ARABIA. 29 



sake his cloister and profession, and engage in the service of Khadija, 

 with whom he remained as a domestic when Mahommed was taken to 

 her bed. This monk was perfectly qualified, by his great learning, for 

 supplying the defects which his master, for want of a liberal education, 

 laboured under, and which, in all probability, must have obstructed the 

 execution of his design. It was necessary, however, that the re- 

 ligion they proposed to establish should have a divine sanction ; and 

 for this purpose Mahommed turned a calamity, with which he was 

 afflicted, to his advantage. He was often subject to fits of the epilepsy, 

 a disease which those whom it afrlicts are desires to conceal. Ma- 

 hommed gave out, therefore, that these fits were trances into which 

 he was miraculously thrown by God Almighty, during which he was in- 

 structed in his will, which he was commanded to publish to the world. 

 By this strange story, and by leading a retired, abstemious, and austere 

 life, he easily acquired a character for superior sanctity among his ac- 

 quaintance and neighbours. When he thought himself sufficiently 

 fortified by the numbers and the enthusiasm of his followers, he boldly 

 declared himself a prophet sent by God into the world, not only to 

 teach his will, but to compel mankind to obey it. 



As we have already mentioned, he did not lay the foundation of his 

 system so narrow as only to comprehend the natives of his own country. 

 His mind, though rude and enthusiastic, was enlarged by travelling 

 into distant lands, whose manners and religion he had made a peculiar 

 study. He proposed that the system he established should extend ove» 

 all the neighbouring nations, to whose doctrines and prejudices he had 

 taken care to adapt it. Many of the inhabitants of the eastern coun- 

 tries were at this time much addicted to the opinions of Arius, who 

 denied that Jesus Christ was co-equal with God the Father, as is de- 

 clared in the Athanasian creed, i-gypt and Arabia were filled with 

 Jews, who had fled into these corners of the world from the persecu- 

 tion of the emperor Adrian, who threatened the total extinction of 

 that people. The other inhabitants of these countries were pagans. 

 These, however, had little attachment to their decayed and derided 

 idolatry ; and, like men whose religious principle is weak, had given 

 themselves over to pleasure and sensuality, or to the acquisition of 

 riches, to be the better able to indulge in the gratifications of sense, 

 which, together with the doctrine of predestination, composed the sole 

 principles of their religion and philosophy. The system of Mahom- 

 med was exactly suited to these three kinds of men. To gratify the 

 two former, he declared that there was one God, who created the 

 world and governed all things in it ; that he had sent various prophets 

 into the world to teach his will to mankind, among whom Moses and 

 Jesus Christ were the most eminent : but the endeavours of these had 

 proved ineffectual, and God had therefore now sent his last and great- 

 est prophet, with a commission more ample than what Moses or Christ 

 had been intrusted with. He had commanded him not only to publish 

 his laws, but to subdue those who were unwilling to believe or obey 

 thern ; and for this end, to establish a kirigdom upon earth, which 

 should propagate the divine law throughout the world ; that God had 

 designed utter ruin and destruction to those who should refuse to sub- 

 mit to him ; but lc his faithful followers he had given the spoils and 

 possessions of all the earth, as a reward in this life, and had provided for 

 them hereafter a paradise of all sensual enjoyments, especially those 

 of love ; that the pleasures of such as died in propagating the faith 

 would be peculiarly intense," and vastly transcend those of the rest. 



