[Footnote 2:  These words,—­Who hath taught us the Use of the Pen; who hath taught Man what he did not know, are taken out of the XCVI. Chapter of the Alcoran, according to those Editions of it which are now in use:  but Joannes Andreas Maurus, (who was Alfaqui, or chief Doctor of the Moors in Sciatinia, in the kingdom of Valentia in Spain, and afterwards converted to the Christian Religion in the Year of our Lord 1487) says, that it is the first Chapter that was written of all the Alcoran. But be that how it will, we may from hence, and infinite other places, observe the strange way which these Eastern Writers have of Quoting the Alcoran; for they intermix those Expressions which they take out of it with their own words, without giving the Reader the least Notice or Hint whence they had them, or where to find them.]

[Footnote 3:  And I testify, &c.—­After be testified the Unity of the Godhead, be immediately adds La Sharica Leho, That he has no Partner. These words frequently occur in the Alcoran, and are particularly levell’d against the Christians, which Mahomet frequently will Mushricoun, i.e..  Associantes, Joyning Partners with God, because they acknowledge the Divinity of our Blessed Saviour.]

[Footnote 4:  The whole Mahometan Creed consists only of these two Articles, 1.  There is no God but God, [i.e. There is but One God] and 2.  Mahomet is his Apostle. A very short Creed, but their Explications of it, make amends for its shortness.  The Reader may see a Paraphrase of it out of Algazali, in Dr.  Pocock’s Specimen Historiae Arabum, p. 174.]

[Footnote 5:  The Learned Avicenna—­This great Man was born in Bochara, a City famous for the Birth of a great many very Learned Men; it lyes in 96 Degrees, and 50 Minutes of Longitude reckoning from the Fortunate-Islands, and 39 Degrees and 50 Minutes of Northern Latitude.  A pleasant place, and full of good Buildings, having without the City a great many Fields and Gardens, round about which there is a great Wall of XII Parasangae, or 36 Miles long, which encompasses both the Fields and the City Abulphed.  Golius ’s Notes upon Alferganus. Thus much concerning the Place of his Nativity; he was born in the Year of the Hegira 370, which is about the 980 Year of Christ.  He was indeed a prodigious Scholar; he had learn’d the Alcoran, and was well initiated into Human Learning before he was Ten years old; then he studied Logick and Arithmetick, and read over Euclid without any help, only his Master show’d him how to demonstrate the first five or six Propositions; Then he read Ptolemy’s Almagest, and afterwards a great many Medicinal Books; and all this before be was sixteen years old.  He was not only a great Philosopher and Physician, but an excellent Philologer and Poet.