Fincastle Mirror

MAHOMET.

The following brief notice of this great impostor, is from a scarce book published in Amsterdam in 1711, and was intended by the author to exhibit the powerful effects of ambition upon the human mind.

Mahomet was the son of Pagan and a Jewess, both of whom had sprung from the very dregs of the people; their poverty prevented them giving him an education. His childhood was consequently neglected, and the only things he in all probability acquired, was abstemiousness and vigor of body. The daily wants to which the poor are subject daily, leave but little time for reflection, consequently, there is not such food for the passions; notwithstanding every thing in active minds serves as a stimulant to inflame the feelings. A fortunate circumstance placed him in a rich Arabian merchant's house, and he dying, Mahomet married his widow. By this marriage, he suddenly became possessor of immense wealth, which his master had left.

The seeds of ambition with which he had been born sprang up in his heart on obtaining this fortune. At first he only proposed to aggrandize himself; but the spirit of conquest having seized him, he was chiefly anxious to fulfill this desire however, they both seemed to be worthy his pursuit, and he studied every way to accomplish his ends. Treason, perfidy, murders, sacrilege, and robbery of every description, excited in him no remorse. He viewed them only as a greedy conqueror. He trampled upon justice and humanity, regarding them as the offspring of weak and timid minds, which not being capable of great or elevated undertaking, are sensible to pity only because they feel how they themselves need support. He put himself at the head of a band of robbers, by whose aid he ravaged Arabia: the expectation of booty increased his banditti, and daily his dominion enlarged; his success spread terror around, and very soon he became master of an immense extent of country. But arms alone were not sufficient for the preservation of his power, over a people whom he had subdued through fear. He felt the necessity of adding imposture to tyranny, in order to strengthen his empire, and he suggested a system of religion that assured to him the blind obedience of the people whom he had conquered. The few principles he had imbibed when under the influence of his parents, ought to have raised some remorse when he was contemplating the impious part he was about to play, but when ambition is carried to its highest pitch every object is sacrificed to this unbridled passion, and even the most sacred things are abused, when it is believed they may prove instrumental to aggrandizement. To accomplish his purpose, he employed a heretical Jacobite--a true Nestorian monk and a Jew, to assist him in writing his Koran, a most extraordinary composition, full of absurd and sublime ideas, mixed together without order or method.