om embracing the law of Moses. II. The doctrine ofed ture life, improved by every additional circumstance which uld give weight and efficacy to that important truth. I. The miraculous powers ascribed to the primitive urch. IV. The pure and austere morals of the Christians. The union and discipline of the Christian republic, which adually formed an independent and increasing state in the art of the Roman empire.* I. We have already described the religious harmony of ancient world, and the facility with which the most ferent and even hostile nations embraced, or at least pected, each other's superstitions. A single people used to join in the common intercourse of mankind. The ws, who, under the Assyrian and Persian monarchies, had guished for many ages the most despised portion of their ves, emerged from obscurity under the successors of as continue to prove the popularity and standard value of the rk.-ED. * There was a sixth cause, to which the others owed ir efficacy. This was the want of a better religion, then beging to be widely felt in the Greek and Roman world. They were growing their polytheism; beginning to be ashamed of what Gibbon flatteringly calls their "elegant mythology." From the days of ales to those of Cicero, philosophers had been vaguely striving devise a more rational theology. Though unsuccessful in this, y had diffused around them a general dissatisfaction with the pular worship. To this feeling the first Macedonian rulers of Egypt, wittingly perhaps, gave an energetic vivacity, by their active tronage of learning, and ingrafted on this a knowledge of the saic religion, by means of the numerous Jews whom they planted A patronized in Alexandria and Cyrene, and by the translation of Hebrew Scriptures into Greek. Throughout the east, but more pecially in Egypt and Syria, great numbers were thus prepared to andon heathenism and embrace a spiritual faith.-ED. M. Guizot maintains here, that "intolerance seems to be inherent the religious spirit, when armed with power;" and at some length duces authorities, to show that persecution was practised by the raians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. Some of these are very estionable, as proofs of his assertion; and the "fearful cruelties, tributed to the "successors of Alexander, to make the Jews forsake eir religion," are an entire perversion of the facts related by Jose The general position might have been better attested; but it ill be found, that religious opinions never have been visited by pains id penalties, except to protect the wealth or emolument of the perseDum Assyrios penes, Medosque, et Persas Oriens it, despectissima pars servientium. Tacit. Hist. 5, 8. Herodotus ho visited Asia whilst it obeyed the last of those empires, slightly itors.-ED. 2 THE JEWS [CH. X atlexander; and, as they multiplied to a surprising degr in the east, and afterward in the west, they soon excited t curiosity and wonder of other nations.* The sullen obst nacy with which they maintained their peculiar rites a unsocial manners, seemed to mark them out a distin species of men, who boldly professed, or who faintly d guised, their implacable hatred to the rest of human-kind Neither the violence of Antiochus, nor the arts of Her nor the example of the circumjacent nations, could e persuade the Jews to associate with the institutions Moses the elegant mythology of the Greeks. Accordi mentions the Syrians of Palestine, who, according to their own on fession, had received from Egypt the rite of circumcision. See lih c. 104. * Diodorus Siculus, lib. 40. Dion Cassius, lib. 37, p. 1 Tacit. Hist. 5, 1-9. Justin. 36, 2, 3. + Tradidit arcano quæcunque volumine Moses, The letter of this law is not to be found in the present volume of Mos the maxims of universal toleration, the Romans protected superstition which they despised.* The polite Augustus ondescended to give orders, that sacrifices should be offered r his prosperity in the temple of Jerusalem;t while the leanest of the posterity of Abraham, who should have paid he same homage to the Jupiter of the Capitol, would have een an object of abhorrence to himself and to his brethren. ut the moderation of the conquerors was insufficient to ppease the jealous prejudices of their subjects, who were armed and scandalized at the ensigns of Paganism, which ecessarily introduced themselves into a Roman province.‡ The mad attempt of Caligula to place his own statue in the emple of Jerusalem, was defeated by the unanimous resobution of a people who dreaded death much less than such n idolatrous profanation.§ Their attachment to the law of Moses was equal to their detestation of foreign religions. The current of zeal and devotion, as it was contracted into a arrow channel, ran with the strength, and sometimes with he fury, of a torrent. This inflexible perseverance, which appeared so odious or o ridiculous to the ancient world, assumes a more awful character, since Providence has deigned to reveal to us the mysterious history of the chosen people. But the devout and even scrupulous attachment to the Mosaic religion, so b conspicuous among the Jews who lived under the second temple, becomes still more surprising, if it is compared with the stubborn incredulity of their forefathers. When the law was given in thunder from mount Sinai; when the tides of the ocean, and the course of the planets, were suspended for the convenience of the Israelites; and when their duration so short, that Josephus has not thought them worthy of his notice. See Prideaux's Connexion, vol. ii, p. 285. * Cicero pro Flacco, c. 28. + Philo de Legatione. Augustus left a foundation for a perpetual sacrifice. Yet he approved of the neglect which his grandson Caius expressed towards the temple of Jerusalem. Sueton. in August. c. 93, and Casaubon's notes on that passage. See See, in particular, Josephi Antiquitat. 