Assyrian
caliphs. His seal of gold, or silver, was inscribed with the apostolic
title; when he prayed and preached in the weekly assembly, he leaned
against the trunk of a palm-tree; and it was long before he indulged
himself in the use of a chair or pulpit of rough timber. After a reign
of six years, fifteen hundred Moslems, in arms and in the field, renewed
their oath of allegiance; and their chief repeated the assurance of
protection till the death of the last member, or the final dissolution
of the party. It was in the same camp that the deputy of Mecca was
astonished by the attention of the faithful to the words and looks of
the prophet, by the eagerness with which they collected his spittle, a
hair that dropped on the ground, the refuse water of his lustrations,
as if they participated in some degree of the prophetic virtue. "I have
seen," said he, "the Chosroes of Persia and the Caesar of Rome, but
never did I behold a king among his subjects like Mahomet among his
companions." The devout fervor of enthusiasm acts with more energy and
truth than the cold and formal servility of courts.

In the state of nature, every man has a right to defend, by force of
arms, his person and his possessions; to repel, or even to prevent, the
violence of his enemies, and to extend his hostilities to a reasonable
measure of satisfaction and retaliation. In the free society of the
Arabs, the duties of subject and citizen imposed a feeble restraint; and
Mahomet, in the exercise of a peaceful and benevolent mission, had been
despoiled and banished by the injustice of his countrymen. The choice of
an independent people had exalted the fugitive of Mecca to the rank of
a sovereign; and he was invested with the just prerogative of forming
alliances, and of waging offensive or defensive war. The imperfection
of human rights was supplied and armed by the plenitude of divine power:
the prophet of Medina assumed, in his new revelations, a fiercer and
more sanguinary tone, which proves that his former moderation was the
effect of weakness: the means of persuasion had been tried, the season
of forbearance was elapsed, and he was now commanded to propagate
his religion by the sword, to destroy the monuments of idolatry,
and, without regarding the sanctity of days or months, to pursue
the unbelieving nations of the earth. The same bloody precepts, so
repeatedly inculcated in the Koran, are ascribed by the author to the
Pentateuch and the Gospel.