the fame food, hurt with the fame weapons, fubject to the fame difeafes, healed by the fame means, warmed and cooled by the fame fummer and winter, as a Chriftian is? If you prick them, do they not bleed? If you tickle them, do they not laugh? If you poifon them, do they not die?-The man, who can give a serious answer to these questions, and yet perfist in perfecuting an unoffending being, because he is a Jew, whatever country he may claim, or whatever religion he may profess, has the foul of an inquifitor, and is fit for nothing elfe but to feed the fires of an Auto da Fé.

When I turn my thoughts to the past and present fituation of this peculiar people, I do not fee how any Christian nation according to the fpirit of their religion can refuse admiffion to the Jews, who, in completion of those very prophecies, on which Chriftianity refts, are to be fcattered and diffeminated amongst all people and nations over the face of the earth. It seems therefore a thing as inconfiftent with the spirit of thofe prophecies for any one nation to attempt to expel them, as it would be to incorporate them.

The fin and obduracy of their forefathers are amongst the undoubted records of our gospel, but I doubt if this can be a fufficient reafon,

why

why we should hold them in such general odium through so many ages, feeing how naturally the fon follows the faith of the father, and how much too general a thing it is amongst mankind to profess any particular form of religion, that devolves upon them by inheritance, rather than by free election and conviction of reafon founded upon examination:

Let me put the case of a man born a Jew and fettled in a kingdom, where the Inquifition is in force; can he reconcile his natural feelings to a conversion in favour of that church, which denounces everlasting damnation against him, if he does not betray the fecrets of his parents, and impeach them to the Inquifition for the concealed religion, which he knows they practife, though they do not profess.

If we as Chriftians owe fome refpect to the Jews as the people chosen by God to be the keepers of thofe prophetic records, which announce the coming of the Meffias, we owe it also to the truth of history to confefs, that the hope indulged by them that his coming would bring temporal as well as fpiritual falvation, was general to all the nation. Their antient fages had united the military with the prophetic character; fome had headed their armies; all had gone forth with them, and even their women

had contributed to the downfal of their enemies and oppreffors: They had been delivered from their Egyptian and Babylonish thraldom by the arm of God; the yoke of Rome laid no lefs heavy on their necks; and they regarded their former deliverances as types and forerunners of the greater deliverance to come, when the Son of God fhould defcend upon earth in the plenitude of his power to rid them from their enemies and oppreffors.

In place of this glittering but delufive vifion they beheld a meek and humble man, a teacher of peaceful doctrines, who went about preaching forgiveness of injuries and fubmiffion to authorities. They afked him (and the question was a proving one) whether he would have them render tribute unto Cæfar: He told them in reply they should render unto Cæfar the things that were Cæfar's, tribute to whom tribute was due: Mortifying reply! extinguishing at once their hopes and their ambition. Still there was something about him that converted many and ftaggered all; never man fpoke as he spoke, never man did what he did; he had evident power of working miracles; the hand of God was with him and the operations of nature were under his controul: His power was great, but was not great to their purposes, and therefore they denied that.

it was derived from God; they charged him with being a magician, and casting out devils by the aid of the prince of the devils: A likely intercourse between the representatives of light and of darkness; a notable collufion between heaven and hell; if Beelzebub was to be charged with confpiring to caft out Beelzebub, it was at leaft incumbent on the abettors of the charge to prove that any being, endowed with such power could be fo devoid of intelligence.

Conviction and rebuke only rendered them more furious and inveterate; despairing at length of employing his power against Rome, they refolved upon turning the power of Rome against him: They impeached him before Pilate the Roman procurator; Pilate unwillingly at their urgent requifition sentenced him to ignominious execution; difavowing in the strongest terms his fhare in the act, and by the figurative exculpation of washing his hands in public view, purifying, (as far as such a ceremony could purify) his tribunal from the guilt of fpilling innocent blood.

Can it be a wonder with us at this hour that the Jews fhould perfift in avowing their unbelief in the Meffias? If they admit the evidences of the Chriftian religion, do they not become their own accufers? And this, although it be no reaD 3

fon

fon why a man fhould fhut his eyes against the truth, will yet be a motive, allowing for the imperfection of human nature, why he should not feek for it.

I

N° LXV.

SLIGHTLY hinted in my former paper

that the Jew of Venice would not turn out to be the proper offspring of Shakespear, and as the researches of his commentators have fettled this point fo clearly against the legitimacy of Shylock, I may leave it with the reader's judgment to decide, whether he formed his drama. immediately from the Pecorone of Fiorentina, borrowing the incident of the cafkets from Boccace; or at fecond hand, as fome fuppofe, from an old ballad formed upon that story.

But I had a further object in the hint I then dropt, fuggefted to me by the perufal of a very curious old novel written by Thomas Nafhe, and publifhed in 1594, intitled The Unfortunate Traveller, or the Life of Jacke Wilton. The hero is defcribed to be one of the court-pages belonging to Henry the Eighth, and is made to play a number of roguifh pranks in the camp of that