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sian and Roman monarchies; beholds, with pity CHAP. and indignation, the degeneracy of the times: and resolves to unite, under one God and one king, the invincible spirit and primitive virtues of the Arabs. Our more accurate inquiry will suggest, that instead of visiting the courts, the camps, the temples of the East, the two journeys of Mahomet into Syria were confined to the fair of Bostra and Damascus; that he was only thirteen years of age when he accompanied the caravan of his uncle, and that his duty compelled him to return as soon as he had disposed of the merchandise of Cadijah. In these hasty and superficial excursions, the eye of genius might discern some objects invisible to his grosser companions; some seeds of knowledge might be cast upon a fruitful soil; but his ignorance of the Syriac language must have checkhis curiosity; and I cannot perceive in the life or writings of Mahomet, that his prospect was far extended beyond the limits of the Arabian world. From every region of that solitary world, the pilgrims of Mecca were annually assembled, by the calls of devotion and commerce: in the free concourse of multitudes, a simple citizen, in his native tongue, might study the political state and character of the tribes, the theory and practice of the Jews and Christians. Some useful strangers might be tempted, or forced, to implore the rights of hospitality; and the enemies of Mahomet have named the Jew, the Persian, and the Syrian monk, whom they accuse of lending their secret aid to the composi

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CHAP. tion of the Koran. Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius; and the uniformity of a work denotes the hand of a single artist. From his earliest youth, Mahomet was addicted to religious contemplation: each year, during the month of Ramadan, he withdrew from the world and from the arms of Cadijah: in the cave of Hera, three miles from Mecca, he consulted the spirit of fraud or enthusiasm, whose abode is not in the heavens, but in the mind of the prophet. The faith which, under the name of Islam he preached to his family and nation, is compounded of an eternal truth, and a necessary fiction, THAT THERE IS ONLY ONE GOD, AND THAT MAHomet IS THE APOSTLE of God.

One God.

It is the boast of the Jewish apologists, that while the learned nations of antiquity were deluded by the fables of polytheism, their simple ancestors of Palestine preserved the knowledge and worship of the true God. The moral attributes of Jehovah may not easily be reconciled with the standard of human virtue: his metaphysical qualities are darkly expressed; but each page of the Pentateuch and the Prophets

I am not at leisure to pursue the fables or conjectures which name the strangers accused or suspected by the infidels of Mecca, (Koran, c. 16, p. 223; c. 35, p. 297, with Sale's Remarks. Prideaux's Life of Mahomet, 22-27. Gagnier, Not, ad Abulfed. p. 11, 74. Maracci, tom. ii, p. 400). Even Prideaux has observed that the transaction must have been secret, and that the scene lay in the heart of Arabia.

d Abulfeda in Vit. c. 7, p. 15. Gagnier, tom. i, p. 133, 135. The situation of mount Hera is remarked by Abulfeda, Geograph. Arab. p. 4). Yet Mahomet never read of the cave Egeria, ubi nocturnæ Numa coustituebat amicæ, of the Idaan mount, where Minos conversed with Jove, &c.

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is an evidence of his power: the unity of his CHAP. name is inscribed on the first table of the law; and his sanctuary was never defiled by any visible image of the invisible essence. After the ruin of the temple, the faith of the Hebrew exiles was purified, fixed, and enlightened, by the spiritual devotion of the synagogue; and the authority of Mahomet will not justify his perpetual reproach, that the Jews of Mecca or Medina adored Ezra as the son of God. But the children of Israel had ceased to be a people; and the religions of the world were guilty, at least in the eyes of the prophet, of giving sons, or daughters, or companions, to the supreme God. In the rude idolatry of the Arabs, the crime is manifest and audacious: the Sabians are poorly excused by the pre-eminence of the first planet, or intelligence in their celestial hierarchy; and in the Magian system the conflict of the two principles betrays the imperfection of the conqueror. The Christians of the seventh century had insensibly relapsed into a semblance of paganism; their public and private vows were addressed to the relics and images that disgraced the temples of the East; the throne of the Almighty was darkened by a cloud of martyrs, and saints, and angels, the objects of popular veneration; and the Collyridian heretics who flourished in the fruitful soil of Arabia, invested the Virgin Mary with the

Koran, c. 9, p. 153. Al Beidawi, and the other commentators quoted by Sale, adhere to the charge; but I do not understand that it is coloured by the most obscure or absurd tradition of the Talmudists.

