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the Jews' religion, and as, in consequence, its own sole interpreter; or whether the disciples of the law were bound to receive, as of co-ordinate authority with it, the tradition handed down, from ancient times, through the fathers of the Hebrew church. Under Christianity, in the Western church especially, the controversy has raged, through successive ages to the present, between the adherents of the Bible alone, as the exclusive standard of Christian faith and practice, -and the advocates of the tradition of the church Catholic, as of supreme, or of subordinate authority, and as the true and authoritative interpreter of Scripture. On a fair comparison of Mahometanism with both branches of the true religion, the doctrinal analogy, so far as the question of tradition is concerned, certainly has nothing wanting to its completeness. After the precedents of the Jewish and Christian churches, the Mahometan world became early divided on the question, whether the Koran comprehended the sum of the confession of true believers, and constituted their only standard of appeal, whether the Koran itself was to receive its authoritative interpretation from the Sonna, or reputed traditions of Mahomet. Nor are the corresponding features of this analogy distinguished simply by a general air of resemblance: on the con

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trary, the whole triple controversy respecting the authority of tradition, in its origin, its conduct, and its ascertained results; in the parallel sects and schisms to which it gave birth; and in the lasting and implacable enmities to which it ministered fuel, when viewed even in an insulated light, may well be regarded as no ordinary indication of the providential analogy, assumed to subsist, between the three religious systems.

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Upon the doctrinal history of the Christian religion, it must, in this place, be observed generally, that, while the sum of all Catholic doctrine is built on the one sure foundation, the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, wherein are to be found the announcement, and the proofs, of every verity maintained, from the apostolic age inclusive, by the church, the rise, on the other hand, of those doctrinal debates, which successively sprang up to disturb the unity of Christendom, has been historically traced, by ecclesiastical writers, to one or other of two sources, the Oriental, or the Greek, philosophy: the former, by its monstrous opposition to the truth, serving only more fully to elicit the sense. of Scripture, on that mysterious question of philosophy, the origin of evil; the latter, by its abstract subtleties of speculation, rendering a similar service, on matters equally abstruse and

important, the nature of the Godhead; the doctrines of liberty and necessity; of grace and human merit; of faith and good works, — with other controversies, which, while they necessarily led to divisions in the church, have still advanced, in their discussion, the great providential aim of clearing and confirming the Catholic verities.

The doctrinal history of Mahometanism presents a striking correspondence with that of Christianity, in the rise and management of its controversies: a correspondence, springing also from the self-same cause, the introduction, into the schools of the Saracens, of the Greek philosophy, engrafted on the Oriental. From the period of this innovation, accordingly, we meet, among the sectaries of Mahomet, similar philosophical disputations, respecting the origin of evil; the nature and attributes of the Godhead; fate and free-will; and several more questions, akin to those which successively prevailed in the Christian world, from the close of the first century inclusive. On each of the mysterious subjects specified, there unquestionably obtains a doctrinal parallel; only with this marked contradistinction between the legitimate revelation and its spurious counterpart, that the doctrines, reputed orthodox in the Mahometan religion, are

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chiefly compounded from the Christian heresies; while singular approximations, on the other hand, have been made to the Catholic doctrines, by Mahometan sects accounted heretical. To exemplify the fact by a conclusive instance; the fundamental tenet of Mahometanism, its doctrine of the divine unity, is obviously, in substance, the same with the belief of the various sects calling themselves Christian, who deny the doctrine of the Trinity: while, on the other hand, the Trinitarian doctrine (however confusedly expressed, and imperfectly understood) very curiously re-appears, in the shape of a Mahometan heresy, in the philosophical school of the Hâyetians, or followers of the Motazalite doctor, Ahmed Ebn Hâyet.* The circumstance is highly interesting and important, as an index to the tendency of Mahometanism towards Catholic Christianity; thus manifested, in the early reaching forth of Mahometan speculation, to grasp the fundamental mystery of Catholic truth.

As the parallel between Christianity and Mahometanism, in the rise, nature, and conduct of their doctrinal controversies, must be more particularly examined hereafter, in treating of the analogy of the two religions, in their respective

* Pocock, Specim. p. 18, 19.; and p. 221.

sects and heresies *, it may suffice, for our immediate object, to present the doctrinal parallel, by simple statement of the principal subjects discussed in common by the two creeds; and of the common sources, to which preceding inquiry has traced their doctrinal disputations.

One of the earliest controversies of primitive Christianity (a doctrinal debate, as appears from allusions in the New Testament, already fermenting in the Apostolic age), the celebrated question respecting the origin of evil, has been successfully traced, by ecclesiastical writers, to an extrinsic source; namely, to the Oriental philosophy, as cultivated by the adherents of the Magian superstition. Now, whether borrowed directly from the same source, or, as seems more probable, derived from it indirectly, through the medium of the Gnostic heresies, the question concerning the origin of evil, and the doctrine of two principles, to which this question gave birth, came to be similarly agitated in the philosophical schools of the Saracens; their orthodox doctors maintaining, on the subject, the true belief, which holds God to be the author of good only, and evil to be the work solely of created natures; those accounted heterodox, on the other

* See section ix.

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