the greater and lesser impurities--about the matter and the manner of
ablutions,--about the attributes of God and his perfections--about the
Chaitan, and the good and wicked angels,--about death, the resurrection,
the interrogatory in the tomb, the judgment, the passage of the narrow
bridge not broader than a hair, the balance of works, the pains of hell,
and the joys of paradise.


Next to these, that second more numerous group, with white banners
intersected with crosses, are the followers of Jesus. Acknowledging the
same God with the Mussulmans, founding their belief on the same books,
admitting, like them, a first man who lost the human race by eating an
apple, they hold them, however, in a holy abhorrence; and, out of pure
piety, they call each other impious blasphemers.

The great point of their dissension consists in this, that after
admitting a God one and indivisible the Christian divides him into three
persons, each of which he believes to be a complete and entire God,
without ceasing to constitute an identical whole, by the indivisibility
of the three. And he adds, that this being, who fills the universe,
has reduced himself to the body of a man; and has assumed material,
perishable, and limited organs, without ceasing to be immaterial,
infinite, and eternal. The Mussulman who does not comprehend these
mysteries, rejects them as follies, and the visions of a distempered
brain; though he conceives perfectly well the eternity of the Koran, and
the mission of the prophet: hence their implacable hatreds.

Again, the Christians, divided among themselves on many points, have
formed parties not less violent than the Mussulmans; and their quarrels
are so much the more obstinate, as the objects of them are inaccessible