vited.

Their spiritual blindness, though excused by ignorance and crowned with
virtue, will be scourged with everlasting torments; and the tears which
Mahomet shed over the tomb of his mother for whom he was forbidden to
pray, display a striking contrast of humanity and enthusiasm. [109]
The doom of the infidels is common: the measure of their guilt and
punishment is determined by the degree of evidence which they have
rejected, by the magnitude of the errors which they have entertained:
the eternal mansions of the Christians, the Jews, the Sabians, the
Magians, and idolaters, are sunk below each other in the abyss; and the
lowest hell is reserved for the faithless hypocrites who have assumed
the mask of religion. After the greater part of mankind has been
condemned for their opinions, the true believers only will be judged by
their actions. The good and evil of each Mussulman will be accurately
weighed in a real or allegorical balance; and a singular mode of
compensation will be allowed for the payment of injuries: the aggressor
will refund an equivalent of his own good actions, for the benefit of
the person whom he has wronged; and if he should be destitute of any
moral property, the weight of his sins will be loaded with an adequate
share of the demerits of the sufferer. According as the shares of guilt
or virtue shall preponderate, the sentence will be pronounced, and all,
without distinction, will pass over the sharp and perilous bridge of
the abyss; but the innocent, treading in the footsteps of Mahomet, will
gloriously enter the gates of paradise, while the guilty will fall into
the first and mildest of the seven hells. The term of expiation will
vary from nine hundred to seven thousand years; but the prophet has
judiciously promised, that all his disciples, whatever may be their
sins, shall be saved, by their own faith and his intercession from
eternal damnation. It is not surprising that superstition should act
most powerfully on the fears of her votaries, since the human fancy can
paint with more energy the misery than the bliss of a future life. With
the two simple elements of darkness and fire, we create a sensation
of pain, which may be aggravated to an infinite degree by the idea of
endless duration. But the same idea operates with an opposite effect on
the continuity of pleasure; and too much of our present enjoyments is
obtained from the relief, or the comparison, of evil. It is natural
enough that an A