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 done; for he performed no miracles, he was not foretold.  No man can do what Christ has done.

600

The heathen religion has no foundation [at the present day.  It is said once to have had a foundation by the oracles which spoke.  But what are the books which assure us of this?  Are they so worthy of belief on account of the virtue of their authors?  Have they been preserved with such care that we can be sure that they have not been meddled with?]

The Mahometan religion has for a foundation the Koran and Mahomet.  But has this prophet, who was to be the last hope of the world, been foretold?  What sign has he that every other man has not, who chooses to call himself a prophet?  What miracles does he himself say that he has done?  What mysteries has he taught, even according to his own tradition?  What was the morality, what the happiness held out by him?

The Jewish religion must be differently regarded in the tradition of the Holy Bible, and in the tradition of the people.  Its morality and happiness are absurd in the tradition of the people, but are admirable in that of the Holy Bible. (And all religion is the same; for the Christian religion is very different in the Holy Bible and in the casuists.) The foundation is admirable; it is the most ancient book in the world, and the most authentic; and whereas Mahomet, in order to make his own book continue in existence, forbade men to read it, Moses,[217] for the same reason, ordered every one to read his.