Page:Alcoran of Mahomet 1649.djvu/439

 dern Hitories of the Eat and Wet Indies, wherein are more damnable tenets then any in the Alcoran, and they who have read the Jewih Talmud, and Cabala, will finde them as ridiculous pieces as the Alcoran.

If there were any lovelines, beauty, excellency, or any thing ele in the Alcoran that might win the minde, and draw the affection after it, I hould hold the reading of it dangerous, but whereas it is uch a mihapen and deformed piece, I think the reading of it will confirm us in the truth, and caue us love the Scripture o much the more: for as a beautiful body is never more lovely then when he is placed neer a Black-More, neither is truth more amiable then when it is beet with Errors. Oppoita uxta e poita clarius elucecunt, ''the Gem recieves lutre from the foile, the tars from the night, & fire is mot corching in Frot, even o by an Antiperitais truth is fortified by error Who can thing that the fight of a Hob Goblin, or deformed vizard hould draw the childe from the Nure or bret of the Mother to embrace it, Whereas the fight thereof will rather caue the child hold fater by the mother. The wie Spartans oft-times brought drunkards into the room. where their ons were, not that they hould be induced thereby to love, but to abbor drunkennes, which they could not have done, had they not een the uneemly and rude carriage, the undecent behavior, and uncompoed getures of the drunkard. When Zica had detroyed the Adamits of Bohemia, he preerved two alive that they might reveal to the world the wicked errors of that Sect. Who is o mad as to prefer the embracements of a filthy Baboon, to his beautiful Mitres, or the braying of an As to a Conort of Muick? he deerves the ears of Midas that will prefer the Cuckoes ong to the weet notes of the Nightingale.''

Though the Alcoran be received among many Nations, yet this reception proceeds not from any love they bear to it, or any lovelines they finde in it, but partly out of fear, being forced by the Sword, partly out of a prepoterous deire of liberty and preferment, and partly out of ignorance, as not being uffered to read the Scriptures nor to hear Philoophy, by which the errors thereof may be detected, nor to enquire into the aburdities thereof, or to dipute and quetion any thing in it: for which caue alo it is not uffered Rh