| 87 awaited them, they fled from country to country, seeking in vain any rest for the sole of their feet. Even the wide extended plains of Asia afforded them no resting place, but has been often spotted with their blood, as swell as the hills and valleys of Europe. The church of Rome ever ranked and treated them as heretics. The Canons of different councils pronounced excommunication against those who should favor or uphold the Jews against Christians; enjoined all Christians neither to eat, nor hold communion with them; prohibited them from bearing public offices, or having Christian's slaves appointed to be distinguished by a mark, decreed that their children should be taken from them, and brought up in monasteries; and what is equally descriptive of the low estimation in which they were held, and of the miseries to which they were subjected, there was often a necessity even for those who otherwise oppressed them, to ordain that it was not lawful to take the life of a Jew without any cause." (p. 79.) And who is able to tell the heart rending miseries which befell my nation during the long continued and ungodly proceedings of the Crusades? O! it is well for us that the powers of our intellects are limited by Him who knows the end from the beginning; else, were we able to recall the black and bloody scenes for many centuries under which the Jewish nation have groaned and despaired, and have them all presented into one view, the effect would be overwhelming! See for particulars, Gibbon's Hist. vol. vi: p. 17
In England-aye in Christian England too-my brethren have suffered great cruelty and persecution.
And why should I refrain from admitting that-here I had to pause, being blinded with the tears which spontaneously rushed into my eyes and fell upon the paper on which I am writing at the recollection, and at the necessity that I must class England too, amongst those who oppressed Israel? When I reflect that those who have rescued me from dark superstition, and presented me with the Gospel of my dear Savior have formerly too laid the iron yoke of tyranny upon the backs of my forefathers; when I remember that this country (where I for the first time heard about Jesus, and where I now find Christians who say to the Jew, "You are my brother, and, as a brother I love you," has once been a scene of unparalleled sufferings of the poor Jew; when I think of these things, then I am constrained to suffer the stream of my tears mixed with grief and joy' to have free course, which I trust my Christian reader will pardon.
But to return: we asserted that in England, too, the Jews have suffered cruelty and oppression. "During the Crusades," says Keith, "the whole nation united in the persecution of them." In a single instance, at York, fifteen hundred Jews, including women and children, refused all quarters; could not purchase their lives at any price; and frantic with despair, perished by a mutual slaughter. Each master was the murderer of his own family, when death became their only deliverance. The scene of the castle of Massada, which was their last fortress in Palestine, and where nearly one hundred perished in the same manner, was renewed in the Castle of York. So despised and hated were they, that the Barens, when contending with Henry VIII, to ingratiate themselves with the populace, ordered seven hundred Jews to be slaughtered at once, their houses to be plundered, and their synagogues to be burned.-Richard, John, Henry III, often extorted money from them, and the last, by the most unscrupulous and unsparing measures, usually defrayed his extraordinary expenses with their spoils, and impoverished some of the riches amongst them His extortions at last became so numerous, and his oppression so grievous, that in the words of the historian, he reduced the miserable wretches to desire to leave to depart the kingdom, but even self-banishment was denied them. Edward the First completed their misery, seized on all their property, and banished them from the kingdom. Above fifteen thousand Jews were rendered destitute of any residence were despoiled to the utmost and reduced to ruin.-Nearly four centuries elapsed before the return to Britain of this abused race.
It is, indeed, marvellous[marvelous], and the same has been the wonder and admiration in all ages of historians, sceptics [skeptics], and Christians, how the Jews, after having had such showers of persecutions poured down upon them, in which the kingdoms of this world have combined their powers to extinguish them from off the face of the earth, have still remained a people, a nation distinct from all others, though mixed up in the ocean of nations, and tossed with tempest, they have remained distinct as pearls in the cavern of the sea. But the wonder ceases to be a wonder when we remember that God had future blessings for them in store; and the only answer that I could give, if asked, how they endured the storms of persecutions for the many centuries with such amazing patience and perseverance is , that they rested their hope in the providence of God, who once for ever declared, "I have loved thee with an everlasting love."
But what is still more distressing, and what
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