Page:History of Mahomet, that grand impostor.pdf/11

 reply was, “That their predecessors had contemned the miracles of Saleh, and the other prophets, and therefore God would work no more amongst them.” At another time he would insist, “That those whom God had ordained to believe, would believe without miracles, and those that he had not ordained, would never be convinced by that kind of evidence; and that therefore, they were entirely needless:” But none of his reasons being satisfactory, as plainly confessing he had not the power of working miracles, with which other prophets were endowed, he was deserted by many of his followers.

Finding all his sophistry too weak, on his retiring to Medina, another city of Arabia, he took the sword in his hand, and having got an army to back his cause, he soon changed his note; for then he pretended, “That since God had sent Moses and Jesus with miracles, and men would not hearken to their doctrine, he had now sent him in the last place without miracles, to force them to obedience by the power of the sword.’ Pursuant hereto, he forbade his disciples to enter into any further disputes about his religion, and commanded them to destroy all who opposed it, promising great rewards in a future state to such as would take up arms in its defence, and that those who died in the cause should have a crown of martyrdom.

On this head the Mahometan doctors argue cunningly enough in the following manner: The prophets of God, say they, are of divers sorts, according to the divers attributes of his divine nature, which they are sent to shew forth to the world. Thus Jesus Christ was sent to manifest he Righteousness, the Power, and the ledge