to the coming of the Meffiah, nothing but a total apostacy of their nation can poffibly prevent his appearing in God's time, and in the glorious manner they have been taught to expect him by which means, they have been enabled to linger out that long series of centuries in this dreadful state of uncertainty, ever eager to catch at the least shadow of hope, and to liften to every impoftor, though at the hazard of the moft mortifying difappointment, and addition to their

anxieties.

Of this we have given a fufficient number of instances during the courfe of this chapter, and many more we might have added to them, had our stated boundaries permitted it.

One, however, we cannot pafs by, which happened foon Illufive after the pretended difcovery of Prefter John's kingdom, or bopes about empire of Abiffinia, of which we shall speak in a fubfequent the Jewish volume. No fooner had the news reached Europe, that fome Sceptre be- Portuguefe had difcovered that much fought-for kingdom, ing found and found it to be governed by a monarch lineally defcended in Abif- from king Solomon, the fon of David, that he and all his fub

finia.

jects were circumcifed, that they observed the fabbath, and abftained from fwine's-flefh, and other unclean meats, &e. than the Jews, both in Europe and Afia, were elevated beyond measure at the report; and took it for granted, that both the Ethiopian monarch and his fubjects were Jews; and that the promifed fceptre of Judah was preferved among them by a Divine Providence. The vastness of his dominions, the magnificence of his court, and other particulars relating to that newly discovered empire, were greatly exaggerated by the two Portuguese Jews who were fent upon that discovery. The learned rabbi Abalbanèr, of whom, and of whofe works, we have given an account a little higher, and who was then at Lisbon, took occafion, from this agreeable piece of news, to extol the glory and numeroufnefs of the Jewish nation, in one of his comments on the minor prophets. About the Forge a fame time a letter was trumped up, and printed by thofe of Letter from Conftantinople, and difperfed amongst thofe of their nation, that empe- far and near, in the Hebrew tongue and character, and prerar to them. tended to be written and fent to them by the Abiffinian em

peror. They had caufed it to be tranflated into most European languages, and fent to the whole Jewish brotherhood, backed by fundry other artful circumstances, which failed not to raife, as ufual, the spirits, if not the triumph, of the tribe of Judah, where-ever the news had reached.

1 See before, p. 352, (C), & feq.

IT proved, however, but a short-lived one; and the Portuguefe had no fooner penetrated into the Abiffinian empire, than they found it to be all Chriftian, monarch as well as fubjects; and that though they ftill retained the old Jewish rites above-mentioned, yet they had, by their own confeffion, been converted to Christianity ever fince the time of the apostles, as we shall more fully fhew when we come to that part of their history. This new difcovery not only put an end at once to all the joy and hopes of the Jewish nation, but filled them with confufion and defpondency: and fince this fo much wifhed and fought-for fceptre of Judah could not be found in any of the three old known parts of the world, they quickly refolved to go in quest of it among the many vast and newly discovered tracts of America, and try their fortune in that Send in new world; where we shall rejoin them again at the close of quest of it this chapter, and fee to what a height of triumph one of their to Amegreat rabbies improved a few dark and vague hints, fent to rica, him from thence in favour of the royal dignity and of the Jewish nation: fo determinate are they, at all adventures, to compafs fea and land in queft of it, or even to believe it still flourishing in the clouds, or depths of the fea, rather than allow it to have been absorbed in, or, to speak more truly, dignified and exalted into a spiritual fceptre and kingdom, Disbelief by that very perfon, whom their grand fanhedrim condemned of a fpirito the moft ignominious of deaths, for impiously arrogating tual/ceptre that extraordinary dignity to himself; and which, had it really and kingbelonged to him, that fupreme court ought, and would, without all doubt, have been the first and readiest to acknowlege and proclaim it to the whole world. For fo they actually judge, one and all, of that whole tranfaction; and cannot, without the utmost abhorrence, imagine the bare poffibility, that the grand council of their nation, unerring as they conceive it then was, to have been fo fatally blinded in a matter of the greatest consequence, and to have ever been capable of paffing fo unjust a sentence on a perfon of his extraordinary merit and character. This reflexion, juft and affecting as it is, muft of course give an additional weight to their averfeness to the gospel, which represents them as guilty of that atrocious fact, and as rejected by God, their city and temple demolished, the whole Jewish nation as groaning under the most grievous captivity on that account, and the Gentiles as admitted in their ftead into Chrift's fpiritual kingdom. And what a series of the moft mortifying truths are these for that once fo favoured people, to believe and acknowlege before they can be admitted into it themselves; and what discouragement must it be, moreover, to fo carnal a people, to forego

dom.

and

and renounce all their expectations of a temporal and glorious one, as their learned men had, with fo much care and pains, delineated to themfelves out of the figurative and pompous expreffions of the prophets, and described as abounding with every thing that is magnificent and attractive, for the fake of one that was founded in the deepest humility and self-denial, and promifed no other earthly fatisfaction, but what resulted from the practice of the fublimeft moral and focial virtues, and the prospect of a future life. But more especially ftill, as that is in fact giving up the whole authority of their talmud, which, we have fhewn elsewhere, they hold to be greater than that of the Hebrew text ", and cafting a heinous reflection on the writers and compilers of it, who have been most lavish in their defcriptions of the earthly pomp and glory of it, as having reprefented it in a manner quite oppofite to the meaning of the facred volumes, and to what Chrift now peremptorily affirmed it was to be. And can we wonder at their crying out with one voice, as in the parable, WE WILL NOT HAVE THIS MAN TO REIGN OVER US ", or at those who have come after them, for continuing in the fame obdurate averfenefs to a religion, which exacts fo much, and offers fo little, of what they have been so long inured to esteem the greatest bleffings of Heaven, peace and riches, power and plenty, a numerous pofterity, and dominion over all the world? All which, and many more, they expect will flow on all hands. like a torrent upon them, under the reign of their Messiah.

