l; we must put the papers on the table.

593

_Against the history of China._ The historians of Mexico, the five
suns,[214] of which the last is only eight hundred years old.

The difference between a book accepted by a nation, and one which makes
a nation.

594

Mahomet was without authority. His reasons then should have been very
strong, having only their own force. What does he say then, that we must
believe him?

595

The Psalms are chanted throughout the whole world.

Who renders testimony to Mahomet? Himself. Jesus Christ[215] desires His
own testimony to be as nothing.

The quality of witnesses necessitates their existence always and
everywhere; and he, miserable creature, is alone.

596

_Against Mahomet._--The Koran is not more of Mahomet than the Gospel is
of Saint Matthew, for it is cited by many authors from age to age. Even
its very enemies, Celsus and Porphyry, never denied it.

The Koran says Saint Matthew was an honest man.[216] Therefore Mahomet
was a false prophet for calling honest men wicked, or for not agreeing
with what they have said of Jesus Christ.

597

It is not by that which is obscure in Mahomet, and which may be
interpreted in a mysterious sense, that I would have him judged, but by
what is clear, as his paradise and the rest. In that he is ridiculous.
And since what is clear is ridiculous, it is not right to take his
obscurities for mysteries.

It is not the same with the Scripture. I agree that there are in it
obscurities as strange as those of Mahomet; but there are admirably
clear passages, and the prophecies are manifestly fulfilled. The cases
are therefore not on a par. We must not confound, and put on one level
things which only resemble each other in their obscurity, and not in the
clearness, which requires us to reverence the obscurities.

598

_The difference between Jesus Christ and Mahomet._--Mahomet was not
foretold; Jesus Christ was foretold.

Mahomet slew; Jesus Christ caused His own to be slain.

Mahomet forbade reading; the Apostles ordered reading.

In fact the two are so opposed, that if Mahomet took the way to succeed
from a worldly point of view, Jesus Christ, from the same point of view,
took the way to perish. And instead of concluding that, since Mahomet
succeeded, Jesus Christ might well have succeeded, we ought to say that
since Mahomet succeeded, Jesus Christ should have failed.

599

Any man can do what Mahomet has don