SOOFFEES. 
55 
support those vague dreams abroad, which attracted so mysterious 
an interest about the enthusiast in his cell. Indeed, most of 
the Sooffee professors kept within the formal pale of the esta¬ 
blished religion, for the sake of security, and the facility of 
making proselytes. They avowed themselves believers in one 
God, that Mahomet was his prophet, and Ali the legitimate 
successor of the prophet, to the exclusion of Omar. So far they 
were perfectly orthodox according to the Persian rule of faith, 
but the creed was only from their lips, while their real tenets 
were as much calculated to charm a vivid imagination, as to 
mislead it into consequences unsuspected and dangerous. They 
represent themselves as men devoted to the search of truth, and 
incessantly occupied in adoration of the Almighty, a re-union 
with whom is to be the end and the perfection of their being. 
They describe all creation, and therefore themselves, as having 
proceeded immediately from the bosom of God, “ who poured 
his spirit on the universe, as the general diffusion of light is 
poured over the earth by the rising sun ; and as the absence of 
that luminary leaves the world in total darkness, so the partial 
or total withdrawing of the divine splendour or light, causes 
partial or general annihilation.” And this doctrine relates, not 
merely to the power of life, but to the power of moral action. 
The distinct and finite nature of the human soul being denied, 
and man declared a pure emanation or ray from the divine es¬ 
sence, he owns no individual responsibility for the good or evil 
of his actions ; and, attributing both alike to the infinite being 
of whom he is already a part, and into whose almighty essence 
he is to be re-absorbed, he goes on through life without other 
check to his appetites and passions, than what may happen to 
lie in a just taste, delighting in imitating the celestial purity it 
