HKB
PERPETUITY
588
On the fact that the Christian religion is not the only religion.--So far is this from being a reason for believing that it is not the true one, that, on the contrary, it makes us see that it is so.
589
Men must be sincere in all religions; true heathens, true Jews, true Christians.
590
J. C. Heathens | Mahomet \ / Ignorance of God.
591
The falseness of other religions.--They have no witnesses. Jews have. God defies other religions to produce such signs: Isaiah xliii, 9; xliv, 8.
592
History of China.[213]-I believe only the histories, whose witnesses got themselves killed.
[Which is the more credible of the two, Moses or China?]
It is not a question of seeing this summarily. I tell you there is in it something to blind, and something to enlighten.
By this one word I destroy all your reasoning. "But China obscures," say you; and I answer, "China obscures, but there is clearness to be found; seek it."
Thus all that you say makes for one of the views, and not at all against the other. So this serves, and does no harm.
We must then see this in detail; we must put the papers on the table.
593
Against the history of China. The historians of Mexico, the five suns,[214] of which the last is only eight hundred years old.
The difference between a book accepted by a nation, and one which makes a nation.
594
Mahomet was without authority. His reasons then should have been very strong, having only their own force. What does he say then, that we must believe him?
595
The Psalms are chanted throughout the whole world.
Who renders testimony to Mahomet? Himself. Jesus Christ[215] desires His own testimony to be as nothing.
The quality of witnesses necessitates their existence always and everywhere; and he, miserable creature, is alone.
596
Against Mahomet.--The Koran is not more of Mahomet than the Gospel is of Saint Matthew, for it is cited by many authors from age to age. Even its very enemies, Celsus and Porphyry, never denied it.
The Koran says Saint Matthew was an honest man.[216] Therefore Mahomet was a false prophet for calling honest men wicked, or for not agreeing with what they have said of Jesus Christ.
597
It is not by that which is obscure in Mahomet, and which may be interpreted in a mysterious sense, that I would have him judged, but by what is clear, as his paradise and the rest. In that he is ridiculous. And since what is clear is ridiculous, it is not right to take his obscurities for mysteries.
It is not the same with the Scripture. I agree that there are in it obscurities as strange as those of Mahomet; but there are admirably clear passages, and the prophecies are manifestly fulfilled. The cases are therefore not on a par. We must not confound, and put on one level things which only resemble each other in their obscurity, and not in the clearness, which requires us to reverence the obscurities.
598
The difference between Jesus Christ and Mahomet.--Mahomet was not foretold; Jesus Christ was foretold.
Mahomet slew; Jesus Christ caused His own to be slain.
Mahomet forbade reading; the Apostles ordered reading.
In fact the two are so opposed, that if Mahomet took the way to succeed from a worldly point of view, Jesus Christ, from the same point of view, took the way to perish. And instead of concluding that, since Mahomet succeeded, Jesus Christ might well have succeeded, we ought to say that since Mahomet succeeded, Jesus Christ should have failed.
599
Any man can do what Mahomet has done; for he performed no miracles, he was not foretold. No man can do what Christ has done.
600