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compliances . They professed to be heralds from God of the most glorious news to the world , in which ail might partake on the simple terms of repentance and reformation . They invited men of every nation to lay aiside all
party names , all national distinctions , all absurd creeds , all burdens 6 me rites , and to unite with them in the cultivation of rational piety and virtue as brethren , as worshipers of the one true God , as followers of the same divine
Saviour , and as heirs of the same blessed immortality . —3 . The teachers of ritual Judaism expected a Messiah that would conquer and enslave , rather than save the world . If they went abroad and invited the nations to
receive a worship m which this insolent and selfish expectation was the fundamental principle , they invited them to offer themselves as _ captives to be tied to the chariot-wheels of a triumphant destroyer . And would any Heathen of a sound mind comply with such invitations ? We have the fullest
assurance that the contrary was the case . This hope of the Jews , founded at once m cruelty , ignorance and national vanity , so far from conciliating others , involved them in open hostilities with the surrounding nations , and was the immediate cause of their extermination
by the Romans . How different from this was the Messiah whom the apostles held forth to the world ! They proclaimed a Saviour who sacrificed Ids life to rescue mankind from vice and misery , whose doctrine , whose
object aad whose example called forth every honourable feeling of the human heart ; while the assurance of eternal life reserved for the righteous , ratified by his resurrection , was calculated to
rouse the nations , by one instantaneous impulse , to burst asunder the fetters of superstition and enlist under his glorious banners . —4 . So exactly did the character of Jesus correspond to the predictions of the prophets , so unequivocally was the finger of God displayed in the miracles he wrought , that
his opponents , in resisting his claims , were themselves compelled to apostatize from Judaism . This apostacy may be gathered from the New Testam ent , and still more clearly from the writings of Josephus . It appears » i the subterfuge which they adopted of ascribing to Beelzebub things which "icy knew to be done by the Spirit of
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God . It is the foundation of the severe animadversions upoa their character by our Lord , and forms ttoe chief grounds of the charge brought against them , that they were become a race of vipers , or children of the serpent ;
that is , of apostates from the God of Israel , and abettors of idolatry . This charge they justified by their subsequent conduct ; for they joined on all occasions the Roman magistrates and the Pagan priests in persecuting the disciples of Jesus : and would men endeavour to make converts to that
God whom they had themselves forsaken , and whose worshipers they pursued with unrelenting violence ?—5 . The Heathens appear to consider every city that was besieged and captured as forsaken of its guardian gods . In consequence of this opinion , they
must have looked upon the destruction of the Jewish community as a complete proof either that the religion of the Jews was an imposture , or that the Jews themselves had by their crimes forfeited their privileges as the chosen people of God ; and this notion must
have effectually prevented every stranger from becoming a proselyte to the Jews . Relying with full confidence on these arguments , I assert , that the teachers of Pharisaical Judaism gave up entirely the spirit of proselytism , and that no individual of a sound mind ,
either among the Greeks or any other nation , would become a convert to them after the promulgation of the gospel . The clause in Josephus , " And these , in « t manner , they made a part of themselves , " is not likely to be felt
in its full force by modern readers . The Jews , priding in their privileges as the descendants of Abraham , looked upon the Heathens with the utmost contempt ; and such of these as became proselytes were received as dogs when permitted to pick up the crumbs which fall from their master ' s table . The
disciples retained a portion of this haughty spirit even after they had been enlightened by the ministry of their divine Master . The incident related of Peter and Cornelius in the Acts .
shews that a miracle was necessary to convince him that a Gentile , however penitent and virtuous , was , equally with a Jew , an object of the Divine favour . It is to thfe truly divioe temper that Josephus refers when he says ,
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Philo and Josephus proved to be Christian Writers . 353
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1821, page 353, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2501/page/29/
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