Page:History of Mahomet, that grand impostor.pdf/33

 time he laid the foundation of one of the greatest revolutions that ever happened in the world; for within the compass of eighty years his successors extended their dominion over more kingdoms than the Romans did in eight hundred; and tho’ their empire did not continue in its grandeur much above three hundred years, yet out of it has arisen several others, kingdoms and empires, some of them the most potent in the world, as those of Turkey, Persia, and the Great Mogul, &c.

This pretended prophet, is said to have been of a good stature and comely aspect, and affected much to be thought to resemble the patriarch Abraham. And though it be granted that he was illiterate, it is certain he had extraordinary natural abilities, and well knew how to apply himself to the passions and affections of weak men, and make every accident subservient to his own designs. His two predominate passions were lust and ambition. The course he took to establish himself an empire, abundantly shews the latter, and the multitude of women he had to do with, sufficiently declares the former. And indeed a tincture of these runs through the whole frame of his religion, there being scarce a chapter in the Alcoran which does not lay down some law of war and bloodshed, or else give some liberty for the use of women here, or some promise for the enjoyment of them hereafter.

While his first wife lived, it does not appear that he took any other: but tho’ he was fifty years of age when she died, he afterwards multiplied wives and concubines apace: those that say he had the fewest alloting him fifteen wives, and others reckoning up twenty-one, of which five died before him six he divorced, and ten were alive at his death. One