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CHAP. name and honours of a goddess. The myste ries of the Trinity and Incarnation appear to contradict the principle of the divine unity. In their obvious sense, they introduce three equal deities, and transform the man Jesus into the substance of the son of God: an orthodox commentary will satisfy only a believing mind: the intemperate curiosity and zeal had torn the veil of the sanctuary; and each of the oriental sects was eager to confess that all, except themselves, deserved the reproach of idolatry and polytheism. The creed of Mahomet is free from suspicion or ambiguity; and the Koran is a glorious testimony to the unity of God. The prophet of Mecca rejected the worship of idols and men, of stars and planets, on the rational principle that whatever rises must set, that whatever is born must die, that whatever is corruptible must decay and perish." In the author of the universe, his rational enthusiasm

f Holtinger Hist. Orient p. 225-228. The Collyridian heresy was carried from Thrace to Arabia by some women, and the name was borrowed from the xoxλugis, or cake, which they offered to the goddess. This example, that of Beryllus bishop of Bostra, (Euseb. Hist. Eccles. I. vi, c. 33), and several others, may excuse the reproach, Arabia hæresean ferax.

The three gods in the Koran (c. 4, p. 81; c. 5, p. 92) are obviously directed against our catholic mystery; but the Arabic commentators understand them of the Father, the Son, and the Virgin Mary, an heretical Trinity, maintained, as it said, by some barbarians at the council of Nice, (Eutych. Annal. tom. i, p. 440). But the existence of the Marianites is denied by the candid Beau sobre, (Hist. de Manicheisme, tom. i, p. 532): and he derives the mistake from the word Roual, the the Holy Ghost, which in some oriental tongues is of the feminine gender, and is figuratively styled the mother of Christ in the gospel of the Nazarenes,

This train of thought is philosophically exemplified in the character of Abraham, who opposed in Chaldæa the first introduction of idolatry, (Koran, c. 6, p. 106; d'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 13).

confessed and adored an infinite and eternal being, without form or place, without issue or similitude, present to our most secret thoughts, existing by the necessity of his own nature, and deriving from himself all moral and intellectual perfection. These sublime truths, thus announced in the language of the prophet, are firmly held by his disciples, and defined with metaphysical precision by the interpreters of the Koran. A philosophic theist might subscribe the popular creed of the Mahometans:* a creed too sublime perhaps for our present faculties. What object remains for the fancy, or even the understanding when we have abstracted from the unknown substance all ideas of time and space, of motion and matter, of sensation and reflection? The first principle of reason and revelation was confirmed by the voice of Mahomet: his proselytes, from India to Morocco, are distinguished by the name of Unitarians; and the danger of idolatry has been prevented by the interdiction of images. The doctrine of eternal decrees and absolute predestination is strictly embraced by the Mahometans; and they struggle with the common difficulties, how to reconcile the prescience of God with the freedom and responsibility of man; how to ex

1 See the Koran, particularly the second, (p. 30), the fifty-seventh, (p. 437), the fifty-eighth (p. 441), chapter, which proclaim the omnipotence of the Creator.

* The most orthodox creeds are translated by Pocock, (Specimen, p. 274, 284-292); Ockley, (Hist. of the Saracens, vol. ii, p. lxxxii-xcv); Reland, (de Religion. Moham. 1. i, p. 7-13), aud Chardin. (Voyages en Perse, tom. iv, p. 4-28). The great truth that God is without similitude, is foolishly criticised by Marracci, (Alcoran, tom. i, part iii, p. 8794), because he made man after his own image.

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