CHAP. II.]

ST. JOHN 03? JERUSALEM.

81

Nor was it Christendom alone, but also theMahometans had been long undergoing a not dis-similar preparation. Whatever be the doctrinesdeduced by subsequent commentators from theKoran, that book itself has much more of moralseverity than sensualism, and shows so thorough aknowledge of both the Testaments that it has beenrepoi’ted it was from a monk called Gabriel thatMahomet had his inspirations, though he pretendsit was the archangel of that name.

The sonna or oral law was reduced to writingtwo centuries after Mahomet; so the absurdities itmay contain are no more to be imputed to him,than the fables of the Talmud to the Patriarchs.A collection of seventy-two thousand old popularcustoms and tales may easily furnish food of everykind. But is it a refined taste to select for publi-cation whatever of most shockingly indecent canbe discovered in that anonymous farrago or any ofits impure appendages? Is it just to charge theKoran with that superfluous filth? Let the Koranstand on its own merits; or if to be condemned, becondemned for its own faults. Plurality of wives ex-isted in Arabia long before Mahomet, nor could hehave abolished it, if he wished; but he foundadultery common, and he vigorously forbade it;and put an end to drunkenness also, and instituted

VOL. i.

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