Page:History of Mahomet, that grand impostor.pdf/6

 only among such as were his acquaintance and confidents. His second proselyte was his slave; and, the third, his cousin. Mahomet’s fourth disciple, was a very rich man in Mecca, and being a person of wisdom and experience, gave his cause no small reputation; and his example was soon followed by five others, who were afterwards the principal generals of his armies, and contributed very much to the establishment of his empire and doctrine in those parts of the world.

After he had gained these nine proselytes, he began openly to publish his imposture to the people of Mecca, in the forty-fourth year of his age; and to declare himself a prophet sent by God to reduce them from the error of Paganism, and to teach them the true religion. He did not pretend to deliver to them a new one, but to revive the old one, which God first gave to Adam; and, after it had been lost in the corruption of mankind, restored it by revelation to Abraham, who taught it his son Ishmael their forefather. Adding, that Ishmael, when he first planted himself in Arabia, instructed the people in the same religion he had received from Abraham; but their posterity afterwards corrupted it into idolatry, which God had now sent him to destroy, and once again to restore the religion of Ishmael. Therefore, according to his own account, the Jews do not improperly call the religion of Mahomet by the name of Ishmaelism.

Mahomet, allowed both the Old and New Testaments, and that Moses and Jesus Christ were prophets sent from God; but affirmed, that the Jews and Christians had corrupted these holy writings, from which corruptions he was sent to purge them, to restore the law of God to its original purity; and therefore the most of the sages