those who had heard him; that his successor, wishful to associate the scattered limbs in one body, made the collection more with presumption than precision ; that this collection was a subject of long debate among the Mehometans, some contending that the prince had omitted many revelations of the prophets; and others, that he had adopted some which were doubtful and spurious. You will find, that those disputes were appeased solely by the authority of the prince under whom they originated, and by the permanent injunctions of those who succeeded him on the throne.Consequently, it is very doubtful, whether the impostures of Mahomet really proceeded from himself, or were imputed to him by his followers.

Some even of Mahomet's disciples affirm, that of the three parts which compose the Alcoran, but one is the genuine production of the prophet. Hence, when you show them any absurdity in the book, they will reply, that it ought to be classed among the two spurious parts which they reject.*

But if you ask us how we know that the books, containing the fundamentals of our faith, were composed by the holy men to whom they are ascribed, we readily offer to submit them to the severest tests of criticism. Let them produce a book whose antiquity is the least disputed, and the most unanimously acknowledged to be the production of the author whose name it bears; let them adduce the evidences of its authenticity; and we will adduce the same evidences in favour of the canon of our gospels.

* See Joseph of St. Maria on the expedition to the East Indies.

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If you ask the followers of Mahomet to show you in the Alcoran, some characteristics of its divine authenticity, they will extol it to the skies, and tell "that it is an uncreated work; the truth by way of excellence; the miracle of miracles; superior to the resurrection of the dead; promised by Moses and the apostles; intelligible to God alone; worthy to be received of all intelligent beings, and constituted their rule of conduct."* But when you come to investigate the work of which they have spoken in such extravagant terms, you will find a book destitute of instruction, except what its author has borrowed from the books of the Old and New Testament; concerning the unity of God; the reality of a future judgment; the certainty of the life to come; and those various maxims, that we must not give alms in ostentation; that God loveth a cheerful giver that all things are possible to him; and that he searches the heart. You will find a book in many places directly opposed to the maxims of the sacred authors, even when it extols the Deity, as in the laws it prescribes respecting divorce; in the permission of a new marriage granted to repudiated women; in the liberty of having as many wives as we please, a liberty of which Mahomet availed himself; in what he recounts of Pharaoh's conversion of Jesus Christ's speaking in the cradle with the same facility as a man of thirty or of fifty years of age; in what he advances concerning a middle place between heaven and hell, where those must dwell who have done neither good nor evil, and those whose good and evil are equal; in

* Maraccio on the Alcoran, chap. vi.

what he says concerning Jesus Christ's escape from crucifixion, having so far deceived the Jews that they crucified another in his place, who very much resembled him.*

You will find a book replete with fabulous tales. Witness what he says of God having raised a moun. tain, which covered the Israelites with its shadow.† Witness the dialogue he imagined between God and Abraham. Witness the puerile proofs he adduces of the innocence of Joseph. Witness the history of the seven sleepers. Witness what he asserts that all the devils were subject to Solomon. Witness the ridiculous fable of the ant that commanded an army of ants, and addressed them with an articulate voice, Witness the notions he gives us of paradise and hell.|| -Whereas, if you require of Christians the characteristic authorities of their books, they will adduce sublime doctrines, a pure morality, prophecies punctually accomplished, and at the predicted period, a scheme of happiness the most noble and the most assortable with the wants of man that ever entered the mind of the most celebrated philosophers.

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If you ask the sectarians of Mahomet what signs God has wrought in favour of their religion, they will you, that his mother bore him without pain; that the idols fell at his birth; that the sacred fires of Persia were extinguished; that the waters in Lake Sava diminished; that the palace of Cosroes fell to the ground.§ They will tell you, that Mahomet himself performed a great number of miracles, that he

* Chap. on Women. of orders.

+ Preface, page 14. + Chap. on truth. Chap. See Maraccio's Life of Mahomet, page 10.

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made water proceed from his fingers; that he cut the moon, and made a part of it fall into his lap.* They will tell you, that the stones, and the trees saluted him, saying, peace, peace, be to the ambassador of God. They will tell you, that the sheep obeyed his voice; that an angel having assumed the figure of a dragon, became his guardian. They will tell you, that two men of enormous stature grasped him in their hands, and placed him on the top of a high mountain, opened his bowels, and took from his heart a black drop, the only evil satan possessed in his heart having afterwards restored him to his place, they affixed their seal to the fact. Fabulous tales, adduced without proofs, and deservedly rejected by the more enlightened followers of Mahomet.

But, if you require of the Christians miracles in favour of their religion, they will produce them without number. Miracles wrought in the most public places, and in presence of the people; miracles the power of which was communicated to many of those who embraced Christianity; miracles admitted by Zosimen, by Porphyry, by Julian, and by the greatest enemies of the gospel; miracles which demonstrate to us the truth by every test of which remote facts are susceptible; miracles sealed by the blood of innumerable martyrs, and rendered in some sort still visible to us by the conversion of the Pagan world, and by the progress of the gospel, and which can find no parallel in the religion of Mahomet, propagated with the sword, as is confessed by his followers, who

*Simon's Hist. Crit. of the Faith of the Nations of the Levant. raccio, preface page 14 col. 2.

+ Ibid. page 18.

+ Ma

say,

that he fought sixty battles, and called himself the military prophet. Whereas Christianity was established by the prodigies of the Spirit, and by force of argument. The mysteries of the gospel are not therefore in the first class, which render a religion suspected. They do not conceal its origin. This is what we proposed to prove.

II. Mysteries should expose a religion to suspicion, when they imply an absurdity. Yes, and if Christianity notwithstanding the luminous proofs of its divine authority; notwithstanding the miracles of its founder; notwithstanding the sublimity of its doctrines; notwithstanding the sanctity of its moral code, the completion of its prophecies, the magnificence of its promises; notwithstanding the convincing facts which prove that the books containing this religion were written by men divinely inspired; notwithstanding the number and the grandeur of its miracles; notwithstanding the confession of its adversaries, and its public monuments; if it was possible, notwithstanding all this, should the Christian religion include absurdities, it ought to be rejected. Because,

Every character of the divinity here adduced, is founded on argument. Whatever is demonstrated to a due degree of evidence ought to be admitted without dispute. The proofs of the divine authority of religion are demonstrated to that degree; therefore the Christian religion ought to be received without dispute. But were it possible that a contradiction should exist; were it possible that a proposition, appearing to us evidently false, should be true, evidence would no longer then be the character of truth;