We therefore owe infinite obligation to your nation for upbraiding us, as you have never ceased to do, with paying divine honours to Jesus Christ, and making a Trinity in the Divine nature, and consequently with being idolaters. It has been one principal means of making the more inquisitive among us to consider whether the heinous charge was a just one; and the consequence has been, that we have found it to be so. You had reason on your side, and we yield to it. With the same candour, do you also examine whether we have not, in other respects, reason on our side also, and submit to that, not to us, who are only the means in the hand of Providence of holding it out to you. If you will examine impartially what Christianity really is, and not what it has been represented to be, you will find in it nothing at which your minds ought to revolt. It is perfectly consistent with all the zeal you now have for the law of Moses, though it is hostile to the additions which the Scribes and Pharisees among you have made to it, and which no person, except one authorized by God for the purpose, had any right to make. Christianity inculcates as fully as Moses himself, the doctrines of the divine unity, and that of his placability to returning penitents, and it asserts with peculiar clearness and energy that fundamental article of all practical religion, the revelation of a future life, rectifying some mistakes into which your ancestors seem to have fallen with respect to it. But, whether you be offended or not, Christianity opens the gates of heaven to all the Gentile world. This doctrine, however, is by no means inconsistent with any thing contained in your Scriptures, but, on the contrary, is really implied in them. For there we read that Enoch, Noah, Job, and many others, enjoyed the favour of God, (and they will, no doubt, be happy in a future state,) though they lived before the publication of the law of Moses, or even the appointment of circumcision. It is evident, therefore, that these rites are not, in their own nature, necessary to acceptance with God. Nay, Abraham himself became the friend and favourite of God before he was circumcised: and neither he, nor Isaac, nor Jacob, were acquainted with the peculiar laws of Moses. Why, then, should you think it inconsistent with any maxim in the government of God, that he should be disposed to make all the sincerely pious and virtuous, happy? Your peculiar ritual cannot, from the nature of it, be observed by all mankind. It is only adapted to a country of small extent, but sufficient, and properly situated, to be the head of all countries, and where your nation will reign as kings and priests unto God," receiving the homage of all other nations, and presenting offerings to God on their behalf. If a situation like this does not gratify your highest ambition, you encourage an ambition of a very preposterous and improper kind, inconsistent with the happiness of all other nations, and indeed with that of your own. But can you really think that God made all the Gentile nations to be your slaves and vassals, and did not rather intend that your pre-eminence should have for its object, in the great plan of Providence, the happiness of the whole world? The head, though the most honourable member of the body, is calculated to be subservient to the whole system. The family of Aaron supplies you with priests, but it is for the use of all the twelve tribes; and the family of David gives you kings, but for the happiness of the nation at large. In like manner, your whole nation is to be the head of all the nations of the earth, in order to its being the medium of communicating happiness to all mankind, who are equally the offspring of God and the care of his providence with yourselves. Let, then, this great, this rational and desirable pre-eminence content you, and let all idea of opposition and difference of interest cease. We will receive and honour you as our elder brethren, in the great family of God. Acknowledge us as your younger brethren. Your nation is the great object towards which our eyes are directed. From the call of Abraham, you have been the chief instrument in the hands of God, of instructing mankind in the great truths of religion. Your sufferings have had the same object with your prosperity; and having now, we hope, nearly answered their end, may the God of heaven, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God whom we Christians as well as you Jews worship, (and whom we have learned of you to worship,) be graciously pleased to put an end to them, gather you from among all nations, as he has promised, resettle you in your own country, the land of Canaan, and, under princes of the family of David, make you the most illustrious, as you are now the most despised, of all the nations of the earth! With my most earnest prayers for your happiness, temporal and spiritual, I am, Your brother in the worship of the one only true God, P.S. I am far from flattering myself that the little which I have now advanced should, of itself, make any of you converts to Christianity. My utmost hope is, that it may be the means of drawing your attention to the subject, and especially to the study of your Scriptures and ours in conjunction; that you may judge for yourselves whether there be reason in what I have advanced, or not. Your conversion must be the result of your own diligent study and impartial inquiry, with the blessing of God. In order to contribute the little that may be in my power to so desirable an event, I shall be very happy to hear what any of