but to rule over them. He fought not difciples, but fubjects; and obedience, not reafoning, is required from fubjects.

It

was to lead them the more eafily, that he ascribed all to God. By making himself his minister, he removed every fufpicion of perfonal interest, and avoided alarming that distrustful vanity which is common to all men. He feigned to obey, that he might exact obedience. He made himself but the first of fervants, with a certainty that every man would strive to be the fecond, and command the reft. He allured by promises, and terrified by menaces; and as every novelty is fure to meet with opponents, by holding out the terrors of his anathemas, he left them the hope of pardon. Hence in some paffages we find an appearance of toleration; but this toleration is fo rigid, that fooner or later it must lead to abfolute fubmiffion. So that, in fact, the fundamental fpirit of the Koran continually recurs, and the most arbitrary power is delegated to the meffenger of God, and by a natural confequence to his fucceffors. But

by

by what kind of precepts is the use of this power manifefted? There is only one God, and Mahomet is his prophet. Pray five times a-day, turning towards Mecca. Eat not in the day time during the whole month of Ramadan. Make the pilgrimage of the Caaba, and give alms to the widow and orphan.

"Here is the profound source from whence muft fpring all the fciences, and every branch of political and moral knowledge. The Solons, the Numas, and Lycurgufes, all the legiflators of antiquity, have in vain exhaufted their geniufes to explain the relations of mankind in fociety, to declare the duties and the rights of every class, and every individual. Mahomet, more able or more profound than they, refolves all into five phrases. It certainly may be safely afferted, of all men who have ever dared to give laws to nations, none were more ignorant than Mahomet; of all the abfurd compofitions ever produced, none is more truly wretched than his book. Of this the tranfactions of the last twelve hundred years in Afia are a proof. For it

would

would be eafy to demonstrate that the convulfions of the governments, and the ignorance of the people, in that quarter of the globe, originate more or lefs immediately in the Koran, and its morality." Volney's Travels, Vol. P. 497, American Edition.

THE END.