Gabriel as the bearer of his revelations to have been a deceit throughout. The power which Mohammed claimed rested entirely on the truth of his assertion that God had committed to him a prophetical office, carrying with it the promulgation of a new and universal religion. The absolute falsehood of this assertion is contained in the invention of the Angel Gabriel. The Jewish historian whom I have quoted fully admits this imposture, just as St. John Damascene made it a reproach a hundred years after Mohammed’s time. The virtues above mentioned, what are they but the beautiful spots of the tiger’s skin veiling the ferocity of the beast? Mohammed by the confession of his friends would appear to have had two intense passions, one for sweet odours, the other for women. Thalebi commenting on the 5th Sura records how ten zealous disciples used often to meet and pray in the house of Osman.(101) They watched through the night and had resolved to prepare themselves for paradise by chastity and mortification. Mohammed did not approve of it, and preached to the people that it was no way his mind that those who professed Islam should abstain, like Christian priests and religious, from women and from eating flesh, and from sweet odours; should debar themselves from sleep, and practice hardships. Fighting was his monkhood. Abulfeda says he openly confessed as to himself, “Two things attract me and carry me away: women and sweet odours. My joy is in these two pleasures, and they make me more prayerful.” In fact Mohammed was never so pious as when he took a new wife; while he deserted them all for the Coptic slave-girl Mariam. And the Koran told him that he was right. What were pharisaic prayings in the market place to the devotions of Mohammed? He called upon all with whom he came in contact to accept the one God, and Mohammed as his prophet, on pain of being exterminated, and he delivered up to the pleasure of the Mohammedan fighter as many female captives as any one could take, over and above the four wives whom he allowed to all. These captives were not the victims of angry passions in men maddened by a furious conflict, but the avowed and justified reward of those who might, if slain in battle, have been martyrs, but instead were victorious. The very worst corruption(102) which we meet with in the idol worship and demon worship of Greeks and Romans was the shamelessness which pandered to all lusts of the flesh under cover of religion. But Mohammed added to this corruption. In virtue of his Koran the most infamous passions were allowed not in belief of false gods, themselves models of impurity, but in worshipping the one holy God. In all this the example as well as the word of the religious founder had gone before, and his people followed it from age to age.