that can endure the utmost worldly evils that can be inflicted, rather than relinquish tenets that incur such vengeance. THE Jews were often accused of an intolerant spirit, to justify the cruelty and outrage so frequently committed on a defenceless people; since the specific divine command to punish the abominable sinners of Canaan; since the remote era of their prophetic ancestors, they have never interfered with other mens religions, never attempted to make proselytes: it is inconsistent with their religion to injure any one for a different belief, scripture expressly forbids it to be good to the stranger, to the infidel, to the gentile, for thou wast a stranger in the land of Egypt; is so far from intolerancy, that if any person is enclined to become a Jew, the law of circumcision, the various ceremonies and precepts, are to be represented to him, to deter him from a precipitate and inconsiderate adoption of what is deemed a painful religion. A NATION SO distinct from any other, a people people so separate and isolated always have excited hatred. In the time of Honorious and Theodosuis Roman Emperors the Christians massacred the Jews in their Synagogues; and when the prefect of the city came to quiet the tumult, the furious monks called him an idolater, heathen and unbeliever, and stoned him for his humane interposition; they threatened death to all those who favored the Jews or pleaded for toleration. HYPATIA, daughter of Theon the philoso pher, a lady of prodigious talents, great meekness and chastity, being suspected of discountenancing these disgraceful outrages, was assailed by a mob, headed by one Peter, a lecturer, was seized and dragged out of the carriage, was led to a Church, and in that sanctuary the pretty unhappy maiden maiden was stript, her beauteous body barbarously mangled and burnt to ashes. Though no means were used by these fanatic Christians to check such enormities, some vouchsafed to confess that it was an act that reflected disgrace on Cyrill, . AAL Bishop of the place, and his flock, so moderately and lukewarmly were atrocities censured that excite horror; they made the civil authority subservient to their ecclesiastical tyranny, and there was none that would venture to impugn a fury that might be excited against themselves. Bishop Newton has justly said, that the preservation of the Jews, through so many ages, and the total destruction of their enemies are wonderful events, and are made still more wonderful by being signified before-hand by the spirit of prophecy, as is particularly denoted in the prophet Jeremiah: "Fear not thou, O Jacob, my servant, saith the Lord, for I am with thee; for I will make a full end of all the nations whither I have driven thee, but I will not make an end of thee." The preservation of the Jews, is a signal, and illustrious act of divine providence; they are dispersed among all nations, and not confounded with them; the drops of rain that fall, and the great rivers which flow into the ocean, are mingled and lost in that great and immense body of water, and such such would have been the fate of the Jews in the ordinary course of nature; they would have been mingled and lost in the common mass of mankind, but they flow in all parts, blend with all nations, and yet are religiously and civilly separate from all, they still remain in their faith a distinct people; they are unable to live conformable to their laws, they no where elect their own magistrates, no where exercise the whole of their religion, intolerance restrains them; they are checked, bruised, and contemned, yet they are wonderfully saved, they bound from oppression, and like their ancestors Moses in the bull rushes, or Daniel in the lion's den, human power is frustrated, and there is no destroying whom God chuses to preserve. THEIR Solemn feasts and sacrifices are limited to one certain place, and that has been for many ages in the possession of strangers and aliens, who do not permit them to resume their station; though so dispersed they continue separate; the northern nations have come in swarms into the more southern parts of Europe; but but where are they now to be discerned and distinguished? the Gauls went forth in great bodies to seek their fortunes in foreign parts, but what footsteps or traces of them are remaining any where? In France who can discriminate the race of the ancient Gauls from the divers other people who have settled there. In Spain who can separate Spaniards, Goths, and Moors, who alternately conquered it? In England who can ascertain which are original Britons, or Danes, or Saxons, or Romans, or Normans; the most ancient and honorable pedigrees can only be traced to a certain period, and beyond that there is nothing but conjecture and uncertainty, obscurity and ignorance: but the Jews go beyond all other nations, they can deduce their genealogy from the beginning of the world; after the destruction of their archives and records they cannot discriminate particular families, but they know they sprang from their Patriarch and Prince Abraham; yet the contempt and persecution they every where encounter, one would imagine would make them |