24 Dr. Mac Culloch on the 
_ Thus, he goes on to say, it was confined for four hundred 
years to the eastern Romans; adding, that at the end of the 
eleventh century, the Pisans suffered from it without knowing 
its composition. He concludes with saying, that it was at 
length either discovered or stolen by the Mahometans; and 
that in the holy wars of Syria and Egypt they retorted an in- 
vention, contrived against themselves, on the heads of the 
Christians. I think it will appear presently, that Gibbon has 
not examined this subject with his usual acuteness, and that he 
is here decidedly wrong as to the history of the invention and its 
true progress. 
We know not, indeed, why this great historian should have 
formed the judgment which he has done on the invertion of 
gunpowder; since his reading must, if any person’s could, have 
led him to a different conclusion. He says, ‘‘ Vanity or envy 
has tempted some moderns to carry gunpowder up to a period 
beyond the fourteenth, and Greek fire before the seventh 
century.” What the motives of the writers with whom he thus 
disagrees might have been, it is unnecessary to ask. Dutens 
has experienced some harder blows than this; yet that the his- 
torian is himself in the wrong here, it will not, I believe, be very 
difficult to show. I must defer the question of gunpowder, as 
long as possible, and be content with inquiring what probability 
there is that the Greek fire was a Greek invention at all; and 
whether it is not much more probable, that the Greeks, or 
eastern Romans, borrowed it from the oriental nations, instead 
of teaching it to them. 
We may safely begin by putting aside the history of the 
angel and Constantine the Great, though willing to believe that 
it might have been known before the time of Constantine 
Pogonatus. It will be better to take up the story from Cal- 
linicus, as it carries with it more of the appearance of circum- 
stantiality and truth. 
The communication between Heliopolis and the eastern 
nations, renders it, in the first place, suspicious, that the Greek 
architect borrowed the invention from the orientals. That they 
possessed it at least before the Greeks, whether they commus 
