Page:The Mohammedan system of theology (IA mohammedansyste00neal).pdf/201

 mere human invention betrays an imperfect standard of morality. Many striking beauties occur in the writings of the illustrious sages of Greece and Rome: but after all, there is wanting a consistent code of ethics, to furnish which was evidently beyond their abilities: the character of their virtuous man is objectionable; however some parts may agree with moral fitness, yet upon the whole, serious incongruities abound in the delineation for want of an exact rule and criterion by which their judgment might be informed and regulated. How could it be otherwise, when their deities were mixed characters of virtue and vice? So that incoherence, confusion, and errors were necessarily interwoven throughout the whole of their mythology.

Mohammedanism is liable to the same exception, though with less excuse, because it had a better model from which to copy. The character of God is not consistently supported