Bewildered about

the tempo

ral one.

BUT, on the other hand, feeing fuch hath been their fatal blindness, to prefer the uncertain and temporal bleffings of the old law, before the more fure, valuable, and lafting ones of the glorious gofpel; (uncertain we call the former, because, as we have had occafion to obferve more than once, the delay of the imaginary kingdom, fo many centuries beyond the time prefixed by the facred oracles, hath thrown them into the greatest uncertainty °), and that preference founded only on an erroneous notion, that the Mofaic difpenfation, an I confequently its promifes, as well as precepts, were of an eternal and unalterable nature; what more effectual method could the Divine Providence take to undeceive them in both refpects, after they had rejected the Meffiah whom he had fent to them, in his predicted time and character, than, first, to cause his temple at Jerufalem, the centre of the Mofaic worship, to be utterly destroyed, and to lie in ruins ever fince, to convince them of the abolition of the one, and then

m See before, Anc. Hist. vol. iii. p. 7, (B). 9 Vid. int. al. p. 428, & feq.

Luke xix. 14.

to

to scatter them over the world, and make them undergo the longest and hardest slavery, under those very gentiles, over whom they expected to gain an abfolute and irreversible dominion, under their vainly expected Meffiah, till it had brought them to the acknowlegement of the true one. Such an affecting argument against them, fhould, one might have reasonable expected, been more than fufficient to have drove them to it; and to have convinced them long ago, not only of the vanity, but absurdity of their expectations; how derogatory to the Divine Juftice and Goodness, and how oppofite they were to the true intereft and happiness of mankind; had not this partial, felfish prejudice, in favour of their own nation, too manifeftly verified the charge of the prophet against them P; That their hearts were become grofs The just and carnal; fo that, having eyes they faw not, ears but caufe of heard not, and hearts incapable of understanding what was their of the utmost confequence to them to know; namely, that blindness, the bleffings defigned by the Divine Wisdom to adorn and and fignalize the Meffiah, were of a far nobler, fublimer, and lasting nature, than all that worldly pomp and grandeur they fo ftupidly dreamed of, and their carnal hearts were fo ftrongly set upon. But fince all these severe methods, the and opprefpropereft, if not the only ones, that could, without infringe- fed fate. ment upon their rational liberty, rectify this strong and long contracted biass, have hitherto proved ineffectual; need we wonder at the Divine Providence continuing them still under the fame difcipline and regimen, till their end is fully answered, and their cure effectually wrought. But we shall here refer our readers, for a farther difplay of this difpenfation of God towards them, to that most learned and elegant account which the apostle hath given us of it in his epistle to the Romans 9; and where he will fee the fource of their incredulity, as well as their wonderful prefervation to the happy time of their general converfion, to be ftanding monuments of the truth of the ancient prophecies, fully accounted for, and the Divine Juftice and Goodnefs, with refpect to his designs and dealings towards them, clearly vindicated, and duly magnified.

NOR hath this fatal prejudice, in favour of a conquering Meffiah, and his fuppofed glorious reign, ftopped here. They have not only renounced, and itill perfift to do so, and vilify the promised, and more fignal redemption, which Chrift offered to them from fin and punishment, as contrary

Ifai. vi. 9, & feq. & alib. Matth. xiii. 14. Acts, ult. 26, & feq. 9 Chap. xi. paff. & alib. plur. MOD. HIST. VOL. XIII.

Hh

to

to their expectation, that he was to deliver them from the Roman yoke, and fubdue thofe tyrants, and the rest of the world, under their subjection (though this notion of a temporal deliverance appears to have been only taken up about this time, when they had fmarted fo long under the Romans; the more ancient of their doctors entertained a much more fublime notion of it (W), and dreamed of nothing less than fuch imaginary conquests and universal dominion): but, in order to juftify their unjust and impious deeds, and fupprefs as much as poffible the murmuring and discontent of those few amongst them who condemned it ; not content to have perfecuted him with the utmost malice and cruelty during his Impious life, they have, by the vileft arts, and blackeft flanders, afforgeries perfed his Divine Character and Doctrine, and rendered his against memory odious, and even execrable, to their nation. InChrift's pe- ftead of his lineal descent from the tribe of Judah, and digree. the lineage of David, fo clearly fet forth by two evangelists (in which genealogies, though there be found fome seeming difference and inconsistency, yet a careful and candid reader will eafily observe it to be of fuch a nature, as rather confirms than invalidates their mutual authority, as we have fully proved in a former part of this work, they have fubstituted a falfe and spurious pedigree, and made him the offHis mira- fpring of adultery and inceft. His miracles, the vast number and variety of which they could not deny, but do even confefs in their Thalmud, they have malicioufly, and with the most abfurd effrontry, afcribed to a diabolical power, and to the magic art, which they pretend he learned during his abode in Egypt, though but a child both on his going and coming out of it. Those of his disciples met, indeed, with

cles.