Page:History of Mahomet, that grand impostor.pdf/5

 well answering his intention, and gained him proselytes among all sorts of people.

However, that he might not immediately turn preacher against that idolatry which he had hitherto practised with his fellow citizens, and with; out some previous change, take upon him the character of a reformer and a prophet, so unsuitable to his wicked and licentious course of life; in the thirty-eighth year of his age he began to affect retirement, and withdrew every morning into a solitary cave near Mecca, where he pretended to spend his time in fasting, prayer and meditation and there it is supposed he had heard first consultations with those who helped him to compose his Alcoran. His first attempt was to draw his wife into a belief of his imposture; and in order to this, when he returned home at night from the cave, he used to tell her of visions he had seen, and strange voices he had heard; but she rejected those stories as the vain fancies of a disturbed imagination, or else the delusions of some evil spirit. He farther pretended a converse with the angel Gabriel; which she was as backward to believe as the other, till having advised with a fugitive Monk they then kept in the house, who was concerned with Mahomet in the contrivance, he brought her to be persuaded of the truth of all her husband had told her, and that he was really called to the prophetick office; and thus she became his first proselyte.

Having now, by living two years in a retired and austere manner, gained, as he thought, a sufficient reputation of sanctity for carrying on his design; in the fortieth year of his age he began to take upon him the title of the “Apostle of God,” and to propagate his new religion; but this he did in private for the first four years, and A3only