it was worth while to make the inquiry. The other part of the Korân is taken up in giving necessary laws and directions, in frequent admonitions to moral and divine virtues, and above all to the worshipping and reverencing of the only true GOD, and resignation to his will; among which are many excellent things intermixed not unworthy even a Christian's perusal. But besides these, there are a great number of passages which are occasional, and relate to particular emergencies. For whenever anything happened which perplexed and gravelled Mohammed, and 1 Golius. in appen. ad Gram. Erp. p. 176. which he could not otherwise get over, he had constant recourse to a new revelation, as an infallible expedient in all nice cases; and he found the success of this method answer his expectation. It was certainly an admirable and politic contrivance of his to bring down the whole Korân at once to the lowest heaven only, and not to the earth, as a bungling prophet would probably have done; for if the whole had been published at once, innumerable objections might have been made, which it would have been very hard, if not impossible, for him to solve: but as he pretended to have received it by parcels, as GOD saw proper that they should be published for the conversion and instruction of the people, he had a sure way to answer all emergencies, and to extricate himself with honour from any difficulty which might occur. If any objection be hence made to that eternity of the Korân, which the Mohammedans are taught to believe, they easily answer it by their doctrine of absolute predestination; according to which all the accidents for the sake of which these occasional passages were revealed, were predetermined by GOD from all eternity. That Mohammed was really the author and chief contriver of the Korân is beyond dispute; though it be highly probably that he had no small assistance in his design from others, as his countrymen failed not to object to him;1 however, they differed so much in their conjectures as to the particular persons who gave him such assistance,2 that they were not able, it seems, to prove the charge; Mohammed, it is to be presumed, having taken his measures too well to be discovered. Dr. Prideaux3 has given the most probably account of this matter, though chiefly from Christian writers, who generally mix such ridiculous fables with what they deliver, that they deserve not much credit. However, it be, the Mohammedans absolutely deny the Korân was composed by their prophet himself, or any other for him; it being their general and orthodox belief that it is of divine original, any, that it is eternal and uncreated, remaining, as some express it, in the very essence of GOD; that the first transcript has been from everlasting by GOD'S throne, written on a tablet of vast bigness, called the preserved table, in which are also recorded the divine decrees past and future: that a copy from this table, in one volume