[Footnote 24:  This occasion of the devil’s fall has some affinity with an opinion which has been pretty much entertained among Christians, viz., that the angels being informed of God’s intention to create man after his own image, and to dignify human nature by Christ’s assuming it, some of them, thinking their glory to be eclipsed thereby, envied man’s happiness, and so revolted.]

[Footnote 25:  The Jews are here called upon to receive the Koran, as verifying and confirming the Pentateuch, particularly with respect to the unity of God, and the mission of Mohammed.  And they are exhorted not to conceal the passages of their law which bear witness to those truths, nor to corrupt them by publishing false copies of the Pentateuch, for which the writers were but poorly paid.]

[Footnote 26:  The person who cast this calf, the Mohammedans say, was (not Aaron but) al Sameri, one of the principal men among the children of Israel, some of whose descendants it is pretended still inhabit an island of that name in the Arabian Gulf.  It was made of the rings and bracelets of gold, silver, and other materials, which the Israelites had borrowed of the Egyptians; for Aaron, who commanded in his brother’s absence, having ordered al Sameri to collect those ornaments from the people, who carried on a wicked commerce with them, and to keep them together till the return of Moses; al Sameri, understanding the founder’s art, put them into a furnace to melt them down into one mass, which came out in the form of a calf.]

[Footnote 27:  The eastern writers say these quails were of a peculiar kind, to be found nowhere but in Yaman, from whence they were brought by a south wind in great numbers to the Israelites’ camp in the desert.  The Arabs call these birds Salwae, which is plainly the same with the Hebrew Salwim, and say they have no bones, but are eaten whole.]

[Footnote 28:  The occasion of this sacrifice is thus related:  A certain man at his death left his son, then a child, a cow-calf, which wandered in the desert till he came to age; at which time his mother told him the heifer was his, and bid him fetch her, and sell her for three pieces of gold.  When the young man came to the market with his heifer, an angel in the shape of a man accosted him, and bid him six pieces of gold for her; but he would not take the money till he had asked his mother’s consent; which when he had obtained, he returned to the market-place, and met the angel, who now offered him twice as much for the heifer, provided he would say nothing of it to his mother; but the young man refusing, went and acquainted her with the additional offer.  The woman perceiving it was an angel, bid her son go back and ask him what must be done with the heifer; whereupon the angel told the young man that in a little time the children of Israel would buy that heifer of him at any price.  And soon after it happened that an Israelite, named Hammiel, was killed by a relation