your learned men may object to my state of the evidences of Christianity in this small tract; and I do assure you, that I will consider your objections with the greatest attention. Let us then freely confer and reason together on the subject; and if we should not entirely convince one another, we shall at least have an opportunity of shewing our candour and good-will. You will please to take particular notice, that my chief object (besides shewing that the proper characters of the person who is distinguished in your prophecies by the title. of Messiah apply to Jesus Christ, and to no other) is to convince you that the proper, that is, the historical evidence for the miracles of Christ, is of the very same kind with that to which you must have recourse, in order to prove the truth of those of Moses, and, upon the whole, more strong and satisfactory. If, therefore, it be in your power to persuade a Heathen, that God really spake to your ancestors by Moses; by the force of exactly similar arguments you ought to acknowledge that the same great Being spake by Christ and the apostles; and on whatever principles you reject the evidence of Christian miracles, any person will be justified in rejecting those on which the truth of your own religion rests. Diligently, then, compare the historical evidence of the two religions. Both, you will find, are, in reality, but one. They are perfectly consistent with, nay, they imply each other, and must stand or fall together. 251 LETTERS TO THE JEWS. PART II. OCCASIONED BY MR. DAVID LEVI'S REPLY TO THE FORMER LETTERS. שובו אלי ואשובה אליכם אמר יהוה צבאות [Birmingham, 1787.] Mal. iii. 7. LETTER I. Of Mr. Levi's want of Candour, his Ignorance of profane Literature, and of the New Testament; and of his requiring Unanimity in the Opinions of Christians. Brethren in the belief of the unity of God, I AM happy to find that I have, in any measure, gained your attention to the Letters I took the liberty to address to you, inviting you to an amicable discussion of the evidences of Christianity, and that one of your body, Mr. David Levi, * has favoured me with an answer to them. † I should have been more happy if he had been better acquainted with profane literature, as it is commonly, though improperly called, and if he had shewn a little more candour. According to him, I am not "entitled to the appellation of a Christian," and, "notwithstanding all my boasted "Author of Lingua Sacra; the Ceremonies of the Jews, &c." + In "Letters to Dr. Priestley." This publication, according to Mr. Levi, greatly alarmed the Jews; "for, having long felt the iron hand of persecution," he adds, “for the most frivolous and groundless accusations, they consequently dreaded the most distant attempt at what might, by malevolent persons, be construed an attack upon the established religion.' See "Letters to Dr. Priestley, in Answer to his Letters to the Jews, Part II., occasioned by Mr. David Levi's Reply to the former Part," 1789. Letters, p. 9. (P.) "In the strict sense of the word," Mr. Levi adds; and grounds the assertion upon Dr. Priestley's rejection of "the miraculous conception of Jesus," and the "opinion that he was the legitimate son of Joseph." See Second Letter, p. 11. sincerity, the honour of God, or the propagation of Christianity, are things of little moment in my serious thoughts."* He perceives in me, "a complete Deist," "under a most jesuitical argument."† I feel not for myself, but for you, when I recite these things. You must be ashamed that one of your body should have begun this important discussion in a manner so unworthy of you. To make any reply to such calumny would answer no purpose. If it be well founded, I must be so utterly unprincipled, that my most solemn declarations would stand for nothing. That I am not the person Mr. Levi describes, I can only appeal to the tenor of my conduct, and to my writings, with both which he is probably unacquainted. I complain of my opponent's want of profane literature, because it leaves us destitute of some common principles, without which it is impossible to come to any conclusion with respect to the question in debate. He maintains, ‡ that it is contrary to the Scriptures to assert that there were more than four kings of Persia; whereas, if there be any faith in history, there were more than twice that number. Nor is this at all contrary to the Scriptures. For it is only said, (Dan. xi. 2,) "Behold there shall stand up yet three kings in Persia, and the fourth shall be far richer than they all; and by his strength, through his riches, he shall stir up all against the realm of Grecia." By this, nothing more is to be understood, than that only three kings of Persia would intervene between the time of Daniel, and that king who would make a formidable invasion of Greece. Mr. Levi also asserts, § that the work of Josippon Ben Gorion, || in Hebrew, was written by the same Josephus who wrote in Greek: whereas no two histories can be more contradictory to one another than they are, even with respect to the very circumstance for which he quotes the Hebrew work, viz. the history of king Agrippa, who according to it was put to death by Vespasian, at the siege of Jerusalem, but according to the Greek, lived peaceably at Rome, after the Jewish war was over. The Hebrew Josephus makes this Agrippa to have been the Messiah of Daniel, ¶ whereas the writer of the Greek applied all the prophecies concerning your Messiah to Vespasian. * Letters, p. 30. (P.) 1 Ibid. p. 65. (P.) See Lardner, VII. p. 162. + Ibid. p. 31. (P.) § Ibid. p. 61. (P.) |