Reformed Covenanter
Cancelled Commissioner
The Mohammedan imposture is, in some respects, the most remarkable of all false religions. The specious simplicity of its essential doctrines, and its perfect freedom from idolatry, distinguish it forever from the gross mythology of classical and oriental paganism. But besides these characteristics, it displays a third, more interesting still. We mean the peculiar relation which it bears to Christianity. Whether it happened from a happy accident or a sagacious policy, we think it clear that Islam owes a vast proportion of its vast success, to the fact that Mohammed built upon another man’s foundation. Assuming the correctness of the common doctrine that the impostor was a brilliant genius, though a worthless libertine, and that his book is the offspring, not of insane stupidity, but of consummate artifice, there certainly is ground for admiration in the apparent union of simplicity and efficacy in the whole design.
The single idea of admitting freely the divine legation of the Hebrew seers, and exhibiting himself as the topstone of the edifice, the Last Great Prophet, and the Paraclete of Christ, has certainly the aspect of a master stroke of policy. Besides conciliating multitudes of Jews and soi-disant Christians, at the very first, this circumstance has aided the imposture not a little ever since. It relieves the Moslem doctors from the dire necessity of waging war against both law and gospel. Whatever can be cited from the Greek and Hebrew Scriptures, without disparaging Mohammed, they admit as readily as any Jew or Christian. Whatever, on the contrary, is hostile to his doctrines or pretensions, or at all at variance with the statements of the Koran, is disposed of, not by an absolute rejection of the Bible, but by a resort to the convenient supposition of corruption in the text. It is not the policy of Islam to array itself against the Jewish and the Christian dispensations, as an original and independent system; but to assume the same position in relation to the Gospel, which the Gospel seems to hold in relation to the Law—or, in other words, to make itself the grand denouement of that grand scheme, of which the Old and New Testaments were only the preparatory stages. ...
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The single idea of admitting freely the divine legation of the Hebrew seers, and exhibiting himself as the topstone of the edifice, the Last Great Prophet, and the Paraclete of Christ, has certainly the aspect of a master stroke of policy. Besides conciliating multitudes of Jews and soi-disant Christians, at the very first, this circumstance has aided the imposture not a little ever since. It relieves the Moslem doctors from the dire necessity of waging war against both law and gospel. Whatever can be cited from the Greek and Hebrew Scriptures, without disparaging Mohammed, they admit as readily as any Jew or Christian. Whatever, on the contrary, is hostile to his doctrines or pretensions, or at all at variance with the statements of the Koran, is disposed of, not by an absolute rejection of the Bible, but by a resort to the convenient supposition of corruption in the text. It is not the policy of Islam to array itself against the Jewish and the Christian dispensations, as an original and independent system; but to assume the same position in relation to the Gospel, which the Gospel seems to hold in relation to the Law—or, in other words, to make itself the grand denouement of that grand scheme, of which the Old and New Testaments were only the preparatory stages. ...
For more, see:
Joseph Addison Alexander on the cleverness of the Mohammedan imposture
The Mohammedan imposture is, in some respects, the most remarkable of all false religions. The specious simplicity of its essential doctrines, and its perfect freedom from idolatry, distinguish it …
reformedcovenanter.wordpress.com
