﻿OF HINZUAN, OR /OHANNA, 89 



his zeal before them at the expcnce of good breed- 

 ing iirected my attention to a passage in a commen- 

 tary on the Koran, which I found levelled at the 

 Christians. The commentator, having related with 

 some ad litions (but on the whole not inaccurately) 

 the circumstances of the temptation, puts this speech 

 into the mouth of the tempter : " Though I am un- 

 " able to delude thee, yet I will mislead, by thy 

 * c means, more human creatures than thou wilt set 

 *' right." l Nor was this menace vain, (says the 

 Mohammedan write.) * for the inhabitants of a region 



* many thousand leagues in extent, are still so deluded 

 ' by the Devil, hat they impiously call Isa the son of 

 ' God I Heaven preserve us,' he adds, * from bias- 

 •< pheming Christians as well as blaspheming Jews* 

 Although a religious dispute with those obstinate zea- 

 lots would have been unreasonable and fruitless, yet 

 they Reserved, 1 thought, a slight reprehension, as the 

 attack seemed to be concerted among them. % The 



* commentator, 7 said I, ' was much to blame for passing 



* so indiscriminate and hasty a censure: the title, which 

 ' gave your legislator and gives you such offence, was 

 ' often applied in Judea (by a bold figure agreeable 

 ' to the Hebrew idiom, though unusual in Arabic) 

 ' to angels, to holy men, and even to all mankind, who 



* are commanded to call God their Father ; and in 

 ' this large sense the apostle, to the Romans, calls 

 ' the elect the children of God, and the Messiah the 



* frst-born among many brethren ; but the words only 

 ( begotten are applied transcendently and incompa- 



* rably to him alone*; and, as for me who believes 



* the scriptures, which you also profess to believe, 



* though you assert without proof that we have al- 

 f tered them, I cannot refuse him an appellation, 

 f* though far surpassing our reason, by which he is 



* Rom. viii. 29. See 1 John iii. 1, II. Barrow, 231, 332, 251. 

 % 



