Mecca, and fully restored him to the station of his ancestors.

During the whole of this union, notwithstanding a disparity of years on the side of his wife, the conduct of Mohammed appears not only to have been correct, but amiable and exemplary, and when subsequent events placed unlimited power and indulgence within his reach, ingratitude to Khadijah cannot be reckoned amongst his vices. It is recorded that when Ayesha, in all the insolence of beauty, said, "Was not Khadijah old, and has not God given you a better in her place?" "No!" cried the grateful Mohammed," there never was a kinder or a better woman.

She

trusted in me when men mocked at and des

pised me she relieved my wants when I was poor and persecuted by the world: she was all devotion to my cause'." Not only his

* See Sale, Gibbon, Maltby, Mills.

Sale, Mills.

observations at Mecca, the seat of ancient superstition, but extensive information derived from his transactions with the leading sects of the day, under their different modifications, whether Pagan, Jewish, or Christian, convinced him of the powerful influence of religion on the sentiments and practice of mankind he observed also hostile feelings in

:.

sects differing from each other, and endless divisions of sentiment among those professing the same creed. The Unity of the Godhead also which forms the distinguishing feature of the Koran, seemed in his estimation almost obliterated or in danger of being lost, as well by the idolatry of his countrymen in joining mediators with God as by certain ob

Jones thinks that the Mohammedan scheme was much founded on, or gathered from the tenets of the Montanists or Manichees, or both. Montanus pretended to deal with a demon, and his followers were taught to acknowledge him as the Paraclete. See Jones on the Canonical Authority of the New Testament.

noxious tenets, subversive of that grand truth imputed both to Jews and Christians.

Arabia, at this time, harboured a singular variety of sects, and offered a fine field for a religious or political experimentalist. Here Paganism flourished under various forms, the Jews had also flocked and established themselves here as in a place of security after their expulsion from Rome by the Emperor Adrian, and various sects of Christians, as they were successively crushed at Constantinople, fled hither for protection, carrying with them and broaching their respective tenets without molestation. Grievous as it may be, it is still important to note the unhappy heresies which have agitated at different times, the Church of Christ.

From a very early period, even during the life of the immediate disciples of our Lord, the Enemy was not backward in sowing tares: in the days of St. John, whose writings close

the Canon of the New Testament, heresies had advanced to a considerable height, particularly those of Ebion and Cerinthus, and the several sects of Gnostics, which commenced with Simon Magus, and were continued and carried on by Valentinus and Basilides, Carpocrates and Menander. The Divinity of Jesus was denied by Ebion, according to Eusebius and Epiphanius, who asserted him to be a mere man, and to have had no existence before he was born of the Virgin Mary. The Gnostics had debased Christianity by intermixing with its pure doctrines the reveries of Jewish Cabbalists, the conceits of Pythagoras and Plato, and the Chaldæan philosophy, the genealogy of divine emanations and distinctions respecting the Person of Christ. Thus errors had been lamentably accumulating. The symptoms indicated a general decay and dereliction of first principles. The adoration of relics, the worship of

images, saints and angels, transubstantiation, the deification of the Virgin Mary, amongst the Collyridian heretics, and purgatory, were the hateful offspring of this and the preceding centuries. Gregory the Great compares the Church to a rotten and leaky ship, hourly threatened with wreck. Ichabod, thy glory is departed, may be considered as a suitable emblem.

"I saw thy glory as a shooting star

Fall to the base earth from the firmament."

Various writings were current amongst the different sects, and interpolated to answer particular purposes, such as the Gospel of Cerinthus, or the Nazarenes, the Preaching and Revelation of Peter; the Gospel of Barnabas; the Prot-Evangelion of James, or

For an account of all the Apocryphal pieces, and an able confutation, see Jones on the Canonical Authority of the New Testament.