In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar, the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the perpetual energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting from the sublime conception of Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God; he connected indissolubly with it the audacious falsehood that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain by degrading the condition of the female sex and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared and undistinguishing and exterminating war, as part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. The essence of his doctrine was violence and lust: to exalt the brutal over the spiritual part of human nature... between these two religions, thus contrasted their characters, a war of 1200 years has already raged. The war is yet flagrant... while the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will toward men.
-John Q. Adams
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