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Essay on the Evidences of the Jewish Rev...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Essay On The Evidences Of The Jewish Hev...
tbe * former there is no difficulty in accounting for the dispersed
and dependent situation of this people : for their dispersion was
expressly foretold and threatened ^ s the punishment of their re bel , lion against their Heavenly
Sovereign . On any other supposition it will be an arduous , if not impracticable , undertaking to satisfy us why they alone of all the in . habitants of the earth should be , as it were , a people without being a nation f
At this moment the condition of the Jews is exactly what it has been through many past ages . Nearly eighteen hundred years since , their temple and their polity were overthrown bv the
Rorn £ o 3 ' m j and those of them whom the sword had spared , were distributed throughout the empire as slaves . Nor * from that hour have
they recovered their independence : though no longer captives , yet , with scarcely a single exception , they are degraded in every country where they dwell ; and the bulk of them are thus deprived of one of the strongest of human motives to cultivate the
good opinion of their neighbours . Still , under all their disadvantages , some individuals among them have been eminent for worth , taste and learning : and , as a body , their attachment to the
cardinal doctrine of the unity of God , and their zealous observance of their Sabbath , give them a title to particular respect and admiration . The Jews strictly set
apart the seventh day of every week for the public adoration of their Creator : they then debar themselves from worldly advantages in which those around them freely share ; a self-denial the
Essay On The Evidences Of The Jewish Hev...
more exemplary as the customs , not to speak of the laws , of Christian countries , forbid them to pursue their several trades on the
following , or what we call the Lord ' s-day . Such is tkeir unde ~ viating regard to the lessons of their religion ! A consistent Jew rests on two days out of seven from secular occupations !
Though this uninterrupted adherence of the Jewish people to their law , from the period' of the conquest of Jerusalem , be not a proof \ it is , nevertheless , a presumption that their religion came
immediately from God . The difficulty of tracing the effect to its cause , is far lighter on the side of the Christian and of the Jew , than on that of the man by whom revelation is denied : the Jew and
the Christian are furnished with a very natural solution of what , I conceive , must otherwise remain a profound mystery * Those books which compose the Old Testament the Jewish
community have ahfays received as the rule of their faith and practice . If an } ' person ask , " how can you ascertain that their scriptures are the same at present with what they have uniformly been ?"
I answer , we are supplied with evidence to this purpose not merely from tradition , hot only from the testimony of fathers to sons through successive generations , but from their own history ,
and even from strong intimations in the productions of heathen authors . Should we ascend to the date of the overthrow of the holy city , there can be no doubt that , in the interval between this event
and the times in which we live , the Old Testament , such in the main as it now is , has been read
Essay On The Evidences Of The Jewish Rev...
Essay on the Evidences of the Jewish Revelation . 323
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1814, page 325, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/mrp_02061814/page/5/
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