Mohammad did not violate his own marriage-law, and never pretended that permission was given to him to take more wives than what was allowed for other people. All his marriages (which are wrongly considered to have been about a dozen) were contracted by him before he published the law unjustly said to have been violated by him. He retained these wives after the law was promulgated, and their number exceeded four, but he was interdicted to marry any other women in the place of these in case of their demise or divorce. Other believers were advised after the promulgation of the law to reduce the number of their wives exceeding four, but were at liberty to replace their wives within the limit assigned in the case of their demise or divorce. Mohammad's case had no breach of morality or sensual license in it. It was very wise of Mohammad to retain all the wives he had married before Sura IV, 3, came into force, for the reason that the wives thus repudiated by him might have married some of the unbelievers, even some of his enemies, which would have been derogatory to the Prophet in the eyes of his contemporaries and a laughing-stock for his enemies. [Footnote 138: "We may readily admit that at the first Mahomet did believe, or persuaded himself to believe, that his revelations were dictated by a divine agency. In the Meccan period of his life there certainly can be traced no personal ends or unworthy motives to belie this conclusion. The Prophet was there, what he professed to be, 'a simple Preacher and a Warner;' he was the despised and rejected teacher of a gainsaying people; and he had apparently no ulterior object but their reformation. Mahomet may have mistaken the right means to effect this end, but there is no sufficient reason for doubting that he used those means in good faith and with an honest purpose. "But the scene altogether changes at Medina. There the acquisition of temporal power, aggrandisement, and self-glorification mingled with the grand object of the Prophet's previous life, and they were sought after and attained by precisely the same instrumentality. Messages from Heaven were freely brought forward to justify his political conduct, equally with his religious precepts. Battles were fought, wholesale executions inflicted, and territories annexed, under pretext of the Almighty's sanction. Nay, even baser actions were not only excused, but encouraged by the pretended divine approval or command. A special license was produced, allowing Mahomet a double number of wives; the discreditable affair of Mary the Coptic slave was justified in a separate Sura; and the passion for the wife of his own adopted son and bosom friend was the subject of an inspired message in which the Prophet's scruples were rebuked by God; a divorce permitted, and marriage with the object of his unhallowed desires enjoined."--Muir's Life of Mahomet, Vol. IV, pp. 317-8.]