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 noxious tenets, subversive of that grand truth imputed both to Jews and Christians.

Arabia, at this time, harboured a singular variety of sects, and offered a fine field for a religious or political experimentalist. Here Paganism flourished under various forms, the Jews had also flocked and established themselves here as in a place of security after their expulsion from Rome by the Emperor Adrian, and various sects of Christians, as they were successively crushed at Constantinople, fled hither for protection, carrying with them and broaching their respective tenets without molestation. Grievous as it may be, it is still important to note the unhappy heresies which have agitated at different times, the Church of Christ.

From a very early period, even during the life of the immediate disciples of our Lord, the Enemy was not backward in sowing tares: in the days of St. John, whose writings close