OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 395 of human virtue ; and liis living precepts have restrained the gratitude of his disciples within the bounds of reason and religion. The votaries of AH have indeed consecrated the memory of their hero, his wife, and his children ; and some of the Persian doctors pretend that the divine essence was incarnate in the person of the Imams ; but their superstition is universally condemned by the Sonnites ; and their impiety has afforded a seasonable warn- ing against the worship of saints and martyrs. The metaphysical questions on the attributes of God and the liberty of man have been agitated in the schools of the Mahometans as well as in those of the Christians ; but among the former they have never engaged the passions of the people or disturbed the tranquillity of the state. The cause of this im])ortant difference may be found in the separation or union of the regal and sacerdotal characters. It was the interest of the caliphs, the successors of the prophet and commanders of the faithful, to repress and dis- courage all religious innovations : the order, the discipline, the temporal and spiritual ambition of the clergy are unknown to the Moslems ; and the sages of the law are the guides of their conscience and the oracles of their faith. From the Atlantic to the Ganges, the Koran is acknowledged as the fundamental code, not only of theology but of civil and criminal jurisprudence ; and the laws which regulate the actions and the property of mankind are guarded by the infallible and immutable sanction of the will of God. This religious servitude is attended with some practical disadvantage ; the illiterate legislator had been often misled by his own prejudices and those of his country ; and the institutions of the Arabian desert may be ill adapted to the wealth and numbers of Ispahan and Constantinople. On these occasions, the Cadhi respectfully places on his head the holy volume, and substitutes a dexterous interpretation, more apposite to the principles of equity and the manners and policy of the times. His beneficial or pernicious influence on the public happiness lus merit is the last consideration in the character of Mahomet. The wb country most bitter or most bigoted of his Christian or JcAvish foes will surely allow that he assumed a false commission to inculcate a salutary doctrine, less perfect only than their own. He piously supposed, as the basis of his religion, the truth and sanctity of their prior revelations, the virtues and miracles of their founders. The idols of Arabia were broken before the throne of God ; the blood of human victims was expiated by prayer and fasting and alms, the laudable or innocent ai-ts of devotion ; and his rewards
