LXXII. But to return to Mahomet, not only with regard to his birth, but even with respect to those circumstances of his life, which have no connection with, or tendency to clearing up the truth or falsehood of his doctrines, the European and Arabic authors are totally opposite in their accounts of him; and to such a degree do they differ, that Ludovicus Maraccius says, that both one and the other of them, when they are speaking of the same Mahomet, seem as if they were describing two distinct men. There is nothing more firmly established and more generally assented to among us, than that the monk Nestorianus Sergius was his tutor and principal counsellor; but, notwithstanding this, Maraccius thinks, that it was much more likely his master and director was some Jew: the probability of which conjecture, he founds in the many Talmudical and Rabbinical fables with which the Alcoran abounds. Neither is there any certainty in what is said of the tame dove, which was used to put its beak into his ear, and which he pretended was the archangel Gabriel. The history of Mahomet, as given us by Maraccius, the materials for writing which, he affirms, were extracted from the most chosen Arabian authors, sets forth, that the apparitions of the archangel Gabriel to Mahomet, were very frequent; but that he did not come in the shape of a dove, nor in any other form that was perceptible to other people; nor could the apparition be discerned by his wife Cadighe, although she had been often present with him, at the times in which he professed to have seen it. I also know, that Edward Pocock, a writer of great veracity, says, that he never met with the story of the dove in any Arabian author.