divers ages of the world, gave revelations of his will in writing to several prophets, the whole and every word of which it is absolutely necessary for a good Moslem to believe. The number of these sacred books were, according to them, 104. Of which ten were given to Adam, fifty to Seth, thirty to Edrîs or Enoch, ten to Abraham; and the other four, being the Pentateuch, the Psalms, the Gospel, and the Korân, were successively delivered to Moses, David, Jesus, and Mohammed; which last being the seal of the prophets, those revelations are now closed, and no more are to be expected. All these divine books, except the four last, they agree to be now entirely lost, and their contents unknown; though the Sabians have several books which they attribute to some of the antediluvian prophets. And of those four the Pentateuch, Psalms, and Gospel, they say, have undergone so many alterations and corruptions, that though there may possibly be some part of the true word of GOD therein, yet no credit is to be given to the present copies in the hands of the Jews and Christians. The Jews in particular are frequently reflected on in the Korân for falsifying and corrupting their copies of their law; and some instances of such pre- 17 Kor. c. 55. See the notes there. 1 Jallalo'ddin, in Kor. c. 2 and 18. 2 Vide Kor. c. 55, 72, and 74. 3 See D'Herbelot, Bibl. Orient. p. 369, 820, &c. 4 In libro Zohar. 5 Gemara, in Hagiga. 6 Igrat Baale hayyim. c. 15. tended corruptions, both in that book and the two others, are produced by Mohammedan writers, wherein they merely follow their own prejudices, and the fabulous accounts of spurious legends. Whether they have any copy of the Pentateuch among them different from that of the Jews or not, I am not entirely satisfied, since a person who travelled into the east was told that they had the books of Moses, though very much corrupted;1 but I know nobody that has ever seen them. However, they certainly have and privately read a book which they call the Psalms of David, in Arabic and Persian, to which are added some prayers of Moses, Jonas, and others.2 This Mr. Reland supposes to be a translation from our copies (though no doubt falsified in more places than one); but M. D'Herbelot says it contains not the same Psalms which are in our Psalter, being no more than an extract from thence mixed with other very different pieces.3 The easiest way to reconcile these two learned gentlemen, is to presume that they speak of different copies. The Mohammedans have also a Gospel in Arabic, attributed to St. Barnabas, wherein the history of Jesus Christ is related in a manner very different from what we find in the true Gospels, and correspondent to those traditions which Mohammed has followed in his Korân. Of this Gospel the Moriscoes in Africa have a translation in Spanish;4 and there is in the library of Prince Eugene of Savoy, a manuscript of some antiquity, containing an Italian translation of the same Gospel,5