4 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 invention 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, berrowed 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 commu- 