17, 6; 18, 3, and de Bel Judaic. 1, 33, and 2, 9, edit. Havercamp. § Jussi a Caio Cæsare, effigiem ejus in templo locare, arma potius sumpsere, Tacit. Hist. 5, 9. Philo and Josephus gave a very circumstantial, but a very rhetorical, account of this transaction, which exceedingly perplexed the governor of Syria. At the first mention of this idolatrous proposal, King Agrippa fuinted away, and did not recover his senses till the third day. ether Pere 3 to t temporal rewards and punishments were the immediate co sequences of their piety or disobedience, they perpetuail relapsed into rebellion against the visible majesty of the divine king, placed the idols of the nations in the sanctuar of Jehovah, and imitated every fantastic ceremony that wa practised in the tents of the Arabs, or in the cities of Pha za zapose nicia.* As the protection of Heaven was deservedly with drawn from the ungrateful race, their faith acquired a pre portionable degree of vigour and purity. The contemporarie of Moses and Joshua had beheld with careless indifferenc the most amazing miracles. Under the pressure of ever calamity, the belief of those miracles has preserved the Jew of a later period from the universal contagion of idolatry and, in contradiction to every known principle of the human mind, that singular people seems to have yielded a stronge and more ready assent to the traditions of their remote ancestors, than to the evidence of their own senses.t heralue of the strange and ex es amber of p narrow meindead The Jewish religion was admirably fitted for defence, but it was never designed for conquest; and it seems probable that the number of proselytes was never much superior to that of apostates. The divine promises were originally made, and the distinguishing rite of circumcision was en joined, to a single family. When the posterity of Abraham, t had multiplied like the sands of the sea, the Deity, from re th whose mouth they received a system of laws and ceremonies, that the J declared himself the proper, and as it were the national God of Israel; and, with the most jealous care, separated his favourite people from the rest of mankind. The con; bu quest of the land of Canaan was accompanied with so many wonderful and with so many bloody circumstances, that the victorious Jews were left in a state of irreconcilable hostility with all their neighbours. They had been commanded to extirpate some of the most idolatrous tribes, and the execu tion of the divine will had seldom been retarded by the scriices. weakness of humanity. With the other nations they were unbecom forbidden to contract any marriages or alliances; and the to, or be Tch was desti For the enumeration of the Syrian and Arabian deities, it may observed, that Milton has comprised in one hundred and thirty very beautiful lines the two large and learned syntagmas which Selden had composed on that abstruse subject. "How long will this people provoke me? and how long will it be ere they believe me, for all the zigns which I have shewn them?" (Numbers xiv, 11.) It would be or of the Keren has be JEWISH PROSELYTES. 7 CH.. XV.] some cases was perpetual, almost always extended to the third, to the seventh, or even to the tenth, generation. The Cbligation of preaching to the Gentiles the faith of Moses, thad never been inculcated as a precept of the law, nor were Pte Jews inclined to impose it on themselves as a voluntary Saduty. In the admission of new citizens, that unsocial people was actuated by the selfish vanity of the Greeks, rather than by the generous policy of Rome. The descendants of Abraham were flattered by the opinion, that they alone were the heirs of the covenant; and they were apprehensive of diminishing the value of their inheritance, by sharing it too easily with the strangers of the earth. A larger acquaintance with mankind extended their knowledge, without correcting their prejudices; and whenever the God of Israel acquired any new votaries, he was much more indebted to the inconstant humour of polytheism, than to the active zeal of his own missionaries.* The religion of Moses seems to be instituted for a particular country, as well as for a single ation; and if a strict obedience had been paid to the order, that every male, three times in the year, should present himself before the Lord Jehovah, it would have been impossible that the Jews could ever have spread themselves beyond the narrow limits of the promised land.† That obstacle was indeed removed by the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem; but the most considerable part of the Jewish religion was involved in its destruction; and the Pagans, who had long wondered at the strange report of an empty sanctuary, were at a loss to discover what could be the object, or what could be the instruments, of a worship which was destitute of temples, and of altars, of priests and of sacrifices. Yet even in their fallen state, the easy, but it would be unbecoming, to justify the complaint of the Deity from the whole tenor of the Mosaic history. *All that relates to the Jewish proselytes has been very ably treated by Basnage, Hist. des Juifs, lib. 6, c. 6, 7. + See Exod. xxiv, 23; Deut. xvi, 16, the commentators, and a very sensible note in the Universal History, vol. i, p. 603, edit. fol. When Pompey, using or abusing the right of conquest, entered into the Holy of holies, it was observed with amazement, "Nulla intus Deum effigie, vacuam sedem et inania arcana." Tacit. Hist. 5, 9. It was a popular saying with regard to the Jewe: Nil præter nubes et cœli numen adorant. |