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may fairly be objected, as impugning his motives 6; and his character, it must be felt, is thrown altogether into shade, by a comparison with the pure morality exemplified in that of Moses. 64 But, even here, truth and fairness require at our hands some notice of the palpable and unquestionable extenuations. Moses was born and nurtured among a people who knew the true God. He was personally led and inspired by the Holy Spirit; and his heart was leavened, in consequence, by the purificatory influences of divine grace. Mahomet was born an idolater, and bred up in the midst of a nation of gross idolaters, utterly corrupt, also, in their morals. He possessed no extraordinary advantages, or superior illumination. Surprise, therefore, that his moral code was not better, may fairly be exchanged for admiration, that it was not worse. "His system," as has been well observed by a Christian philosopher, " contains a great deal of pure Christianity 65: it enforces the virtues of charity, temperance, justice, and fidelity, in the strongest manner: it prohibits extortion, and all kinds of cruelty, even to brutes; and it binds its votaries to the strictest regularity, order, and devotion." * Amidst the idolatrous inha

* See Dr. Zouch's Works, vol. i. pp. 263, 264. ; and compare Bishop Law, Theory of Religion, pp. 162, 163. ed. 1759, or pp. 194, 195. and

bitants of Mecca or Medina, or the barbarous hordes of idol-worshippers who frequented the Caaba, what new moral light could have arisen upon Mahomet, to raise his personal conduct above the surrounding dissolution of manners? We expect impossibilities, and wonder that the expectation is not realized. Our wonder ought to be greater, if it were.

A further objection, however, may be raised, of a very serious nature, and which carries strong appearance of fairness. Against the morality of the Koran, compared with that of the Pentateuch, it may be urged, that a superior light had come into the world before the time of Mahomet; that the Gospel of Christ had long superseded and made void the law of Moses. Christianity, already for more than three centuries the established religion of the Roman empire, had early gained, and still kept, a footing in Arabia. The Koran itself bears ample testimony to Mahomet's general acquaintance with it. As then he knew the better way, yet chose the worse, his case admits not of extenuation.

The reasoning would be unanswerable, if the

262. ed. Lond. 1820. The Bishop of Carlisle considers Mahometanism, " in the main, a very considerable reformation." See also Turner, vol. iv. pp. 410, 411.

position on which it founds itself were tenable. But full proof of its untenableness is contained in the fact, that the ground has been deserted by the Christian advocates themselves; who are unanimous in ascribing the progress of Mahomet, to the total corruption of Christianity at the time of his rise. To this unsuspected quarter I shall direct the reader for information, as to the kind and quality of Christianity with which alone Mahomet could have been acquainted. "The Christians of this unhappy period," says Dr. White, speaking of the beginning of the seventh century, 66 seem to have retained little more than the name and external profession of their religion. Of a Christian church scarce any vestige remained. The most profligate principles, and absurd opinions, were universally predominant; ignorance, amidst the most favourable opportunities of knowledge; vice, amidst the noblest encouragements to virtue; a pretended zeal for truth, mixed with the wildest extravagancies of error; an implacable spirit of discord about opinions which none could settle; and a general and striking similarity in the commission of crimes, which it was the duty and interest of all to avoid.” 6

Such, not to multiply citations, was the general condition of Christendom when Mahomet appeared. The condition of the Eastern Church

was peculiarly deplorable; for to vice, ignorance, and superstition, this branch of Christianity added a rank and immeasurable growth of heresies and schisms.* These plants were peculiarly suited to the soil of Arabia; a country charac-terised by ecclesiastical writers as fruitful in heresies. + 67 With this bad harvest, accordingly, in the seventh century, Arabia was wholly overrun. And thus Mahomet was condemned to collect his notions of Christianity, at the worst age, from the most corrupt branch, and in the darkest and most deplorably perverted quarter, of Christendom. His notions were naturally framed after the measure of his opportunities; and the piebald effigy of the Christian religion which he has left drest up in the Koran, may be received, if not as a full portraiture, at least as a fair caricature, of the then deformed and degraded profession of the Gospel. Such being his best lights on the subject of Christianity, the argument from his rejection of this heavenly system, or his transgressions against the purity of

"The sins of the Eastern countreys, and chiefly their damnable heresies, hastened God's judgements upon them. In these Western parts, heresies, like an angle, caught single persons; which, in Asia, like a dragnet, took whole provinces.' Fuller's Holy Warre, book i. chap. 6.

"Ferax hæreseôn Arabia." Danæus, Comment. in August. de Hæres. p. 201.

See Vertot, History of the Knights of Malta, vol. i. p. 231, folio ed. ; and compare Universal History, vol. xviii. p. 360. 8vo.

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its doctrines, is without weight; while its force, on the highest calculation, must be seriously weakened by the reflection, that his view of the Gospel was taken from a distance, and out of . the depths of Paganism.

2. By deducing the rise and success of Mahomet from the prophetic promise to Abraham in behalf of his son Ishmael, a sufficient and satisfactory account is obtained of Mahometanism, in its least explicable features: its permanence, and perfect preservation of the origina. doctrines; its dominion over the human mind; and its power, by the arts of peace, no less than by the compulsory influences of war, to change the condition and the characters of the nations of the earth. *

But an adequate reason is still needed to justify the providential permission, supposed by this principle, of a spurious system of faith. And an adequate reason is found in the whole posture of things, as already detailed, at this epoch of history-in the state of the world and of Christendom, at the time of Mahomet's appearance; and in the threefold warfare carried on by Mahometanism, against idolatry, Judaism 6, and heretical Christianity.

As a means to purge the world from idolatry,

*White, Bampt. Lect. p. 295, &c.