So, in our days, more than one prelate has been reproached with having set monks to compose his sermons and funeral orations. There was one Father Hercules (_Père Hercule_) who made sermons for a certain bishop, and when people went to hear him preach, they used to say, "Let us go and hear the _labors of Hercules_." To this charge Mahomet gives an answer in his 16th chapter, occasioned by a gross blunder he had made in the pulpit, about which a great deal had been said. He gets out of the scrape thus: "When thou readest the Koran, address thyself to God, that He may preserve thee from the machinations of Satan. He has power only over those who have chosen Him for their Master, and who give associates unto God. "When I substitute one verse for another in the Koran (the reason for which changes is known to God) some unbelievers cry out, _'Thou hast forged those verses'_; but they know not how to distinguish truth from falsehood. Say rather that the Holy Spirit brought those verses of truth to me from God. Others say, still more malignantly, _There is a certain man who labors with him in composing the Koran_. But how can this man, to whom they attribute my works, have taught me, speaking as he does, a foreign language, while the Koran is written in the purest Arabic?" He who, it was pretended, assisted Mahomet, was a Jew named _Bensalen_ or _Bensalon_. It is not very likely that a Jew should have lent his assistance to Mahomet in writing against the Jews; yet the thing is not impossible. The monk who was said to have contributed to the Koran was by some called _Bohaira_, by others _Sergius_. There is something pleasant in this monk's having had both a Latin and an Arabic name. As for the fine theological disputes which have arisen among the Mussulmans, I have no concern with them; I leave them to the decision of the mufti. In "The Triumph of the Cross" (_"le Triomphe de la Croix"_) the Koran is said to be Arian, Sabellian, Carpocratian, Cardonician, Manichæan, Donatistic, Origenian, Macedonian, and Ebionitish. Mahomet, however, was nothing of all this; he was rather a _Jansenist_, for the foundation of his doctrine is the absolute degree of gratuitous predestination. SECTION II. This Mahomet, son of Abdallah, was a bold and sublime charlatan. He says in his tenth chapter, "Who but God can have composed the Koran? Mahomet, you say, has forged this book. Well; try then to write one chapter resembling it and call to your aid whomsoever you please." In the seventeenth he exclaims, "Praise be to Him who in one night transported His servant from the sacred temple of Mecca to that of Jerusalem!"