from it's votaries a greater facrifice of their favourite propenfities, than it really did, the fyftem must have found eager and impetuous advocates; and circumstanced as the neighbouring countries then were, oppofition to an hardy nation, impelled by fanaticifm, must have been vain.

To account however for the fuccefs of Mahomet from caufes merely human, to shew that predisposing circumstances rendered

his

we apply the confideration of the fuccefs thefe religions met with, as one criterion of their truth, or falfhood. Thofe, who were converted by the Arabian prophet, were by no means united in religious fentiment; nor were they zealous in what they profeffed; nor did the generality of them difallow the main article of faith, which Mahomet wifhed to establish, the unity of the Supreme Being. Befides this, as we have feen, their religious affociations and habits were left free and unmolested. The Jews, on the contrary, were not only firmly united in the belief of one fyftem of opinions, but attached in an extraordinary degree to that fyftem, which they deemed incompatible with the pretenfions of Jefus: moreover, the rites and ceremonies, to which custom and an inveterate errour concerning their real value and import had fo ftrongly attached their minds, were pronounced inefficacious and no longer neceffary to be obferved. Among the Jews also, the immutability of their religion was a popular principle; but there is no trace of fuch a principle in the nations converted by Mahomet. Hence then, practically speaking, the religion offered by Mahomet to the Arabians was much more in unifon with their feelings and opinions, and, in course, much more likely to be embraced by them, than the doctrines of Chriftianity were, when offered to the acceptance of the Jews, who regarded the letter and not the fpirit of the Law, and who had fuffered every pure and correct notion of religion to be fuperfeded by a blind and fervile adherence to vain ceremonies and abfurd traditions.

his attempt eafy, and his fuccefs probable, is only one among a variety of arguments, which establish beyond contradiction the true nature of the defign, which he fo boldly undertook to accomplish. It might appear fuperfluous to detail many of these proofs, but I am unwilling wholly to omit the positive teftimony which the Koran itself furnishes against the pretensions of it's author.

THE claims which he made on behalf of this myfterious volume, are extravagant in the highest degree. He confeffed himself unable to perform any miracle, but he boldly appealed to this facred book, as a miracle which supplied the most fatisfactory evidence in his favour.-That a book, so surpaffing all human compositions, so far exceeding every other book both in diction and in matter, fhould be composed by a man illiterate and ignorant * like himself, he boldly pronounced to be plainly impoffible: and he as boldly pronounced, that it was written by the finger of the Almighty before the creation of the World. "The Moham

medans" fays Sale, " abfolutely deny the

Korân

See Gibbon, p. 200. note. Dr. White's reasoning upon the fubject is highly ingenious, if not altogether conclufive. Pag. 203, 204. and notes xxxvi-xxxviii.

Korân was composed by their prophet himself, or any other for him; it being their general and orthodox belief that it is of divine original, nay, that it is eternal and uncreated, remaining, as fome express it, in the very effence of God; that the tranfcript has been from everlasting by God's throne, written on a table of vaft bignefs, called the preferved table, in which are also recorded the divine decrees, paft and future: that a copy from this table, in one volume, on paper, was by the ministry of the angel Gabriel fent down to the loweft Heaven, in the month of Ramadân, in the night of power: from whence Gabriel revealed it to Mohammed by parcels, fome at Mecca, fome at Medina, at different times, during the space of twenty-three years, as the exigency of affairs required: giving him however the confolation to fhew him the whole (which they tell us was bound in filk, and adorned with gold and precious ftones of Paradife) once a year; but in the last year of his life, he had the favour to fee it twice, They fay, that few chapters were delivered entire, the most part being revealed piecemeal, and written down, from time to time, by the Prophet's amanuenfes in fuch or fuch

a part

a part of fuch or fuch a chapter, till they were compleated, according to the directions of the angel *."

SUCH an affumption at once carries with it it's own refutation. If however we confider the inferiority of the Koran to many profeffed human † compofitions, and still more the palpable contradictions which it contains, we may allow the Impoftor himself to have been it's author, without much indulgence to his claims as the Apostle of God. Refpecting the contradictory paffages, it is curious to obferve the manner, in which the Mahometan doctors have accounted for them. "They obviate any objection from thence by the doctrine of abrogation; for they fay that God in the Korân commanded feveral things, which were for good reafons afterwards revoked and abrogated ‡."

Ir is plain alfo, that many paffages in the Koran were produced, in order to extricate it's author from fome embarrassment, in which he had been entangled. "For whenever any thing happened which perplexed and gravelled Mohammed, and which

* Sale, p. 64.

+ Gibbon, p. 209. White, p. 255, &c.

Sale, p. 67. See Gibbon, 208. and Prideaux, 118.

he

he could not otherwife get over, he had conftant recourfe to a new revelation, as an infallible expedient in all nice cafes, and he found the fuccefs of this method answer his expectation. It was certainly an admirable and politic contrivance of his to bring down the whole Korân to the lowest Heaven only, and not to the earth, as a bungling prophet would probably have done; for if the whole had been published at once, innumerable objections might have been made, which it would have been very hard, if not impoffible, for him to folve. But as he pretended to receive it by parcels, as God faw proper that they should be publifhed for the converfion and inftruction of the people, he had a fure way to answer all emergencies, and to extricate himself with honour from any difficulty which might occur. If any objection be hence made to that eternity of the Korân which the Mohammedans are taught to believe, they easily answer it by their doctrine of abfolute predeftination; according to which, all the accidents, for the fake of which these occafional paffages were revealed, were predetermined by God from all eternity *.”

THE paffages, here alluded to, are not