conquered the huge Ta- ble land of the North, and touched with their standards at once the Roman borders, the Persian, and the Chinese. Warning at the head of the Tartar tribes, their chief force was cavalry, and their cavalry was computed by millions ''* They then paused. But other leaders reused them again, and in 844 they passed the head of the Caspian, and fixed a governmental in the greater Armenia. In 1O38 they again re- ceded, turned to the south, and overrun the Persian empire.
 The later princes of Constantinople had sometimes redeemed the character of the throne; and instances of vaIor, conduct, and virtue, are to be found even among chieftains bred up in the effeminacy of the most luxurious court of the world. The Saracens had been repelled, after long succession of tremendous battles, and the Roman territory had been extended by Ncephorus, and his successor Basil, to the eastern boundaries of Armenia. The em- pire reposed for while under the banners of this brave and unfortunate chieftain, when at once it was startled by an inun- dation of war. The Turkish cavalry had overspread the whole frontier, from Tau rus to Arzoum, a line of six hundred miles. Their progress was strewed with massacre, and this invasion cost of the subjects of the Greek Emperor, a hundred and thirty thousand lives; but while Constantinople was already closing its gates, the invasion sank away into the desert, and the lesson was forgotten. But it was rapidly renew ed |; in 1O62, the l" Grand Sultan' of the Turks, Arparzlan, rushed upon Cesarea, at the head of an innumerable almy. He swept all before him for some years, but fortune at length gave moments respite to the Greeks, and in 1O6S the Sultan was forced to cross the Euphrates. He return ed with the swiftness and ferocity of bar barian revenge; and in 1O71, by one bloody battle, finally broke the power of the Em- perors in Asia.
 The blow was now ready to come down. It was still averted. A civil war begun a. mong the Turks, which perhaps saved the whole of Europe from desolation, like that of India by Timour. The western world had yet no force to oppose the sav- age, yet not undisciplined vigor, and the inexIlaustible multitudes of the Turkish cavalry. ss The fairest thrones of Europe might have still descended to succession of grim barbarians, and the mountain and the desert might have been the desperate refuge of her people. Europe might to this hour have been like Spain in the days of Pelayo. The civil war divided this ir- ror;ct;hIo n,aSs Of nower. and fOlIr dynas-